The town of Bylki (or Bilke in Hungarian) is located in the county of Irshava (Hungarian Ilosva) in the Bereg region, and is named after the river Bylki, one of the two rivers that flow there – Bylki and Borzhava. The town lies on the main road between Mukacheve (Munkács) and Huszt.
The town was founded in the fourteenth century and the Jews began to arrive there in the seventeenth century, as refugees from the pogroms of Bogdan Khmelnitsky in the years 1648-49. As proof, tombstones were found in the Jewish cemetery with dates from those years.
In the 1930s, the population of Bylki and its suburbs numbered some 10,000 people, of whom about 2,000 were Jews, who made their living from trade, agriculture and commerce (mainly timber and cattle trade), liquor production, flour milling, and other typical Jewish occupations such as tailoring, shoemaking, carpentry and so on.
There were also some professionals, winegrowers, school teachers and principals, government officials, and, of course, cheder teachers.
Community life: The community’s official name was “Yidishe Autonomishe Kultus Gemeinde” and it was run by the “head of the congregation”, together with two democratically elected gabbays and a community council.
The community’s social and cultural life were influenced by the Galician Hasidism of the Baal Shem Tov, the Chatam Sofer of Presburg (Slovakia), and the Zionist movement (mainly during the Czech rule, 1919-1939).
The Rabbinical Dynasty of Bylki:
The first rabbi was Rabbi Yaakov Kopel, the son of Rabbi Shmelke, Av Beit Din of Szőllős, who died in 1874, and was succeeded by Rabbi Meir Yisrael Izrael, a student of the Chatam Soffer, who immigrated to Palestine in 1909.
He was succeeded by Rabbi Aharon Lieberman, a talmid hakham, an educated man and a gifted speaker. Because of a controversy he left in 1927 and moved to Hungary, where he was appointed a rabbi. The fourth and last was Rabbi Naftali Zvi Weiss, a descendant of the Rebbe of Spinka who served from 1928 to 1944. He was deported to the ghetto in Berehove, and from there to Auschwitz. May God avenge his blood.
Zionist Education:
Between the World Wars, the youth in Bylki had a strong affinity to progress. Zionist movements also appeared in Bylki. The town was visited by Eretz Israel emissaries and Zionist leaders from the big cities in Czechoslovakia, who told the Jews of Bylki about the Yishuv’s development in Palestine, about the pioneers and about the hope of establishing a Jewish state. The Zionist movement had a spiritual influence on the Jews of Bylki in general and on the town’s youth in particular. The basic education was given to the youth in the chedder, the yeshiva, the Czech school, and about a dozen of teenagers from Bylki even attended the Munkacs Hebrew Gymnasium
In 1944, the Jews of Bylki were slaughtered along with the Jews of the whole Carpath-Rus. Most of them were sent to Auschwitz and perished in the gas chambers, in hard labor, starvation and disease. May God avenge their blood.
Most of the Bylki Jews who survived the Holocaust did not return to their city, and were dispersed to various countries, mainly to the United States. Many immigrated to Israel and took part in the War of Independence and other wars. They became part of the Israeli society, established families and bore sons and grandsons who continue building the country and contributing to the new Israeli society and culture.
By: Dr. Moshe Avital, July 2007