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The shtetl of Volp lies on the road between Volkovysk and Grodno, at the mouth of the Volpianka River. Its population was comprised of 1,100 Jews and approximately the same number of non-Jews, or citizens.^[1] The designation ‘citizen’ was a legacy of the time when Volp was founded. The shtetl was privileged to experience growth and popularity thanks to its Synagogue: a masterpiece of art and architecture, which over the course of ten generations, anchored the shtetl and attracted the attention of many exponents and critics of the art academies of Europe. A rich body of writing was generated about the Volp Synagogue in Polish, Russian and German. As a consequence, Volp is prominent for a segment of Jewish history in the 17^th Century, when Jewish settlements were established and spread out in the time of the Lithuanian rulers, the Holshanskys, who ruled in Vilna. During their time, they attracted many Jews: craftsmen, small shopkeepers, and merchants, as well as other citizens, to whom they granted special status, freeing them from taxes for a set period of time, and giving them special privileges. The shtetl grew quickly, with its commerce and small industry, and became a place where the rich nobility from the surrounding area would come. The nobles because a source of income for the Jewish shopkeepers.

Volp attained the high point of its development under the aegis of the Graf, Lev Sapieha^[2], when the town became the seat of his summer residence. In the year 1643, King Wladyslaw IV and his Queen, Cecilia Renata came to Volp in great pomp and ceremony.

The Synagogue in Volp Reproduced from Nota Kozlowski's Oil Painting

The Holy Ark in the famous Volp Synagogue

The Volp Synagogue

The Bimah

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The economic upsurge permitted the wealthy Jewish community to erect the magnificent synagogue in the eastern part of town, right by the road to Volkovysk. The synagogue exuded its influence far beyond the borders of Poland and Lithuania. Even miles away, there were road markers pointing to the gigantic wooden structure, which was highly original in both style and concept. Apart from this, the building had a massive main section of several stories high, with large and small roofs, some higher, some lower, and two symmetric wings, right and left which were harmoniously proportioned. Who constructed this synagogue? According to tradition, it was the same architect who constructed the synagogue in the capital city of Grodno, because that synagogue makes use of a number of design elements that are identical to the synagogue in Volp. The exact details are not known with certainty, because at the time of the war with Sweden, when the Swedes torched Volp on all four sides, the entire community building was burned down, along with the archive that was located there. Also, the Swedes plundered all the valuable implements of the synagogue, such as the awesome silver menorah that used to stand in the synagogue, and which three people could barely lift. The synagogue, however, remained intact, and was not maintained in the three hundred years of its existence. Only the roof was at one time covered with new shingles, and on the Ark, the inscription remained from 1781, which recalls the improvements to the synagogue. The art commission of the Polish legislature (i.e. the Sejm), recognized the synagogue of Volp as one of the most noteworthy old-time architectural landmarks in all of Poland, and forbade even the most minor alterations to be made, or any repairs or renovations without a special permit.

The center of the synagogue was crowned with an octagonal cupola, which was supported by four massive columns which were covered with a variety of carvings. from the inside, the cupola covered five galleries, either higher or lower, symmetrically divided, and carved from wood. The cupola had painting on it of shining stars against a background of a dark sky color. The interior height of the synagogue up to the soffit was 120 feet. The previously mentioned four columns formed the four corners of the Bimah.

According to the opinion of Matyas Berson, a member of the Posen Art Academy, in his Polish brochure of 1904 – “Kilka słów o Drewnianych Bóżnicach w. Polsce”

the Bimah can be thought of as an architectural masterpiece in the art of carpentry. The most original and most magnificent part of the synagogue was without a doubt the Holy Ark – 36 feet high and 15 feet wide in several stages. The Holy Ark was thought to be the handiwork of the greatest wood workers of the 17^th century. The carvings of the Holy Ark were composed of arabesques, motifs of a variety of allegorical representations of animals and plants. Berson expresses himself in his brochure as follows:

“Looking at the Holy Ark, which has remained in its original condition, the eye is lost among the many impressions, and the aesthetic sense is filled from its breadth. It is one of the most beautiful compositions of its kind.”

