Also:   Pruzana (city, Belor.)
PRUZHANY (Pol.  PruUana), city in Brest oblast, Belarus. Situated on the road 
which leads from Brest-Litovsk to Moscow, it was under Polish rule until 1795; 
in the third partition of Poland it was incorporated into Russia, and in 1919 
regained by Poland until 1939. Jews lived in Pruzhany during the middle of the 
15th century and around 1450 there was a hevra kaddisha which noted its 
activities in a register. In 1463 the first synagogue (destroyed by fire in 
1863) was erected near the center of the Jewish quarter. In 1495 the Jews of 
Pruzhany were included in the general expulsion of Jews from Lithuania, but 
they returned after a few years. In 1563 there were 11 Jewish families and 276 
Christian families. Both Christians and Jews earned their livelihood primarily 
from agriculture and livestock, although there were some engaged in commerce 
and crafts. In 1588 the town was granted autonomous rights according to the 
Magdeburg Law. The rights of the Jews were formally drawn up and ratified by 
Ladislaus IV in 1644 and subsequently, on several occasions, by his successors. 
According to these rights Jews were authorized to reside in Pruzhany, to 
practice their religion and freely engage in their occupations. At the close of 
the 17th century there were 571 Jews (42% of the population); in 1868, during 
the period of Russian rule, there were 2,575 Jews (61% of the total). By the 
close of the 19th century the Jewish community enjoyed a vigorous social and 
cultural life in which all trends and parties were active. In 1921 the Jewish 
population was 4,152 (about 57% of the total). With the establishment of 
independent Poland, Jews also participated in the municipal government. In 
1927, 16 of the 24 delegates elected to the administration were Jews. In the 
elections of the Jewish community in 1928, M. Goldfein, a delegate of the 
merchants, was elected president.


Distinguished rabbis served in the town. At the close of the 16th century, 
R. Joel Sirkes, the renowned author of the Bah (Bayit Hadash), officiated as 
rabbi and rosh yeshivah for some time. R. David b. Samuel ha-Levi, author of 
the Turei Zahav (Taz) also held the rabbinical office for a brief period. Among 
the last rabbis of the town, one of the most prominent was 
R. Elijah Feinstein (1842�1929) who was appointed in 1884. Active in the 
affairs of Polish Jewry, he wrote Sefer Halikhot Eliyahu 
("Book of the Demeanors of Elijah," 1932), and a novella on Maimonides which 
was published in 1929. He was succeeded by his son-in-law R. David Feigenbaum, 
who perished in the Holocaust. 

[Shimshon Leib Kirshenboim]

Holocaust Period and After

Under Soviet rule (1934�41) the Jewish communal bodies were disbanded. Private 
enterprise was gradually liquidated as merchandise was sold and no new stock 
made available. Cooperatives were set up for the skilled craftsmen. Educational 
institutions were reorganized, and a Yiddish-language school set up. The Jewish 
orphanage was combined with its Christian-run counterpart and placed under the 
municipality.

On June 27, 1941, after war broke out between Germany and the U.S.S.R., the 
Germans entered Pruzhany. They immediately exacted a fine from the Jewish 
community of 500,000 rubles, 2 kg. gold, and 10 kg. silver, to be paid within 
24 hours. A Judenrat was set up, first chaired by Welwel Schreibman and later 
by Yizhak Janowicz, which tried to cope with the emergency. The Germans set up 
a ghetto on Sept. 22, 1941. Workshops were created in the hope that the 
economic utility of the Jews to the Germans would forestall deportations. The 
Judenrat combated the decrees against the Jewish inhabitants, gaining the 
confidence of members of the community. The ghetto swelled when four thousand 
Jews were brought in, 2,000 from Bialystok, and 2,000 from towns in the 
vicinity. In the latter half of 1942 an underground resistance organization was 
formed in the ghetto. Cells were established, arms acquired, and contacts 
sought with the partisans on the outside. On Jan. 27, 1943, two Jewish 
partisans approached the Judenrat to strengthen contact with the underground. 
Germans caught them there by surprise, but with the help of some of the 
Judenrat members the partisans escaped. The Judenrat was then charged with 
collaborating with the partisans. The following day the Germans began the 
deportation of the 10,000 inmates of the ghetto, 2,500 being dispatched daily 
to Auschwitz. Within four days the community was destroyed. Some groups of Jews 
fled to the forests and joined the Jewish partisans who operated in the 
vicinity. In the late 1960s there was a Jewish population of about 60 (12 
families). The former Great Synagogue was turned into an electric power plant. 
A mass grave of Jewish victims massacred by the Nazis was repeatedly desecrated 
and a road was built through its site. 

[Aharon Weiss]