The Jewish Encyclopedia
The Jewish Encyclopedia: A Descriptive Record of the History, Religion and Customs of the Jewish People from the Earliest Times to the Present Day is an English-language encyclopedia containing over 15,000 articles on the history and state of Judaism up to the early-20th century. The encyclopedia's managing editor was Isidore Singer and the editorial board was chaired by Isaac K. Funk and Frank H. Vizetelly; the work's scholarship is still regarded: the American Jewish Archives deemed it "the most monumental Jewish scientific work of modern times", Rabbi Joshua L. Segal said "for events prior to 1900, it is considered to offer a level of scholarship superior to either of the more recent Jewish encyclopedias written in English."It was published in 12 volumes between 1901 and 1906 by Funk & Wagnalls of New York, reprinted in the 1960s by KTAV Publishing House. It is now in the public domain. Singer conceived of a Jewish encyclopedia in Europe and proposed creating an Allgemeine Encyklopädia für Geschichte und Wissenschaft des Judenthums in 1891.
He envisioned 12 volumes, published over 10-to-15 years, at a cost of 50 dollars as a set. They would contain unbiased articles on ancient and modern Jewish culture; this proposal received good interest from the Brockhaus publishing company. However, after the House of Rothschild in Paris, consulted by Zadoc Kahn, offered to back the project with only 8 percent of the minimum funds requested by Brockaus, the project was abandoned. Following the Dreyfus affair and associated unpleasantness, Singer emigrated to New York City. Believing that American Jews could do little more than provide funding for his project, Singer was impressed by the level of scholarship in the United States, he wrote a new prospectus, changing the title of his planned encyclopedia to Encyclopedia of the History and Mental Evolution of the Jewish Race. His radical ecumenism and opposition to orthodoxy upset many of his Jewish readers. Funk agreed to publish the encyclopedia on the condition that it remain unbiased on issues which might seem unfavorable for Jews.
Singer accepted and was established in an office at Funk & Wagnalls on 2 May 1898. Publication of the prospectus in 1898 created a severe backlash, including accusations of poor scholarship and of subservience to Christians. Kaufmann Kohler and Gotthard Deutsch, writing in American Hebrew, highlighted Singer's factual errors, accused him of commercialism and irreligiosity. Now considering that the project could not succeed with Singer at the helm, Funk & Wagnalls appointed an editorial board to oversee creation of the encyclopedia. Funk & Wagnalls assembled an editorial board between October 1898 and March 1899. Singer toned down his ideological rhetoric, indicated his desire to collaborate, changed the work's proposed title to The Jewish Encyclopedia. Despite their reservations about Singer, rabbi Gustav Gottheil and Cyrus Adler agreed to join the board, followed by Morris Jastrow, Frederick de Sola Mendes, two published critics of the project: Kauffmann Kohler and Gotthard Deutsch Theologian and Presbyterian minister George Foot Moore was added to the board for balance.
Soon after work started, Moore was replaced by Baptist minister Crawford Toy. Last was added the elderly Marcus Jastrow for his symbolic imprimatur as America's leading Talmudist. In March 1899, the Central Conference of American Rabbis, contemplating a competing project, agreed to discuss collaborating with Funk & Wagnalls—thus securing the position of the Jewish Encyclopedia as the only major project of its kind. Shuly Rubin Schwartz describes the payment scheme arranged at this time as follows: Members of the local executive committee, exclusive of Singer and, of course, would receive one thousand dollars per annum, while the rest of the department editors would receive five hundred. All collaborators, editors included, would be paid five dollars per printed page of about one thousand English words. If the article was written in a foreign language, payment would be only $3.50 per page. Singer's compensation was forty dollars a week, his salary was considered an advance, since Singer alone was to share with the company in the profits.
