Religious Tourism

Rakhiv is situated on the River Csorna Tisa. The town’s jurisdiction covers also the village Berlebas, some 9 kms south of it. Rakhiv had been part of the district of Maramaros in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. After World War I (1918), part of the district north of the River Tisa was given to the Republic of Czechoslovakia. From March 1939 to the spring of 1945 the region had been under Hungarian occupation and after the World War II (1945) was annexed to Ukraine, then a republic of the Soviet Union.

The majority of the inhabitants of Rakhiv are Ruthenians, some are Hungarian and Schwabs (Germans).

Two Jews are on record in Rakhiv in the year 1728, one of them leased a farming estate. In 1735 and again in 1746 two other Jews are mentioned in records. Later, for about 100 years, Jews were not permitted to live at Rakhiv. Only in the middle of the 19th century, when the restricting laws against the Jews were gradually annulled, a few dozen Jews from Galicia came to Rakhiv and founded a community. A community register was kept as from 1869. In the 1870’s following the congress of the Jews of Hungary, the community was registered as an orthodox community. Among its institutions were: a hevra kaddisha, two Torah study societies, a psalms society, and a number of charity funds. In 1920 a women’s charity society by the name of “Vered” was formed.

In 1880, 288 Jews lived in Rakhiv. A wooden synagogue was apparently built at that time, and the great brick synagogue followed some years later. There were also a beit midrash of the Mishnah study society, the small bet midrash at the rabbis house, and a kloiz of the Admor Rosenboim.

The first rabbi of the community, Rabbi Israel Haim Friedman, a scholar of the religious law, was appointed in 1888 and served until his death in 1922. He was succeeded by his son Rabbi Shelomo Zalman Friedman who was a Sighet hasid and headed a yeshiva at the place. Among his students, whose number sometimes reached 150, were also students of other Hasidic centres. They came from Maramaros and other places in Carpatho-Russia. The Admor Isaac Rosenboim had a beit midrash at his home. His brother, the Admor Mordecai Rosenboim, was the leader of the Hasidim of Rachov in the period between the two world wars. The community employed a mohel (circumciser) and shohatim (ritual slaughterers). Of the heads of the community are known Shelomo Abish and M. Davidovitz.

In 1921, there were 1,400 Jews in the community of Rakhiv, including the 50 Jews of Berlebas. Most of them were Hasidim of Vizhnitz and they spoke Yiddish.

In 1930, 1,234 Jews lived in Rakhiv, out of a total population of 8,893.

The majority of the Jews of Rakhiv were merchants and almost the whole of the town’s trade was in their hands. Among the artisans were: tailors, cobblers, carpenters, watchmakers, tanners, bakers, photographers, and others. Jews founded at Rakhiv 3 big sawmills, 3 flour mills, and a power station. These enterprises employed Jews as workers and clerks. Among the professionals were: a judge, 3 lawyers, 2 doctors, 3 dentists. Jews owned farm and forest lands and a few were owners of taxicabs. The secretary of the town was most of the time Jewish and there were Jews also on the staff of the municipal authority.

At the time of the Republic of Czechoslovakia, between the two world wars, the majority of the Rakhiv Jews were followers of “Agudat Israel”, nevertheless there was a lively Zionist activity among the youth of the town. Mendel Davidovitz of the Zionist Revisionist movement founded at Rachov a branch of the Revisionist youth movement Betar. Davidovitz was a delegate to Zionist congresses. In addition, there were also local branches of “Hashomer Hazair”, “Hehalutz”, and “Hamizrachi”. In 1926, prior to the elections to the 15th Zionist congress, 20 shekels (membership in the Zionist organization and a voting right) were acquired at Rakhiv.

A drama circle was active at Rakhiv and plays in Yiddish were performed during Hanukkah and Purim festivals at Rakhiv and neighbouring Jewish settlements. Jewish youth engaged also in sport and the two local sport clubs, football and tennis, were composed mainly of Jews.

The Holocaust period

The Munich Agreement was signed in September 1938, about a year before the outbreak of World War II and in November of that year the Ruthenians were given autonomy in part of Carpatho-Russia, including Rakhiv. In the pro-German Ruthenian regime the Jews were in constant danger of losing their lives and property. Ruthenians made plans to take over Jewish property and drew up lists of Jews to be killed. On 15.3.1939 the Hungarians occupied the region and liquidated the Ruthenian bands. But the relief was short-lived. The “Jewish laws” of the pro-German Hungarian government, which restricted the Jews in education, trade, and the professions, were applied also against the Jews of the occupied territory. Many young Jews escaped to the USSR, but most of them were arrested there as spies or suspect elements and sent to forced labour camps. Some of them died in Siberia, the others eventually volunteered to the Red Army or to the Czech units under General Svoboda which fought under Soviet command.

In July 1941 several dozens of Jews who did not possess Hungarian citizenship papers were expelled from Rakhiv. They were murdered in Kamenets Podolski together with scores of thousands of other Jews who had been similarly expelled from Hungary. Two families from Rakhiv and ten Jews from Berlebas managed however to escape and returned to Hungary. In that year Jewish men of the ages 18-48 were conscripted to labour companies in the Hungarian army.

On 19.3.44 the German army entered Hungary. On the 16th of April the Jews of Rakhiv were herded into the general school and kept there for 8 days. On the 9th day they were moved to the ghetto that had been set up in the town of Mate Szalka, were about 17,000 Jews were being kept without shelter over their heads, without food and without sanitary conditions. A month later all the Jews in the ghetto were sent to the extermination camp of Auschwitz in Poland. The number of the Jews of Rakhiv and the area who perished at Auschwitz and other camps was about 1,200.

In the autumn of 1944 when the Red Army liberated the town, the Jews of Rakhiv who had escaped from the labour camps returned to their homes. They revived the life of the community and in 1945, when the war ended, they were joined by survivors from the concentration camps in Germany. A steady minyan was organized at one of the Jewish houses. Rabbi Shelomo Zalman Friedman survived the war but did not return to Rakhiv. He was appointed as the head of the rabbinical court in the town of Satmar (Satu Mare), and in 1947 moved to Lugano in Switzerland. He spent the last years of his life in Bene-Berak in Israel. The shohet Rabbi Ze’ev Greif also survived, returned to Rakhiv and served in addition as the mohel (circumciser) for the whole neighbourhood, until his death in 1975. When Carpatho-Russia became part of Ukraine all the prayer houses were requisitioned from the Jews and the buildings were turned into warehouses. With the years, most of the Jews left the place and in the 1970’s there were less than a minyan Jews at Rakhiv.

Official text written by Researchers of The Museum of The Jewish People at Beit Hatfutsot

Photo and video by Fr. Maksym Strykhar  (Religious Tourism)