A Corner of the Volp Marketplace

The Volp Hebrew School Right to left, seated: Zalman Kaplan, Meir Gershon Hona's son-in-law), The Volp Rabbi, Rabbi Mordechai Segal, a lady teacher, Yaakov Pet, a lady teacher.

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The town of Volp was proud of its synagogue, and lived in the shadow of its one-time grandeur. Because the Polieser Railroad passed Volp by, the economic circumstance of the shtetl was bad for the last forty years. Many Volp Jews were occupied in gardening. The Jews of the area had a special reputation as tobacco planters. There were times – during the First World War, and immediately afterwards – when the entire town was occupied in it. They worked hard, but earned their living honestly. During the campaigns for the Keren HaYesod or Keren Kayemet, the activists would go from house to house and the Volp citizens would give them sheaves of dried tobacco, as their contributions to the campaign. Volp was cited many times in the records of the national fund organizations as a model of initiative and willingness to be forthcoming.

The new influences on Jewish streets that came after the First World War also did not bypass Volp. The youth was swept up in the Zeitgeist. Many left among the first pioneers to the Holy Land, a portion of them on foot, where they established a meaningful Volp group. A majority of the young people left Volp to study in the in the middle schools and higher institutions of learning in Poland and beyond. It was in this fashion that this small town produced a ‘minyan’ of licensed Hebrew and Yiddish teachers, three doctors (among them Dr. Shevakhovsky, who was killed in Israel), three graduates of the Warsaw Takhkemoni Teacher's Seminary, a chemist, a lawyer – apart from many graduates of the Hebrew and Polish gymnasiums.

Giving no heed to their dire economic circumstances – the Polish government tobacco monopoly always ruined the Jewish tobacco plantations, and the town became impoverished as a result – the Volp Jewish community nevertheless maintained a four-grade Hebrew school.

To accomplished this, they skimped on food, in order to be able to send their children to the Polish Volksschule, which happened to be tuition-free. A large Hebrew library of over three thousand volumes existed next to the Hebrew school, with a rich repertoire of books – ranging from the works of Rabbi Yehuda Halevy to the newest books from publishing houses in the Land of Israel. Also, a significant number of books could be found in the Yiddish library.

The Jews of Volp were exceedingly proud of the Yiddish author Ben-Eliezer (he passed away a few years ago), who was a son-in-law to a Jewish Volp family. His wife, Manya Ben-Eliezer, is to this day the secretary of the Organization of Olim from Volp in Israel.

The well-known Polish author Liza Ozheshkova, who came from Milkovchizna near Volp, portrayed Jewish characters in her work from the small Jewish shtetl, and generally memorialized a number of familiar Jews from Volp, such as Gedalyahu and others. Volp served as a source for her portraits.

The talented Yiddish author, David Leizer Yelinovich was born in Volp. He died in 1922 (at the age of 23) from tuberculosis, leaving behind a cornucopia of prose, poetry, a longer epic, “The Neman,” and many stories about the lives of settlers (in the Holy Land), and others. Among the coterie of Jewish writers in Vilna, he was thought to be a great rising star.

Today, every trace of the shtetl has vanished. On June 25, 1941, the attacking Germans bombarded the town heavily with cannon fire, and created great destruction in Volp. Also, the famous Volp Synagogue, that had withstood all conflagrations for over 300 years, was reduced to rubble.

Translator's footnotes:

1. Called Мещянй in Russian. Return
2. Readers of the Dereczin Memorial Book will recognize the Sapieha Family as one of the most influential of the Polish-Lithuanian nobility of this area. Return

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Volp found itself in the part of Poland that was occupied by the Russians in October 1939. Life proceeded normally under the Soviet regime, without any incidents, until the tragic day of June 22, 1941. A mere four days after this date, on June 26, the entire Jewish infrastructure in Volp went up in flames. Almost all the houses were burned down at that time, from the Catholic Church to the home of Velvel the blacksmith – the last one on the road to Volkovysk.

