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all of them. There were 5,600 Jews listed as residents in Belaya
Tserkov in the 1959 census. Its sole synagogue was closed
in 1962 and thereafter Jews conducted private prayer services.
During the 1965 High Holidays, militia broke into such minyanim,
arrested participants and confiscated religious articles.
In 1970, the Jewish population was estimated at 15,000. Most
left in the 1990s. In Jewish folklore Belaya Tserkov is also referred
to as the “Black Abomination” (Yid. Shvartse Tume), a
play on its name in Russian (“White Church”).
Bibliography: S. Ettinger, in: Zion, 21 (1956), 107–42; Die
Judenpogrome in Russland 2 (1909), 406–8; A.D. Rosenthal, Megillat
ha-Tevaḥ 1 (1927); 78–81; Eynikeyt, no. 24 (1945). Add. Bibliography:
PK Ukrainah, S.V.
[Yehuda Slutsky / Shmuel Spector (2nd ed.)]
BELCHATOW (Pol. Belchatów), small town 28 mi. S. of
Lodz, central Poland, in the district of Piotrkow. Seven Jews
are recorded as living in Belchatow in 1764. Jewish settlement
increased after the formation of Congress *Poland. By 1897
there were 2,897 Jewish residents out of a total population of
3,859, mainly engaged in the flourishing textile industry which
developed in the 19th century. In 1921 the Jewish population
numbered 3,688 (59% of the total), and in 1939, 6,000, constituting
one-third of the total population.
Holocaust Period
The German army took the town during the first week of the
war, during the High Holidays. Many Jews dressed in tallit
and kittel were humiliated in the streets and photographed by
German soldiers. The Torah Scrolls and other liturgical objects
were taken from the local synagogues and burned while
the congregation was forced to dance around the pyre. Jewish
property was looted, goods in Jewish warehouses were confiscated,
and the Jews were evicted from their homes and sent
on forced labor. There was no formal ghetto, but a few streets
were earmarked as the Jewish district. Numerous refugees
from the smaller towns and villages were crowded into this
small area. Frequent German raids took place in which ablebodied
men were kidnapped and deported.
The final liquidation of the Jewish community took place
in August 1942 when close to 1,000 able-bodied Jews were sent
to the *Lodz ghetto and 5,000 Jews were deported to the death
camp in *Chelmno. No Jewish community was established in
Belchatow after the war.
[Danuta Dombrowska]
Bibliography: I. Trunk, in: Bleter far Geshikhte, 2 no. 1–4
(1949), 64–166; D. Dabrowska, in: BŻIH, no. 13–14 (1955); idem (ed.),
Kronika getta łodzkiego, 2 vols. (1965–66), passim; Belkhatov Yisker
Bukh (Yid., 1951). Add. Bibliography: Piotrkow Trybunalski veha-Sevivah
(1965), 113–15, 192, 202.
BELED, village in Györ county (in 1944, iKapuvár district
of Sopron county), western Hungary. The first Jewish settlers
came to Beled in the mid-18th century, mainly from the neighboring
village of Vásárosfalu. Their number ranged from 61 in
1784 to 336 in 1930. According to the census of 1941, the last
belev, alexander
before the Holocaust, their number was 320, representing 11%
of the total of 2,909. The community was organized in 1785; its
synagogue and cemetery were established around 1790. A Jewish
school was established in 1861 and a ḥevra kaddisha under
the leadership of Lipót Kohn in 1884. The congregation identified
itself as Orthodox in 1876. Among the rabbis who served
the community were Joel Fellner (1902–22) and Áron Silberstein
(1925–44). Organizationally, the Beled congregation
also served the spiritual and communal needs of the Jews in
the neighboring smaller villages, including Babot, Bogyoszló,
Cirák, Csapod, Csáfordjánosfa, Dénesfa, Egyed, Garta, Iván,
Kapuvár, Kisfalud, Mihályi, Szil, and several others.
In May 1944, the Jews were first placed in a local ghetto
set up in and around the synagogue. The ghetto also included
the Jews from the neighboring communities of Csapod, Mihályi,
Páli, and Vitnyéd. At its peak the ghetto held 360 Jews.
It was liquidated on June 17, when about half of the ghetto
population was transferred to Szombathely and the other
half to Sopron, from where they were deported to Auschwitz
on July 5, 1944.
Forty-two survivors returned in 1945. Most emigrated or
relocated soon thereafter; in 1968 there was still one Jewish
resident in the village. The synagogue was destroyed during
the German occupation.
Bibliography: M. Stein, Magyar Rabbik, 3 (1907), 1f.; 5
(1909), 3f.; M. Raab, in: Soproni Szemle (1957), 244–52. Braham, Politics;
PK Hungaria, 170–71.
[Randolph Braham (2nd ed.)]
°BELEV, ALEXANDER (1900–1944), first commissar for
Jewish affairs in *Bulgaria (1942–43). He was one of the founders
of the antisemitic organization Ratnik and became an official
of the ministry of the interior. Belev was sent in 1941 to
Germany to study methods of enforcing anti-Jewish legislation
and, in September 1942, he became head of the Commissariat
for Jewish Affairs. He collaborated closely with Dannecker,
*Eichmann’s representative in Bulgaria, with whom he signed
an agreement on February 22, 1943, to deport 20,000 Jews.
Belev implemented the antisemitic “Law for the Protection of
the Nation” (which had been passed on December 24, 1940)
with cruelty and sometimes exceeded his authority in order
to gain his end – the deportation of all Bulgarian Jewry, but he
succeeded only in deporting “to the East” the Jews from the
Yugoslav and Greek territories under Bulgarian military occupation.
His wide powers earned him the nickname “King of
the Jews.” When Bulgaria was conquered by the Soviet Army
in September 1944, Belev attempted to flee with the Germans,
but he was caught by the militia and disappeared without a
trace. He was sentenced to death in absentia by a People’s
Court in Sofia in 1945.
Bibliography: B.J. Arditi, Yehudei Bulgaryah bi-Shenot ha-
Mishtar ha-Naẓi 1940–44 (1962), index; EG, 10 (1967). Add. Bibliography:
M. Bar-Zohar, Beyond Hitler’s Grasp. The Heroic Rescue
of Bulgaria’s Jews (1998), 179–84.
[Ora Alcalay]
ENCYCLOPAEDIA JUDAICA, Second Edition, Volume 3 279