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One of the most important institutions was
the Jewish gemine, or kehila (organized Jewish
community). The kehila, in conjunction with the
municipality, had a tremendous influence on the
Jewish community in Libivne. It is therefore no
wonder that Jewish interest in the functioning of
the kehila was always great and that there were
always controversies over its decisions among the
various sectors of the Libivne Jews.
The fights in and about the kehila were not
always about economic interests. Its concerns
also encompassed local Jewish and general Jewish
problems. It was for this reason that the
various political parties strove so hard to have an
ever stronger position in it.
Whenever the elections to the kehila were
approaching, the atmosphere in town became
cheerfulgatherings in the synagogues and in
the shtibls; street meetings; talks and fights in
private homes. The assemblies were heated affairs.
Quite often they had to be interrupted; at
times they grew into general free-for-alls. There
were vital interests for which people fought. We
must not forget that the kehila had the power to tax
the Jews in order to carry out some of the purposes
permitted it by the government.
The Libivne kehila was established around
1923-24. Elections were held every four years,
and the following officers were elected for the
1926-30 term: chairmanMoyshe Reyzman; secretaryShimon
Shor, the former official government-appointed
rabbi for the town; and his alternateMoyshe
Greenberg; Hershl Lifshitz, Yitshak
Shloyme Sirtchuk, Moyshe Sfard, Meyer
Landgeyer, and Shepsl Rabinovich.
In 1935, the chairman was Meyer Yitshak
Veytsfrucht, who was also head of Libivne
Mizrachi (Orthodox Zionist Party); the secretary
was Moyshe Lifshitz. The executive board consisted
of Yisroel Mekler, Hersh' Lifshitz, Yehoshua
Grimatlicht, Moyshe Kaufman, Aron Rusman,
Yitshak Dubetsky, and Yankl Peretszon, and they
served until 1939.
New elections to the kehila took place in
1939, the year of the outbreak of the war. The new
council members were: chairmanAsher
Tenenboym; membersAvrom Grimatlicht,
Yankl Peretszon, Avrom Lichtmacher, Motl
FROM DAILY LIFE 141
Krayzer, Velvl Sheynvald, Nachum Shtern, and
Yosl Berger.
Town Hall was the shtetl's economic nervecenter.
In the first elections of the early 1920s all
12 elected members of the town council were
Jewish. The position of mayor was, naturally, to be
Jewish too. The Poles, however, did not like the
whole business and looked for all kinds of excuses
to invalidate the elections. And because they
had a strong "pull," they naturally achieved
their purpose.
According to a new plan, the shtetl was
subdivided into regions, and neighboring villages
were attached to each region. This ruse
created a situation where the Jews, instead of
being a majority, became a minority because of
the newly added non-Jewish population of the
villages. And the result was that the number of
Jewish representatives in the kehila was reduced
at first to eight and later to four. The
municipal officers were: the mayora Pole;
the vice-mayora Ukrainian; secretarya Jew,
Yankl Shtern.
During the last days before the war, Yankl
Shtern served as a deputy to the city's mayor. I
remember some of the names of people on the city
council (at various times): Moyshe Klerer (Revisionist
party), Motl Privner (Poale Tsion), Yitshak
Handlsman (Artisan), Shaye Sheyntop (Bund),
Shimon Shor, Moyshe Esterzon, Asher Rusman,
Zhenye Afeldman.
Just as in the other Polish towns, the Poles of
Libivne also appointed a committee to beautify
the appearance of the shtetl. The committee had
a "beautiful" name, but its hidden purpose was
to weaken the economic base of the Jews.
Under the guise of beautifying the shtetl, and
in the name of better sanitary conditions, the Poles
introduced a motion in the city council to transfer
the marketplace to an area outside the town. As in
other towns, the marketplace was actually the
main source of livelihood for most of the Jewish
population.
Moving the marketplace would have been an
economic death-knell for the Libivner Jews. The
Jews therefore strongly opposed the proposed plan,
and with much effort succeeded in seeing to it that
the marketplace would remain where it was. The