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Brody

 
Wikipedia: Brody
The tower of former district court building in Brody. Today it houses Pedagogical College.
A church in Brody

Brody (Ukrainian: Броди, Polish: Brody, Russian: Броды, Yiddish: בּראָד, translit. Brod) is a city in the Lviv Oblast (province) of western Ukraine. It is the administrative center of the Brodivskyi Raion (district), and is located in the valley of the upper Styr River, approximately 90 kilometres northeast of the oblast capital, Lviv. As of 2004, its population is 23,239.

Brody is the junction place of the Druzhba and Odessa-Brody oil pipelines.

Contents

History

The first mention of a settlement on the site of Brody is dated 1084 (Instructions by Volodymyr Monomach). It is believed to have been destroyed by Batu Khan in 1241.

From 1441 Brody was the property of different feudal families (Jan Sieniński, from 1511 - Kamieniecki).

Brody was granted Magdeburg rights and city status in 1546. At this time it was known under the name Lubicz (Любич, Polish: Lubicz) that gave name to the Lubicz Coat of Arms of the owner, Stanisław Żółkiewski (not to be confused with Lubech, Lubecz).

From 1629, the city became the property of Stanisław Koniecpolski, who ordered the construction of Brody Castle (1630-1635). In 1648, the castle took 8 weeks for Bohdan Khmelnytsky to capture it. The castle, or rather the fortress, was designed by the French military engineer Guillaume Le Vasseur de Beauplan.

Since the 17th century, the city has been populated not only by Ukrainians and Poles, but also a significant number of Jews (70% of the town's population), Armenians, and Greeks .[citation needed]

In 1704, Brody was purchased by Potocki family. In 1734 the fortress was destroyed by Russian troops and replaced by Stanisław Potocki's palace in the Baroque style. In 1772, Brody became a part of Habsburg Empire (from 1804 - Austrian Empire). In 1812, Wincenty Potocki was forced by the Austrian government to remove the city's fortifications.

A crossroads and a Jewish trade center in the nineteenth century, the city is considered to be one of the shtetls. It was particularly famous for the Brodersänger or Broder singers, who were among the first to publicly perform Yiddish songs outside of Purim plays and wedding parties.

The promulgation of the May Laws, and the massive exodus of Russian Jews which was its result, took the leaders of Western Jewry completely by surprise. Throughout 1881, hundreds of immigrants… kept arriving in Brody daily. Their arrival placed Austrian and German coreligionists in a quandary… the comfortable middle-class Jewish community of Central and Western Europe looked instinctively to the Alliance Israélite Universelle, the world's largest and most respected Jewish philanthropic agency, to bring order out of chaos, to cope with the huge influx of newcomers. (Howard M. Sachar)

Jews in Brody
according to Austrian-Hungarian Census[1]
Year total pop. Jews Share
1869 18.700 15.138 80,9 %
1880 20.000 15.316 76,3 %
1890 n. a. n. a. n. a.
1900 16.400 11.854 72,1 %
1910 18.000 12.150 67,5 %
The old synagogue (ruins) of Brody

The town was the site of heavy destruction by both Polish and Russian forces in the Polish-Soviet War of 1920, and is described extensively in stories of the Red Cavalry by Isaac Babel. After the conflict, it became part of Second Polish Republic and was located in the Tarnopol Voivodeship. Brody was an important military base, with the Kresowa Cavalry Brigade headquarters established there.

In September 1939 after the Polish defeat in World War II, Brody was occupied by the Red Army following the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. Between June 26 and June 30, 1941 a tank battle was fought nearby between the German 1st Panzer Army and 5 Soviet Mechanized Corps with heavy losses on both sides. In December 1942 the German occupiers forced the Jewish population to resettle in a ghetto inside the town. Most of the prewar population of 9,000 Jewish inhabitants died either in the concentration camps, through starvation, forced labour or were shot to death. During July-August 1944, Brody and nearby areas saw the battles of the strategically important Lvov-Sandomierz Operation (a.k.a. Brodovkiy Kotel) where the Soviet army successfully encircled and destroyed German forces.

During the Cold War, Brody air base served Soviet Air Force regiments.

The Brody museum of history and district ethnography was founded in 2001.

Famous People associated with Brody

Throughout centuries of Jewish life in Brody until the muderous events of the Holocaust, Jews and Gentiles lived a mostly segregated life, with distinct and separate social as well as religious life. Therefore, the division of the following list between Jews and Non-Jews reflects the actual social reality in which the people concerned lived.

Non-Jews

  • Józef Korzeniowski (1797-1863), famous Polish writer
  • Ivan Trush (1869-1941), famous Ukrainian artist.
  • Myron Tarnavskiy (1869-1938), general of Ukrainian Galychina Army
  • Feliks West (1846-1946), Polish publisher
  • Petro Fedun-Poltava (1919-1951), ideologist of Ukrainian national liberation fight 1940–50 years.

Jews

Jewish tombstones at New Jewish Cemetery in Brody. The Cemetery numbers ca. 20,000 burials

Nearby towns

References

  • Howard M. Sachar, The Course of modern Jewish history. Vintage Books (a division of Random House) Chapter 15
  • Kuzmany, Börries: Die Stadt Brody im langen 19. Jahrhundert – Eine Misserfolgsgeschichte? (PhD, University of Vienna, University Paris Sorbonne, 2008) [1]
  1. ^ Ergebnisse der Volkszählungen der K. K. Statistischen Central-Kommission u.a., in: Anson Rabinbach: The Migration of Galician Jews to Vienna. Austrian History Yearbook, Volume XI, Berghahn Books/Rice University Press, Houston 1975, S. 46/47 (Table III)

External links

Coordinates: 50°05′00″N 25°09′0″E / 50.0833333°N 25.15°E / 50.0833333; 25.15


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