The Germans appeared in Volp on July 1. Their first troops entered the town on motorcycles. For the entire week, prior to the arrival of the German troops, all the Jews of Volp hid out in the cellar of Shlomo Chaim Heschel's. The Jews were seized with a panic, out of a great fear of the new rulers. By contrast, the Christians welcomed the Germans with flowers. As quickly as the initial front line moved past, a new order was established, in which the Jews were declared to be outside the settlement. A Judenrat was established in which Fei'sheh Rubinson (Gruna's) was placed at the head. The Jews were compelled to arrange themselves in earthen bunkers, because their homes had been burned down. A regimen of hard forced labor began for the Jews. The Judenrat was compelled to provide a specific number of people every day for forced labor. The Jews had to built the new chancellor's building from scratch, that the Nazis demanded on behalf of their commander. They had to carry the bricks from their own houses, that had burned down, on their backs, for a distance of kilometers.

A part of the Christian populace, indeed, did exhibit a certain measure of friendliness towards their Jewish neighbors. The majority, however, related to them with cruelty. The Jewish were informed upon to the Nazis, and they were robbed of their last possessions. Jews were attacked in the middle of the street and forcibly beaten or whipped altogether.

This lasted for 15 months until the fall of 1942. Suddenly, the German command ordered the Christian populace to provide the Jews with potatoes at reduced prices, several measures for each family. The Jews became encouraged by this last decree. Unfortunately, this turned out to be a bad sign. The tragic Monday of November 2, 1942 arrived. At a time before dawn, an order was disclosed that all the Jews were to assemble at the church square and bring their possessions with them.

This order hit the Jewish population of Volp like a thunderclap. They immediately assembled in the earthen bunkers, where considerable discussion took place. The younger among the Jews argued that the order of the Germans, which can bode no good, should not be obeyed. They argued that the Jews had nothing to lose, that they were better off trying to flee where possible, and not to surrender into the hands of the enemy. Their voices were shouted down by the older ones, who warned that if the order were not obeyed, the Germans would shoot the entire community. Finally, the older element won the argument, and the Jews gathered at the church square at the designated hour.

On arrival at the place, the Jews were ordered to throw all of the belongings they had brought along, together in the courtyard. They were permitted to take only two pair of undergarments, and food for three days. They were compelled to leave the rest in the town. When a Christian, who could no longer wait to plunder the Jews, approached the Jewish possessions, the Germans shot him on the spot.

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Meanwhile, SS troops surrounded the shtetl on all sides, in order to prevent anyone from fleeing. My youngest brother, Eybush and my cousin Leibl Zaretsky, who worked at the German gendarmerie, did not show up at the appointed place. The gendarmes for whom they worked had simply told them that they were not obliged to appear, if they did not want to, and that they can go wherever they pleased. The German command, however, got wind of this, and threatened to shoot 15 Jews if the two boys did not show them selves. In the end, the Judenrat, of which my older brother Leibeh was a member, was able to get the order called off. Under the stringent watch of SS Troops, the Jews of Volp left their home town forever, in the direction of Volkovysk.

Sixty six people, the fathers and mothers of those who were driven out, who because of their age could not present themselves in accordance with the German decree, were then gathered together into the brick Volp bathhouse building. Wladek Petrovich's son and his companions dug a common grave in the new cemetery for the entire day. That evening, they were shot in groups of ten at the mouth of the common grave. Gershon Srebrenik, who jumped into the grave, was buried alive. Only Pearl, Motteh Yosh'keh's had the good fortune to sneak out of a window in the bathhouse, and flee in the direction of the Volkovysk bunkers, where, however, she died two weeks later from exhaustion. Galinshchiza died there as well. The murder of the 66 people took place on the day of Zadushek, which the Belorussians celebrate as their Memorial Day. The Germans ordered the Christian grave diggers to strip the clothing off the corpses, but no one moved from their places to do this.

