Bialystok

• City in northeastern Poland; seat of the Bialystok district.
  
• Established in the 14th century, it was handed over to the Russians in 1807. During the interwar period, it was part of independent Poland. The Jewish presence in Bialystok is first noted in the 17th century.
  
• The development of the textile industry in the region contributed to the growth of the Jewish community. The first Jewish factory was built in 1850. By 1912, almost 90 percent of the textile factories were Jewish-owned, and Jews made up 66 to 75 percent of the population.
  
• The Jewish community was well-organized, with an extensive educational and cultural network.
  
• First occupied by the Germans on September 15, 1939, Bialystok was handed to the Soviet Union a week later. On June 27, 1941, the Germans took Bialystok for the second time, burning, shooting and and torturing 2,000 Jews on what came to be known as “Red Friday”.
  
• Fifty thousand Jews were moved into the ghetto on August 1, 1941. Most inhabitants worked in ghetto industries as the ghetto became a supply base for items required by the occupation forces. The Judenrat organized soup kitchens, two hospitals, an outpatient clinic, a gynecological clinic, three pharmacies, a first-aid organization, two schools, a law court, and other community institutions. Two hundred men formed a Jewish police.
  
• The first united underground movement was organized in August 1942, with the involvement of the Communists, Ha-Shomer Ha-Tsa’ir, and the Bund. A second bloc that included Dror and other movements was established in November 1942, but the two groups joined together only in July 1943, under the leadership of Mordecai Tenenbaum and Daniel Moszkowicz.
  
• A secret archive, modeled on the “Oneg Shabbat” group of the Warsaw Ghetto, operated until April 1943.
  
• The Bialystok Ghetto uprising was fought from August 16-20, 1943, on the eve of what was to be the liquidation of the ghetto. With only one exception, the underground fighters all lost their lives in the battle. On August 18, the mass deportations began. Within three weeks, the Jews of Bialystok were sent to Treblinka, Majdanek, the Poniatowa or Blizyn labour camps, or Aushwitz. A trainload of 1,200 children was taken to Theresienstadt, but one month later, they, too, ended up in Auschwitz.
  
• Bialystok was liberated by the Soviet army in August 1944. About 200 camp inmates, 60 partisans and several dozen hidden Jews had survived.