Zhytomyr
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| Location | |||
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| Government | |||
| Country Oblast Raion |
Ukraine Zhytomyr Oblast Zhytomyrsky Raion |
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| Founded | 8th Century | ||
| Mayor | Vira Sheludchenko | ||
| Geographical characteristics | |||
| Area - City |
65 km² |
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| Population - City (2005) - Density |
277,900 4,555/km² |
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| Coordinates | |||
| Elevation | 221 m | ||
| Other Information | |||
| Postal Code | 10000 — 10036 | ||
| Dialing Code | +380 412 | ||
| Website: www.zhitomir.net | |||
Zhytomyr (Ukrainian: Житомир; Polish: Żytomierz; Russian: Житомир; translit. Zhitomir) is a historic city in western Ukraine. It is the administrative center of the Zhytomyr Oblast (province), as well as the administrative center of the surrounding Zhytomyrsky Raion (district). The city itself is also designated as its own separate raion within the oblast, and is located at around , occupying an area of 65 km².
The current estimated population is 277,900 (as of 2005).
Zhytomyr is a major transportation hub. The city lies on a historic route linking the city of Kiev with the west through Brest. Today it links Warsaw with Kiev, Minsk with Izmail, and several major cities of Ukraine.
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[edit] History
Zhytomyr was allegedly established in the 8th century by Zhytomyr, prince of a Slavic tribe of Drevlians. The exact date of first mentioning, 988, is cut in the large stone of the ice age times, standing on the hill where Zhytomyr was founded. The first records of the town date from 1240 when it was sacked by the Mongol hordes of Batu Khan.
In 1320 Zhytomyr was captured by the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and received Magdeburg rights in 1444. After the Union of Lublin (1569) the city was incorporated into the Crown of the Polish Kingdom. In the Second Partition of Poland in 1793 it passed to imperial Russia and became the capital of the government of Volhynia. During a brief period of Ukrainian independence the city was for a few weeks in 1918 the national capital. From 1920 the city was under Soviet rule.
During World War II Zhytomyr and the surrounding territory came for several years under Nazi German occupation and was Heinrich Himmler's Ukrainian headquarters. The Nazi regime in what they called the "Zhytomyr General District" became what Wendy Lower describes as "a laboratory for… Himmler's resettlement activists… the elimination of the Jews and German colonization of the East—transformed the landscape and devastated the population to an extent that was not experienced in other parts of Nazi-occupied Europe besides Poland. [While]… [u]ltimately, the exigencies of the war effort and mounting partisan warfare behind the lines prevented Nazi leaders from fully developing and realizing their colonial aims in Ukraine… In addition to the immediate destruction of all Jewish communities, Himmler insisted that the Ukrainian civilian population be brought to a 'minimum.'" [1]
From 1991] the city has been part of the independent republic of Ukraine.
The Jewish Encyclopedia (1901-1906) characterized it as "one of the oldest towns in European Russia," meaning the Imperial Russia of that time, and one of the "prominent towns" of Lithuania in the middle of the 15th century.[2]
[edit] Population history
[edit] Jews in Zhytomyr
Zhytomyr apparently had few Jews at the time of the Khmelnytsky Uprising (1648), but by the time it became part of Russia in 1778, it had a large Jewish community, and was a center of the Hasidic movement. Jews formed nearly a third of the 1861 population (13,299 in 40,564); thirty years later they had somewhat outpaced the general growth of the city, with 24,062 Jews in a total population of 69,785. By 1891 there were three large synagogues and 46 smaller batte ha-midrashot. The proportion of Jews was much lower in the surrounding district of Zhytomyr outside the city; at the turn of the century (circa 1900) there were 22,636 Jews in a total population of 281,378.[2]
In Imperial Russia, Zhytomyr held the same status as the official Jewish center of southern part of the Pale of Settlement as Vilnius held in the north. The printing of Hebrew books was permitted only in these two cities during the monopoly of Hebrew printing from 1845 to 1862, and both of them were also chosen as the seats of the two rabbinical schools which were established by the government in 1848 in pursuance of its plans to force secular education on the Jews of Russia in accordance with the program of the Teutonized Russian Haskalah movement. The rabbinical school of Zhytomyr was considered the more Jewish, or rather the less Russianized, of the two ("Ha-Meliẓ," 1868, No. 40, cited in Jewish Encyclopedia). Its first head master was Jacob Eichenbaum, who was succeeded by Hayyim Selig Slonimski in 1862. The latter remained at the head of the school until it was closed (together with the one at Vilnium) in 1873 because of its failure to provide rabbis with a secular education who should be acceptable to the Jewish communities. Suchastover, Gottlober, Lerner, and Zweifel were among the best-known teachers of the rabbinical school at Zhytomyr, while Abraham Goldfaden, Salomon Mandelkern, and Abraham Jacob Paperna were among the students who later became famous in the Jewish world.[2]