Other editors participating in all 12 volumes were Gotthard Deutsch, Richard Gottheil, Joseph Jacobs, Kaufmann Kohler, Herman Rosenthal, Crawford Howell Toy. Morris Jastrow, Jr. and Frederick de Sola Mendes assisted with volumes I to II. William Popper served as assistant revision editor and chief of translation for volumes IV through XII; the editors plunged into their enormous task and soon identified and solved some inefficiencies with the project. Article assignments were shuffled around and communication practices were streamlined. Joseph Jacobs was hired as a coordinator, he wrote four hundred articles and procured many of the encyclopedia's illustrations. Herman Rosenthal, an authority on Russia, was added as an editor. Louis Ginzberg joined the project and became head of the rabbinical literature department; the board faced many difficult editorial questions and disagreements. Singer wanted specific entries for every Jewish community in the world, with detailed information about, for example, the name and dates of the first Jewish settler in Prague.
Conflict arose over what types of Bible interpretation should be included
Belarusian People's Republic
The Belarusian People's Republic referred to as the White Ruthenian Democratic Republic was a failed attempt to create a Belarusian state on the territory controlled by the German Imperial Army during World War I. The BNR existed from 1918 to 1919; the BNR was declared on March 9, 1918, in Minsk by the members of the Executive Committee of the First All-Belarusian Congress, two weeks on March 25, 1918, it proclaimed independance. In 1919, it co-existed with an alternative Communist government of Belarus, moving its seat of government to Vilnius and Hrodna, but ceased to exist due to the capture of the whole Belarusian territory by Polish and Bolshevik forces during the Polish–Soviet War, its government in exile, the Rada of the Belarusian People's Republic is the oldest still functioning. The Belarusian People's Republic was declared on the territory of modern-day Belarus three weeks after the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk was signed on March 3, 1918 between the new Bolshevik government of Soviet Russia and the Central Powers in the border city of Brest-Litovsk.
After the 1917 February Revolution in Russia, active discussions started in Belarus about either gaining autonomy within the new Russian Republic or declaring independence. Representatives of most Belarusian regions and of different political powers, including the Belarusian Socialist Assembly, the Christian democratic movement and the General Jewish Labour Bund, formed a Belarusian National Council in late 1917; the Council started working on establishing Belarusian governmental institutions. Both the Bolsheviks and Germans interfered in its activity. However, the Germans saw an independent Belarus as part of the implementation of their plan for buffer states within Mitteleuropa; the Bolsheviks had negotiations with the Belarusian Democratic Republic regarding an eventual recognition, but decided instead to establish a pro-Soviet government of Belarus - the Soviet Socialist Republic of Belarus. Parallel with negotiations that started between the Germans and Bolsheviks, the Belarusian Council started demanding recognition of autonomous status for Belarus, with continuing internal discussions on whether it should become an autonomous region within Russia or declare national independence.
In its First Constituent Charter, passed on February 21, 1918, the Belarusian Council declared itself the only legitimate power in the territory of Belarus. On March 9, following the signing of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk between the Germans and Bolsheviks, the Belarusian Council issued a Second Charter where it declared the establishment of the Belarusian People's Republic; the Belarusian Council became the provisional government of Belarus and was renamed the Council of the Belarusian People's Republic. On March 25, 1918, the All-Belarusian Congress proclaimed the independence of Belarusian National Republic; the Government of the BNR left Minsk in December 1918 for the Lithuanian Republic, in spring 1919 went into exile. In its Third Constituent Charter, the following territories were claimed for BNR: Mogilev Governorate, as well as Belarusian parts of Minsk Governorate, Grodno Governorate, Vilna Governorate, Vitebsk Governorate, Smolensk Governorate, parts of bordering governorates populated by Belarusians, rejecting the split of the Belarusian lands between Germany and Russia.
The areas were claimed because of a Belarusian majority or large minority, although there were numbers of Lithuanians and people speaking mixed varieties of Belarusian and Polish, as well as many Jews in towns and cities. Some of the Jews spoke Russian as their native tongue. There were attempts to create regular armed forces of the newly established Belarusian republic. Belarusian military units started to form within the disorganized Russian army in 1917. According to the historian Oleg Latyszonek, about 11,000 people volunteers, served in the army of the Belarusian RepublicGeneral Stanisław Bułak-Bałachowicz supported the Government of BNR and positioned his army as a Belarusian national army acting as the first President of the Belarusian Provisional Government shortly after the downfall of the BNR before again handing power to the people. For his resistance against Bolshevik forces, members of Belarusian minority in Poland regard him as their national hero; the major military action of the Belarusian People's Republic army was the Slutsk defence action in late 1920.
