Navahrudak

Navahrudak Навагрудак
Flag Coat of arms
Navahrudak Navahrudak within the Grodno Region
Coordinates: 53°35′N 25°49′E / 53.583°N 25.817°E / 53.583; 25.817
Country	Belarus
Region	Grodno
District (Rayon)	Navahrudak
Founded	1044
Elevation	292 m (958 ft)
Population (2009)[1]
• Total	29,336
Time zone	EET (UTC+2)
• Summer (DST)	EEST (UTC+3)
Postal code	231241, 231243, 231244, 231246, 231400
Area code(s)	+375 1597
License plate	4
Website	Official website

Navahrudak (Belarusian: Навагрудак), more commonly known by its Russian name Novogrudok (Новогрудок) (Lithuanian: Naugardukas; Polish: Nowogródek; Yiddish: נאָווהאַרדאָק‎ Novhardok) is a city in the Grodno Region of Belarus. In the 14th century it was an episcopal see of the Metropolitanate of Lithuania. It is a possible first capital of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, with Trakai also noted as a possibility. It was later part of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, the Russian Empire and eventually Poland until the Soviet invasion of Poland (1939) when the USSR annexed the area to the Byelorussian SSR. After the election of American president Donald Trump, the town gained fame as the hometown of the mother of Trump's son-in-law and advisor Jared Kushner.

Early history

It was first mentioned in the Sophian First Chronicle and Fourth Novgorod Chronicle in 1044 in relation to a war of Yaroslav I the Wise against Lithuanian tribes.^[2] In 1241 it was destroyed by the Mongols.^[3] It was also mentioned in the Hypatian Codex under the year of 1252 as Novogorodok (i.e. "new little town") the town was a major settlement in the remote western lands of the Krivichs that came under the control of the Kievan Rus at the end of the 10th century. Later hypothesis is disputed, as there are earliest archaeological findings from 11th century only.^[4]

In the 13th century, the fragile unity of the Rus disintegrated due to nomadic incursions from Asia, which reached a climax with the Mongol Horde's Siege of Kiev (1240), resulting in Kiev's sacking, leaving a geopolitical vacuum in the region later to be known under the conventional name Black Ruthenia. The Early East Slavs splintered along preexisting tribal lines into a number of independent and competing principalities.

Mindaugas of Lithuania made use of the plight to annex Navahrudak, which also became part of Kingdom of Lithuania,^[5][6][7][8] later Grand Duchy of Lithuania. During the 16th century, Maciej Stryjkowski was the first who, in his chronicle,^[9] proposed theory, that Navahrudak became the capital of the 13th century state. This statement is supported by several other scholars, while others dispute this notion, mainly because contemporary chronicles of the 13th century do not give any reference about Navahrudak as capital, even stating that city was transferred to the king of Halych-Volhynia.^[10] Vaišvilkas, the son and successor of Mindaugas, took monastic vows in Lavrashev Monastery^[11] near Novgorodok and founded an Orthodox convent there.^[12]

Age of the partitions

Historic Market Square

Navahrudak was a part of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth following the Union of Lublin in 1569. In 1795 it was incorporated into Grodno Governorate (It was founded as Slonim Governorate in 1795 and renamed in 1801) of Imperial Russia due to the Partitions of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. It was transferred to Minsk Governorate in 1843. The town was a center of thriving Jewish community, its 1900 population was 5,015.^[13]

Ruins of Navahrudak Castle, by Napoleon Orda.

In the course of the First World War the town was under the German occupation from 22 September 1915 to 27 December 1918.^[3] During the ensuing Polish-Bolshevik war it was occupied by the Polish Army in 18 April 1919 and later the Red Army in 19 July 1920 and finally the Polish one in 1 October 1920. It was ceded to the Second Polish Republic in the Peace of Riga signed on 18 March 1921 by the Soviet Russia and Poland, thus ending the hostilities. In the interwar period, Nowogródek served as capital of the Nowogródek province, until the 1939 invasion of Poland by Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union.