Only one Volp Jew managed to survive the Volkovysk bunkers, and that was Yitzhak Vodovoz (a son of Golda Leah Atzkes). The Volkovysk Jew, Epstein, helped him, a member of the burial society of those bunkers. He sequestered him into a sack on a small wagon, under eight corpses, and in this manner, took him out of the bunkers to the cemetery, from where Vodovoz followed the rail line until he reached the Klibanitzer Forest (7 kilometers from Volp). He joined up with the partisans in the forest, in whose movement he was active in the Volp district, until the liberation by the Russians. This very same Yitzhak Vodovoz took revenge on the Germans and also on the Christians who helped to exterminate the Jews of Volp.

My sister Riv'cheh and her son, Leizer hid themselves with a Christian in the village of Palicki. The Christian however, at a later date, turned them over to the Germans, and the Volp policeman Litvinovich shot her along with her son Leizer. When Yitzhak Vodovoz joined the partisans in the Volp district, he decided to revenge this betrayal and murder. He organized an attack in Klibanitsa. The attackers killed Litvinovich and two Germans, who had previously beaten and tortured the Volp Rabbi, Rabbi Mordechai Segal, whose beard they tore out as part of their bestial acts. The gentiles then acquired great respect for Yitzhak Vodovoz, and the Germans put a price of fifty thousand marks on his head.

Another incident took place with David Zaretsky (son of Sima) and Joseph Motes and his daughter. They hid out in Gliendievich (two kilometers from Volp) in a mill. The head of the village found out about this, and sent them back to Volp under guard. The same night, they were imprisoned in the cellar of the Volp anti-Semite, Vishnievsky. The following morning, they were shot at the new cemetery. The Soviet regime later sentenced the head of the village to ten years in prison. A similar situation occurred with Sholom Rizikov. He hid himself for over three months with a peasant in the village of Lazi (three kilometers from Volp). For this, the peasant confiscated everything that he had, and then informed on him to the Germans. The Germans shot him the same day at the new cemetery. All these betrayals reached Yitzhak Vodovoz, who by that time was already active in the partisan movement. He then organized an expedition to the village where the peasant lived, and took revenge for the death of Sholom Rizikov.

Yitzhak Vodovoz would come to Volp frequently, despite the fact that he knew the Germans were looking for him. The town Christians – as he himself would say – held him in respect like “steel and iron”, after he had several times attacked and carried out expeditions against the perpetrators. Yitzhak Vodovoz and also Shmuel

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Sidransky, who survived the entire war in Russia, from Stalingrad to Prague, survived. They returned to Volkovysk after the liberation, but in August 1947 they left Volkovysk, and are today found in Poland.

The plight of the Volp Jews in the Volkovysk bunkers, in the initial period after their arrival on November 2, 1942, was so oppressive, that the feelings of loyalty among them to share the fate of their families was so intense, that many who could have saved themselves chose not to. This was the case with my youngest brother Eybush and Label Zaretsky, who did not present themselves along with the other Volp Jews on November 2, 1942, in accordance with the German decree. After five days of wandering over fields and forests, they voluntarily presented themselves at the Volkovysk bunkers, and together with their larger family, were eventually exterminated in Treblinka.

What happened to the Volp Jews during their three weeks in the Volkovysk bunkers is adequately communicated by Dr. Einhorn. Their fate was the same as that of [the Jews of] Volkovysk and of [the Jews of] a number of other small towns that had been driven together into the bunkers.

The shtetl of Volp is completely destroyed. The streets are overgrown and covered in rubble – writes Yitzhak Vodovoz. The gravestones are knocked over. Every week, Yitzhak Vodovoz and Shmuel Sidransky would come to Volp to repair the grave sites, and cry out their hearts. Two witnesses for a vanished Jewish community. We are aware, in total of eleven Volp Jews who survived the Holocaust.

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