The Council of the BNR, based at that time in Lithuania, sent officers to help organize armed anti-Bolshevik resistance in the town of Slutsk. The Belarusian army managed to resist a month against the greater strength of the Red Army. During its short existence, the government of Belarus established close ties with the Ukrainian People's Republic, organized food supplies to Belarus from Ukraine and thereby prevented hunger in the country. Diplomatic representations of Belarus had been created in Germany, Estonia and other countries to lobby for Belarusian interests or to support Belarusian soldiers and refugees who landed in different parts of the former Russian Empire. Beginning in 1918, Anton Łuckievič, the Prime Minister of Belarus, met w
Russian Empire Census
The Russian Imperial Census of 1897 was first and only census carried out in the Russian Empire. It recorded demographic data as of 28 January 1897; the Central Statistical Bureau issued statistical tables based on fiscal lists. The second Russian Census was scheduled for December 1915, but was cancelled because of the outbreak of World War I one and a half years earlier, it was not rescheduled before the Russian Revolution. The next census to take place in Russia only occurred at the end of 1926 three decades later; the census project was suggested in 1877 by Pyotr Semenov-Tyan-Shansky, a famous Russian geographer and chief of the Central Statistical Bureau, was approved by Tsar Nicholas II in 1895. The census was performed in two stages. In the first stage the counters visited all households and filled in the questionnaires, which were verified by local census managers. In the second stage; the counters visited all households to verify and update the questionnaires. Despite this being the only census they took, Historians were able to find out the Russian Empires population in earlier periods of time still from collecting city censuses.
The data processing took 8 years using Hollerith card machines. Publication of the results started in 1898 and ended in 1905. In total, 119 volumes for 89 guberniyas, as well as a two-volume summary, were issued; the questionnaire contained the following questions: Family name, given name, patronymic or nickname Sex Relation with respect to the head of the family or household Age Marital status Social status: sosloviye, rank or title Place of birth Place of registration Usual place of residence Notice of absence Faith Mother language Literacy Occupation, both primary and secondaryIn the census summary tables, nationality was based on the declared mother language of respondents. The total population of the Russian Empire was recorded to be 125,640,021 people; the most spoken languages, from which nationality was determined were: Russia 67,476,000 Ukraine 23,430,407 Poland 9,402,253 Belarus 6,927,040 Kazakhstan 4,000,000 Lithuania 3,135,771 Georgia 2,109,273 Uzbekistan 2,000,000 Moldova 1,935,412 Latvia 1,929,387 Azerbaijan 1,705,131 Estonia 900,000 Armenia 829,556 Kyrgyzstan 750,000 Tajikistan 646,000 Turkmenistan 350,000 Largest cities of the Empire according to the census: Saint-Petersburg – 1,264,900 Moscow – 1,038,600 Warsaw – 626,000 Odessa – 403,800 Łódź – 314,000 Riga – 282,200 Kiev – 247,700 Kharkiv – 174,000 Tbilisi – 159,600 Vilna – 154,500 Saratov – 137,100 Kazan – 130,000 Rostov-on-Don – 119,500 Tula – 114,700 Astrakhan – 112,900 Ekaterinoslav – 112,800 Baku – 111,900 Kishinev – 108,500 Helsinki – 93,000 Nikolayev – 92,000 Minsk – 90,900 Nizhny Novgorod – 90,100 Samara – 90,000 Orenburg – 72,400 Yaroslavl – 71,600 Dvinsk – 69,675 Vitebsk – 65,900 Reval – 64 572 Libava – 64,489 Yekaterinodar – 65,600 Tsaritsyn – 55,200 Each enumeration form was copied twice, with the three copies filed in the county archives, the governorate archives, the Central Statistical Bureau in St. Petersburg.