World War II

Soviet troops entered the city in 18 September 1939 and it was annexed into the Soviet Union via the Byelorussian SSR. The Polish inhabitants were exiled, mostly to Siberia and the Soviet Union, as prisoners. In the administrative division of the new territories, the city was briefly (from 2 November to 4 December) the centre of the Navahrudak Voblast. Afterwards the administrative centre moved to Baranavichy and name of voblast was renamed as Baranavichy Voblast, the city became the centre of the Navahrudak Raion (15 January 1940). On 22 June 1941 Nazi Germany invaded the USSR and Navahrudak was occupied on 4 July, following one of the more tragic events when the Red Army was surrounded in what's known as the Novogrudok Cauldron. See Operation Barbarossa: Phase 1.

During the German occupation it became part of the Reichskommissariat Ostland territory. Partisan resistance immediately began. The Bielski partisans made of Jewish volunteers operated in the region. On 1 August 1943, Nazi troops shot down eleven nuns, the Martyrs of Nowogródek. The Red Army reoccupied the city almost exactly three years after its German occupation on 8 July 1944. During the war more than 45,000 people were killed in the city and in the surrounding area, and over 60% of housing was destroyed.

Navahrudak was an important Jewish center and shtetl. It was home to the Novardok yeshiva, led by Rabbi Yosef Yozel Horwitz, as well as the hometown of Rabbi Yechiel Michel Epstein and of the Harkavy Jewish family, including Yiddish lexicograph Alexander Harkavy. Before the war, the population was 20,000, of which about half were Jewish; Meyer Meyerovitz and Meyer Abovitz were the Rabbis there at that time. During a series of "actions" in 1941, the Germans killed all but 550 of the approximately 10,000 Jews. (The first mass murder of Navahrudak's Jews occurred in December 1941.) Those not killed were sent into slave labor.^[3]

After the war, the area remained part of the Byelorussian SSR, USSR, and a rapid rebuilding process quickly restored most of the destroyed infrastructure. On 8 July 1954, following the disestablishment of the Baranavichy Voblast, the raion, along with Navahrudak became part of the Hrodna Voblast, in which it remains to this day, in modern Belarus.

Sights

Shopping Mall. 2004.

• Navahrudak Castle, sometimes anachronistically called Mindaugas' Castle, was built in the 14th century and is in ruins since being burnt down by the Swedes in 1710.
• The Orthodox SS. Boris and Gleb Church, Belarusian Gothic, started in 1519, but not completed until the 1630s; it was extensively repaired in the 19th century.
• The Roman Catholic Transfiguration Church (1712–23, includes surviving chapels of an older gothic building), where Adam Mickiewicz was baptised.
• Museum of Jewish Resistance, visited by Jared Kushner and family.^[14] Also a red pebble path alongf the escape route during the heroic escape of ghetto inmates.
• Other architectural attractions include the Church of St. Michael, renovated in 1751 and 1831, and the shopping mall in the central square.

Some of the Harkavys are buried at the old Jewish cemetery of Navahrudak. A house is shown where the poet Adam Mickiewicz was born; there are also his statue and the "Mound of Immortality", created in his honour by the Polish administration in 1924–31.

Kushner family and Jewish Ghetto

Son-in-law of American president Donald Trump, Jared Kushner's family stems from Novogrudok/Navahruda. His paternal grandmother was interned in the ghetto by the Nazis, and later led a daring escape through a tunnel underneath the ghetto's electric fence – one of Belarus' most famous ghetto escape stories. ^[15]

Climate

The Köppen Climate Classification subtype for this climate is "Dfb" (Warm Summer Continental Climate).^[16]

International relations

Twin towns – Sister cities

Navahrudak is twinned with:

• Elbląg, Poland^[17][18]

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Navahrudak.

• City administration
• Photos on Radzima.org
• Jurkau kutoczak — Юркаў куточак — Yury's Corner. Наваградак
• History of Jewish shtetl in navahrudak
• History
• Old Christian Cemetery Database
• The murder of the Jews of Navahrudak during World War II, at Yad Vashem website.

Notes

Coordinates: 53°35′N 25°49′E / 53.583°N 25.817°E / 53.583; 25.817