Yizkor Book
A 1948 event program titled Entertainment and Ball Given by the United Wisoko-Litowsker and Woltchiner Relief is subtitled Yizkor. As a result this publication has become known as the Yizkor Book for Wysokie -- and for Woltchin, also known as Volchin. The publication contains disappointingly little documentary information about the towns. Only a few copies are known to exist. An English translation may be viewed here.
Encyclopedia of Jewish Communities -- Poland -- Volume V -- Volhynia and Polesie
Pinkas hakehillot Polin: entsiklopedyah shel ha-yishuvim ha-Yehudiyim le-min hivasdam ve-`ad le-ahar Sho'at Milhemet ha-`olam ha-sheniyah.) 1990 Jerusalem, Yad Vashem.
Encyclopedia of Jewish Life
The Encyclopedia of Jewish Life Before and During the Holocaust, Volume 3, Shmuel Spector, Editor-in-Chief. New York University Press, Washington Square, New York. (WorldCat entry: here)
WYSOKIE LITEWSKIE Polesie dist., Poland. Jews settled in the mid-16th cent. and numbered 2,876 in 1897 and 1,994 (total 2,395) in 1920. Most trade was in their hands. Fires in 1884, 1889, and 1904 struck the Jews particularly hard. Between the World Wars the Zionists and the Bund were active. The Germans captured the town on 22 June 1941 and confined the Jews to a ghetto. The community was liquidated on 22 Nov. 1942 with many of the young escaping to the forests.
Note: This is the only known mention of any Jews escaping the liquidation of the Wysokie Ghetto. This eyewitness account offers no support for escapes. Neither does the geography of the town: the only nearby forest was probably the grounds of the Sapieha castle ruins, a small area separated from the Jewish town by an open meadow and the Pulva River and thus easily guarded.
In addition it seems unlikely that there were significant numbers of young Jews in the Ghetto at that point; the usual German pattern in the region was to remove the Jewish youth from the community early-on for “work projects”, from which none returned.
Encyclopedia Judaica
Encyclopaedia Judaica. Skolnik, F., & Berenbaum, M. (2007). Detroit: Macmillan Reference USA in association with the Keter Pub. House. Volume XVI, page 234. Reproduced
here, in the
Jewish Virtual Library.
VYSOKOYE (Pol. Wysokie Litewskie), city in W. Brest oblast, Belorussian S.S.R; in Poland-Lithuania before 1795 and between the two world wars. jews were living in Vysokoye from the late 16th Century. A community was organized in the early 17th century, which by decision of the Lithuanian Council (see *Councils of Lands), came under the jurisdiction of the Brest Community. The synagogue, built of stone in 1607 was enlarged in 1828. In 1650 a meeting of the Lithuanian Council took place in Vysokoye. Jewish economic activity in the second half of the 18th century was encouraged by the owner of the town, Duchess A. Jablonowsky (1728-1800), in accordance with her policy toward Jews in *Semiatycze and *Kock. A bet midrash was established in 1757. A new building was completed to house the bet midrash in 1837 and a new cemetery was opened in 1898. A talmud torah was founded in 1853. The Jewish population numbreed 1,475 in 1847 and 2,876 (85% of the population) in 1897. In the 19th century Jews engaged in the trade of agricultural products, tailoring, tanning, capentry, and transportation. Between the two world wars, when it was part of independent Poland, there was a Hebrew *Tarbut school. The community, which numbered 1,902 (91%) in 1921, was annihilated in World War II.
Bibliography: S. Dubnow (ed.), Pinkas ha-Medinah (1925), index; B. Wasiutyński, Ludność żydowska w Polsce w wiekach XIX i XX (1930), 83; R. Mahler, Yidn in Amolikn Poyln in Likht fun Tsifern (1958), index. [A. Cy.]
Note: The citation is based on a brief note on a photocopy of the article and should be directly verified. The asterisk, *, apparently indicates other articles in the same publication.
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