The copies in St. Petersburg were destroyed. Most of the copies stored at the local and regional level have been destroyed; as in many other census in the era of nationalism, the results reflect the views on national policy of the authorities. In this case, the population of Russian ethnicity was inflated, thus for example, the number of Poles is underrepresented. Imperial officials classified the Ukrainian and Belarusian languages as belonging to Russian group and labeled those nationalities as Little Russian for Ukrainians and White Russian for Belarusians. Первая всеобщая перепись населенiя Россійской Имперiи. Под редакцiею Н. А. Тройницкаго. — СПб.: Изданiе центральнаго статистическаго комитета министерства внутреннихъ делъ, 1905. РОССИЯ. Полное Географическое Описание Нашего Отечества. Под ред. П. П. Семенова-Тян-Шанского. — СПб. 1913. Первая всеобщая перепись населения Российской Империи 1897 г. Распределение населения по родному языку и регионам The First General Census of the Russian Empire of 1897.
Breakdown of population by mother tongue and districts in 50 Governorates of the European Russia
Mohyliv-Podilskyi
Mohyliv-Podilskyi is a city in the Mohyliv-Podilskyi Raion of the Vinnytsia Oblast, Ukraine. Administratively, Mohyliv-Podilskyi is incorporated as a town of regional significance, it serves as the administrative center of Mohyliv-Podilskyi Raion, one of twenty-seven districts of Vinnytsia Oblast, though it is not a part of the district. It is located in the historic region of Podolia, on the border with Bessarabia, along the left bank of the Dniester river. On the opposite side of the river lies the Moldovan town of Otaci, the two municipalities are connected to each other by a bridge. Population: 31,674 The first mention of the town dates from 1595; the owner of the town, Moldavian hospodar Ieremia Movilă bestowed it as a dowry gift to his daughter, who married into the Potocki family of Polish nobility. At that time, the groom named the town Movilǎu in honor of his father-in-law. In the first quarter of the 17th century, Mohyliv became one of the largest towns in Podolia, it was part of the Podolian Voivodeship of the Lesser Poland Province of the Polish Crown.
It was a multi-ethnic border town composed of Poles, Armenians, Serbs and Bosniaks. In the 18th century the main churches of the town were built: the Polish-Armenian Church of the Visitation of the Blessed Virgin Mary and the Greek St. Nicholas Church; the town was annexed by Russia after the Second Partition of Poland. After the restoration of Polish independence, Mohyliv was captured by the Poles under the command of General Franciszek Krajowski in 1919, but it fell to the Soviet Union. In 1937, during the Polish Operation of the NKVD, the Soviets destroyed the Polish Church of the Visitation of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Mohyliv-Podilskyi was occupied by Romanian and German troops in July 1941 and incorporated into the Romanian-ruled Transnistria Governorate. Soon thereafter, thousands of Jews in the town were murdered by the occupiers. Mohyliv-Podilskyi soon became a transit camp for Jews expelled from Bessarabia and Bukovina to Transnistria. From September 1941 to February 1942 more than 55,000 deportees came through the town.
Thousands of people were treated cruelly by the Romanian guards. Many Jews were not allowed to stay in Mohyliv-Podilskyi; the 15,000 who were permitted to stay in the town organized themselves into groups. Some 2,000—3,000 were given residence permits, while the rest lived in constant fear of being deported into the Transnistrian interior for forced labor. In December 1943 over 3,000 Jews were allowed to return to Romania, in March 1944, Jewish leaders in Bucharest got permission to bring back 1,400 orphans. Mohyliv-Podilskyi was liberated that month. Many who stayed in the city were killed by German bombs. Most of the deportees were allowed to return to Romania in the spring of 1945. Mohyliv-Podilskyi has been part of Ukraine since August 24, 1991. Witold Maliszewski, a Polish composer, professor of the Warsaw Conservatory, was born in Mohyliv-Podilskyi Mohyliv-Podilskyi is twinned with: Bakhmut, Ukraine Koziatyn, Ukraine Końskie, Poland Połaniec, Poland Środa Wielkopolska, Poland Bălți, Moldova Pitești, Romania Šaľa, Slovakia Cavriglia, Italy Mohyliv-Podilskyi, article appeared in the Encyclopedia of Ukraine, vol.