The teachers' institutes which were substituted for the rabbinical schools were, in the words of the Jewish Encyclopedia "scarcely more satisfactory" (The JE refers to the teachers' institute at Zhytomyr as "probably the worst-managed Jewish institution in Russia of which there is any record, citing Prelooker, Under the Czar and Queen Victoria, pp. 8-21, London, 1895). It was closed in 1885, succeeded by a Talmud Torah, a "government school" for boys, a girls' school, and several private schools for both sexes that the JE describes as "admirable", with comparable praise for other Jewish institutions of Zhytomyr circa 1900.[2]
While "never a center of rabbinical learning" (JE) Zhytomyr boasted a few rabbis of some note: Rabbi Wolf (died 1800), author of the Or ha-Meïr (Koretz, 1795), a pupil of Bär of Meseritz and one of the leaders of early Hasidism, and Abraham Bär Mavruch, rosh bet din or acting rabbi of Zhytomyr in the first half of the nineteenth century and author of the Bat 'Ayin (Zhytomyr, 1850).[2]
The Jewish community of Zhytomyr suffered a pogrom May 7–8, 1905, with about 20 deaths in the city, and 10 more among a group of young Jews from nearby who were coming to assist the Jews of Zhytomyr; the section of the city known as "Podol" was devastated. Among the dead was Nicholas Blinov, a Christian student, who attempted to defend the Jews.[2]
The Jewish community of the region was largely destroyed in the Holocaust. In the four months beginning with Himmler's 25 July 1942 orders, "all of Ukraine's shtetls and ghettos lay in ruins; tens of thousands of Jewish men, women, and children were brutally murdered by stationary and mobile SS-police units and indigenous auxiliaries."[1]
[edit] Geography
Zhytomyr lies in a unique natural setting; all sides of the city are surrounded by ancient forests through which flow the Teteriv, Kamyanka, Yaroshenka and Putyatinka rivers. The city is rich in parks and public squares.
[edit] Famous people from Zhytomyr
- Juliusz Zarębski, Polish composer
- Ossip Bernstein, chess player
- Jarosław Dąbrowski, Polish-French Paris Commune revolutionary
- Hayyim Nahman Bialik, Hebrew poet, born in Radi, Volhynia, educated in Zhitomir
- Sergei Korolev, prominent rocket engineer and designer, the head of the Soviet space program
- Vladimir Korolenko, Russian writer.
- Keni Liptzin, Jewish actress in Yiddish theatre
- Sviatoslav Richter, Soviet pianist
- Tadeusz Borowski, Polish author
- Julian Movchan, Ukrainian writer/journalist
- Samuel Freedman, Manitoba Chief Justice
[edit] Trivia
- The asteroid 117240 Zhytomyr is named in honour of the city and oblast.
- This city was mentioned in NBC police drama series Law & Order briefly in 2004, when a lawyer was forced to give out the identity of an internet chatroom user who was assumed to have information about a murder case, it was eventually revealed to be a red herring.
[edit] Notes
- ^ a b Lower, 2005, introduction.
- ^ a b c d e f g h "Zhitomir (Jitomir)" in Jewish Encyclopedia (1901-1906)
[edit] References
- This article incorporates text from the 1901–1906 Jewish Encyclopedia article "Zhitomir (Jitomir)" by Herman Rosenthal and Peter Wiernik, a publication now in the public domain.
- Wendy Lower, Nazi Empire-Building and the Holocaust in Ukraine, 2005, University of North Carolina Press. ISBN 0-8078-2960-9. Introduction (online) accessed 19 July 2006.
[edit] External links
- Historic images of Zhitomir
- Images of contemporary Zhitomir, creative works of its citizens and their meeting point
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Subdivisions of Zhytomyr Oblast, Ukraine |  |
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Raions: Andrushivskyi | Baranivskyi | Berdychivskyi | Brusylivskyi | Cherniakhivskyi | Chervonoarmiiskyi | Chudnivskyi | Korostenskyi | Korostyshivskyi | Luhynskyi | Liubarskyi | Malynskyi | Narodytskyi | Novohrad-Volynskyi | Olevskyi | Ovrutskyi | Popilnianskyi | Radomyshlskyi | Romanivskyi | Ruzhynskyi | Volodarsko-Volynskyi | Yemilchynskyi | Zhytomyrskyi |
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Cities: Andrushivka | Baranivka | Berdychiv | Korosten | Korostyshiv | Malyn | Novohrad-Volynskyi | Olevsk | Ovruch | Radomyshl | Zhytomyr |
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Urban-type settlements: Brusyliv | Cherniakhiv | Chervonoarmiisk | Chudniv | Liubar | Luhyny | Narodychi | Popilnia | Romaniv | Ruzhyn | Volodarsk-Volynskyi | Yemilchyne | more... |
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Villages: more... |
