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The Holocaust spelled the end of the Jews
of Porozow. The story is told in the memory
book of neighboring Wolkowysk, but other
pieces of the puzzle are provided by the
report of the Soviet Special Commission and
by the tale of an act of kindness on the
part of the priest of Porozow. Click on the
titles above or below to see the pages that
correspond to each source.
The
Wolkowysker Yizkor Book
Yizkor books were
published in the years following World War II by former
residents of European cities and villages as a means of
paying tribute to those who had died and recording the events of
the Nazi era. Although there is no book about Porozow
per
se, there are references to it in other
Yizkor books, and a
full chapter is devoted to it in Moses Einhorn's 1949 work,
Wolkowysker Yizkor
Book. Both the original Yiddish pages and a translation by
Jacob Solomon Berger are included in this website and can be
viewed by clicking on the heading of this paragraph.
Special State Commission for
the Investigation of Nazi
Crimes
Several pages from the
report issued by this
commission charged with investigating crimes
committed by the Germans
during their occupation of
Soviet areas in 1943-1945
pertained to Porozow.
Although the microfilmed
images are of
poor quality, it is possible
to glean some of the story
from them. Those images, and
translations, are on this
website and are available by
clicking on the heading of
this paragraph.
Yad Vashem
Pages of Testimony for Porozow
Holocaust Victims
Pages of testimony documenting
victims of the Holocaust who were
born or lived in Porozow are on file
in the Hall of Names as Yad Vashem,
Israel's Holocaust Martyrs' and
Heroes' Remembrance Authority.
Submitted by friends and relatives
of the victims, they provide
biographical data on those who died
as a way of preserving their memory.
Clicking on the heading of this
paragraph will take you to a page
from which you can view individual
pages of testimony collected from
the Hall of Names by the late Lucille Gudis.
The Story
of a Jewish-Zionist Community
Katriel Lashowitz published a Hebrew memoir
about Volkovysk in Tel Aviv in 1988 titled
"Volkovysk: The Story of a Jewish-Zionist
Community." Included was a short section
on Porozow, which was translated into
English and republished by Jacob Solomon
Berger. You can read it in either Hebrew or
English by clicking on the heading of this
paragraph.
Jewish
Colonial Trust Assets
Theodore Herzl established The Jewish
Colonial Trust to help prepare the Land of
Israel for Jewish settlement. Early in the
20th century, the Trust issued shares of
stocl, many of which were purchased by
people who perished in the Holocaust. Asset
holders included 27 former residents of
Porozow.
An Act of
Kindness by the Priest of Porozow
Kalman Barakin of Bialystok, a
Holocaust survivor, hand-wrote 28
pages of testimony in Yiddish in
June, 1948 concerning the martyrdom
of the Bialystok Jews. As part of
his story, he included an account of
the acts of a righteous gentile, the
Catholic priest of Porozow, who gave
refuge to several Bialystok Jews
during the German occupation. That
account, quoted in a book on the
destruction of Polish Jewry, can be
viewed by clicking on the heading of
this paragraph.
Miscellaneous
Holocaust Records
Records of two men from Porozow who were
sent to the Auschwitz Concentration Camp but
not immediately put to death but forced to
work, can be found
here.
Two elderly women born in Porozow died in
hospitals in the Lodz Ghetto; information
about them can be found
here.
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