3. "Mogilev on the Dniester". Encyclopædia Britannica. 1911
World War I
World War I known as the First World War or the Great War, was a global war originating in Europe that lasted from 28 July 1914 to 11 November 1918. Contemporaneously described as "the war to end all wars", it led to the mobilisation of more than 70 million military personnel, including 60 million Europeans, making it one of the largest wars in history, it is one of the deadliest conflicts in history, with an estimated nine million combatants and seven million civilian deaths as a direct result of the war, while resulting genocides and the 1918 influenza pandemic caused another 50 to 100 million deaths worldwide. On 28 June 1914, Gavrilo Princip, a Bosnian Serb Yugoslav nationalist, assassinated the Austro-Hungarian heir Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo, leading to the July Crisis. In response, on 23 July Austria-Hungary issued an ultimatum to Serbia. Serbia's reply failed to satisfy the Austrians, the two moved to a war footing. A network of interlocking alliances enlarged the crisis from a bilateral issue in the Balkans to one involving most of Europe.
By July 1914, the great powers of Europe were divided into two coalitions: the Triple Entente—consisting of France and Britain—and the Triple Alliance of Germany, Austria-Hungary and Italy. Russia felt it necessary to back Serbia and, after Austria-Hungary shelled the Serbian capital of Belgrade on the 28th, partial mobilisation was approved. General Russian mobilisation was announced on the evening of 30 July; when Russia failed to comply, Germany declared war on 1 August in support of Austria-Hungary, with Austria-Hungary following suit on 6th. German strategy for a war on two fronts against France and Russia was to concentrate the bulk of its army in the West to defeat France within four weeks shift forces to the East before Russia could mobilise. On 2 August, Germany demanded free passage through Belgium, an essential element in achieving a quick victory over France; when this was refused, German forces invaded Belgium on 3 August and declared war on France the same day. On 12 August and France declared war on Austria-Hungary.
In November 1914, the Ottoman Empire entered the war on the side of the Alliance, opening fronts in the Caucasus and the Sinai Peninsula. The war was fought in and drew upon each power's colonial empire as well, spreading the conflict to Africa and across the globe; the Entente and its allies would become known as the Allied Powers, while the grouping of Austria-Hungary and their allies would become known as the Central Powers. The German advance into France was halted at the Battle of the Marne and by the end of 1914, the Western Front settled into a battle of attrition, marked by a long series of trench lines that changed little until 1917. In 1915, Italy opened a front in the Alps. Bulgaria joined the Central Powers in 1915 and Greece joined the Allies in 1917, expanding the war in the Balkans; the United States remained neutral, although by doing nothing to prevent the Allies from procuring American supplies whilst the Allied blockade prevented the Germans from doing the same the U. S. became an important supplier of war material to the Allies.
After the sinking of American merchant ships by German submarines, the revelation that the Germans were trying to incite Mexico to make war on the United States, the U. S. declared war on Germany on 6 April 1917. Trained American forces would not begin arriving at the front in large numbers until mid-1918, but the American Expeditionary Force would reach some two million troops. Though Serbia was defeated in 1915, Romania joined the Allied Powers in 1916 only to be defeated in 1917, none of the great powers were knocked out of the war until 1918; the 1917 February Revolution in Russia replaced the Tsarist autocracy with the Provisional Government, but continuing discontent at the cost of the war led to the October Revolution, the creation of the Soviet Socialist Republic, the signing of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk by the new government in March 1918, ending Russia's involvement in the war. This allowed the transfer of large numbers of German troops from the East to the Western Front, resulting in the German March 1918 Offensive.
This offensive was successful, but the Allies rallied and drove the Germans back in their Hundred Days Offensive. Bulgaria was the first Central Power to sign an armistice—the Armistice of Salonica on 29 September 1918. On 30 October, the Ottoman Empire capitulated. On 4 November, the Austro-Hungarian empire agreed to the Armistice of Villa Giusti after being decisively defeated by Italy in the Battle of Vittorio Veneto. With its allies defeated, revolution at home, the military no longer willing to fight, Kaiser Wilhelm abdicated on 9 November and Germany signed an armistice on 11 November 1918. World War I was a significant turning point in the political, cultural and social climate of the world; the war and its immediate aftermath sparked numerous uprisings. The Big Four (Britain, the United States, It
Extermination camp
Nazi Germany built extermination camps during the Holocaust in World War II, to systematically kill millions of Jews, Poles, Soviet POWs, political opponents and others whom the Nazis considered "Untermenschen". The victims of death camps were killed by gassing, either in permanent installations constructed for this specific purpose, or by means of gas vans; some Nazi camps, such as Auschwitz and Majdanek, served a dual purpose before the end of the war in 1945: extermination by poison gas, but through extreme work under starvation conditions. The idea of mass extermination with the use of stationary facilities to which the victims were taken by train, was the result of earlier Nazi experimentation with chemically manufactured poison gas during the secretive Aktion T4 euthanasia programme against hospital patients with mental and physical disabilities; the technology was adapted and applied in wartime to unsuspecting victims of many ethnic and national groups. The genocide of the Jewish people of Europe was the Third Reich's "Final Solution to the Jewish question".
