LYUBOML

LYUBOML (Pol. Lubomł), city in Volhynia district, Ukraine. Jews are mentioned in documents in the years 1370–82. Under King Sigismund II Augustus in 1557 they obtained a privilege which freed them from any jurisdiction except that of the governor of the province, and guaranteed them the right of appeal to the king. In 1558 the community prohibited the Jews from buying houses and land within the city walls from gentiles, fearing that Jewish homes might be set on fire or the Jews expelled. King Michael Wiśniowiecki confirmed the privileges of Lyuboml Jewry in 1671. In the 1670s a synagogue in a fortress style was erected, to be part of city defense fortifications. The poll tax of 1721 amounted to 833 zlotys, but because of a fire which destroyed much Jewish property in 1729 it was reduced to 544 zlotys; 1,226 poll tax paying Jews then lived in Lyuboml and the settlements under the community's jurisdiction. In 1847, 2,130 Jews lived in the city, and by 1897   there were 3,297 (73% of the total population). In 1921 there were 3,141 Jews (94% of the total population), in 1931 3,807 (of 4,169 total population) in the city of Lyuboml. Most of the small traders and artisans were Jews, and they owned the flour mills, and the trade in farm productions. There were two Hebrew Tarbut schools, one Yavne religious school, and a small yeshivah. (Encyclopaedia Judaica (Germany) -Holocaust Period Before the outbreak of World War II there were about 3,500 Jews in Lyuboml. The German army entered the town on Sept. 17, 1939, but according to the German-Soviet agreement, it withdrew after three days when the Red Army entered the town. The economy was nationalized, all Jewish organizations and institutions were closed, and one Yiddish school with a Soviet curriculum remained. The Germans occupied the town on June 25, 1941, and some of the 500 Jews who had been drafted into the Red Army were caught and executed. On July 22, 400 men were murdered, and on August 21 another 400 were killed, mostly women. On December 5, 1941, Jews were herded into a ghetto with a density of up to 20 persons per room. For a week from Oct. 1, 1942, the ghetto inmates were murdered – on the first day about 1,800 Jews were killed. There were groups who tried to escape, but only 30 succeeded in reaching the forests, and joined Soviet or Polish partisan units. After the war, the Jewish community of Lyuboml was not reconstituted. -BIBLIOGRAPHY: Halpern, Pinkas, index; B. Wasiutyński, Ludność żydowska w Polsce… (1930), 84; M. Balaban, in: Yevreyskaya Starina, 3 (1910), 189; Yalkut Vohlin, 16–17 (1953), 60–62. Add. Bibliography: S. Spektor (ed.), Pinkas ha-Kehillot, Poland, vol. 5, Volhynia and Polesie (1990).