Liczebność i rozmieszczenie ludności żydowskiej na współczesnym terytorium państwa białoruskiego w XX wieku
The Numbers and Distribution of Jewish Population in Present Territory of the State of Belarus in the 20th Century

Summary/Abstract: The article reviews demographic transformations of the Jewish population now living in Belarus. The statistical and substantive analysis covers the whole 20th century. In the first part of the article the author determines the number of Jews at the turn of the 19th century. The interpretation was based on the results of a census taken in the Russian Empire in 1897. For the region in question it showed 915.2 thousand inhabitants confessing the Mosaic faith, who considered themselves to be of Jewish nationality. They then accounted for 14.1% of the population of Byelorussian lands, especially in the cities and small trading locations, where they outnumbered other ethnic groups. Next the article looks at the geopolitical and demographic consequences of World War I. Byelorussian lands were divided between the Soviet Union and Poland. The size and spatial distribution of the Jewish population was determined based on Polish (1921, 1931), and Jewish (1926, 1939) censuses. A large part of the article deals with the extermination of the Jewish population during the Nazi occupation. The author determined the demographic losses resulting from the Holocaust. There is rather a lot of controversy over this issue in the literature on the subject. According to Eberhardt, these losses totaled 620,000 people, of whom 570,000 were Byelorussian Jews. The last part of the article looks at the demographics of the Jewish population in the second half of the 20th century and the yearly years of the 21st century. The conclusions were based on censuses taken in 1959, 1989, 1999 and 2009. They showed a steady demographic regression, attributed to regular emigration combined with attrition. The latest census, taken in 2009, showed only 12,900 people declaring to be Jewish. These statistics prove that the shrinking of the Jewish minority in Byelorussian lands proceeds unabated.

• Details
• Contents