It is now collectively known as the Holocaust, in which 11 million others were murdered during the Holocaust. Extermination camps were set up by the fascist Ustaše regime of the Independent State of Croatia, a puppet state of Germany, which carried out genocide between 1941 and 1945 against Serbs, Jews and its Croat and Bosniak Muslim political opponents. After the invasion of Poland in September 1939, the secret Aktion T4 euthanasia programme – the systematic murder of German and Polish hospital patients with mental or physical disabilities – was initiated by the SS in order to eliminate "life unworthy of life", a Nazi designation for people who had no right to life. In 1941, the experience gained in the secretive killing of these hospital patients led to the creation of extermination camps for the implementation of the Final Solution. By the Jews were confined to new ghettos and interned in Nazi concentration camps along with other targeted groups, including Roma, the Soviet POWs; the Nazi Endlösung der Judenfrage, based on the systematic killing of Europe's Jews by gassing, began during Operation Reinhard, after the onset of the Nazi-Soviet war of June 1941.
The adoption of the gassing technology by Nazi Germany was preceded by a wave of hands-on killings carried out by the SS Einsatzgruppen, who followed the Wehrmacht army during Operation Barbarossa on the Eastern Front. The camps designed for the mass gassings of Jews were established in the months following the Wannsee Conference chaired by Reinhard Heydrich in January 1942 in which the principle was made clear that the Jews of Europe were to be exterminated. Responsibility for the logistics were to be executed by Adolf Eichmann. On 13 October 1941, the SS and Police Leader Odilo Globocnik stationing in Lublin received an oral order from Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler – anticipating the fall of Moscow – to start immediate construction work on the killing centre at Bełżec in the General Government territory of occupied Poland. Notably, the order preceded the Wannsee Conference by three months, but the gassings at Kulmhof north of Łódź using gas vans began in December, under Sturmbannführer Herbert Lange.
The camp at Bełżec was operational by March 1942, with leadership brought in from Germany under the guise of Organisation Todt. By mid-1942, two more death camps had been built on Polish lands for Operation Reinhard: Sobibór under the command of Hauptsturmführer Franz Stangl, Treblinka under Obersturmführer Irmfried Eberl from T4, the only doctor to have served in such a capacity. Auschwitz concentration camp was fitted with brand new gassing bunkers in March 1942. Majdanek had them built in September; the Nazis distinguished between extermination and concentration camps, although the terms extermination camp and death camp were interchangeable, each referring to camps whose primary function was genocide. Todeslagers were designed for the systematic killing of people delivered en masse by the Holocaust trains; the executioners did not expect the prisoners to survive more than a few hours beyond arrival at Belzec, Sobibór, Treblinka. The Reinhard extermination camps were under Globocnik's direct command.
The Jewish men and children were delivered from the ghettos for "special treatment" in an atmosphere of terror by uniformed police battalions from both and Schupo. Death camps differed from concentration camps located in Germany proper, such as Bergen-Belsen, Ravensbrück, Sachsenhausen, which were prison camps set up prior to World War II for people defined as'undesirable'. From March 1936, all Nazi concentration camps were managed by the SS-Totenkopfverbände, who operated extermination camps from 1941 as well. An SS anatomist, Dr. Johann Kremer, after witnessing the gassing of victims at Birkenau, wrote in his diary on 2 September 1942: "Dante's Inferno seems to me a comedy compared to this, they don't call Auschwitz the camp of annihilation for nothing!" The distinction was evident during the Nuremberg trials, when Dieter Wisliceny was asked to name the extermination camps, h
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