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In the 17th
century the town was almost wiped from the map in the
Khmelnytsky Uprising
which drove out or killed most of its Jewish residents. Ternopil
was almost completely destroyed by
Turks and
Tatars in 1675 and rebuilt by
Aleksander Koniecpolski
but did not recover its previous glory until it passed to
Marie Casimire,
the wife of king
Jan III Sobieski
in 1690. The city was later sacked for the last time by Tatars
in 1694, and twice by
Russians
in the course of the
Great Northern War
in 1710 and the
War of the Polish Succession
in 1733. In 1747
Józef Potocki
invited the
Dominicanes
and founded the beautiful late
baroque
Dominican Church (today the Cathedral of the Immaculate
Conception of The Blessed Virgin Mary of the Ternopil-Zboriv
eparchy of the
Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church).
The city was thrice looted during the
confederation of Bar
(1768–1772), by the confederates themeselves, by the kings army
and by Russians. In 1770 it was further devastated by an
outbreak of
smallpox.
In 1772 the
city came under
Austrian
rule after the
First Partition of Poland.
At the beginning of the 19th century the local population put
great hopes into
Napoleon Bonaparte,
in 1809 the city came under Russian rule, which created to
Ternopol krai there. In 1815 the city (then with 11,000
residents) returned to Austrian rule in accordance with the
Congress of Vienna.
In 1820
Jesuits
expelled from
Polatsk
by Russians established a
gymnasium
in the town. In 1870 a rail line connected Tarnopol with
Lviv,
accelerating the city's growth. At that time Ternopil had a
population of about 25,000.
The Cathedral
of the Immaculate Conception of The Blessed Virgin Mary (former
Dominican Church)
During
World War I
the city passed from
German
and
Austrian
forces to
Russia
several times. In 1917 it was burnt down by fleeing Russian
forces. After the dissolution of the
Austro-Hungarian Empire
the city was proclaimed part of the
West Ukrainian People's Republic
on
11 November
1918.
During the
Polish-Ukrainian War
it was the country's capital from
22 November
to
30 December
after
Lviv was
captured by Polish forces. After the act of union between
Western-Ukrainian Republic and the
Ukrainian People's Republic
(UPR), Ternopil formally passed under the UPR's control. On
15 July
1919 the
city was captured[1]
by Polish forces. In 1920 the exiled Ukrainian government of
Symon Petlura
accepted the Polish control of Ternopil and of the entire area
in exchange for the Polish assistance in restoration of
Petlura's government in Kyiv.
This effort
ultimately failed, and in July and August 1920 Ternopil was
captured by the
Red Army
in the course of the
Polish-Soviet War
and served as the capital of the
Galician Soviet Socialist Republic.
By the terms of the
Riga treaty
that ended the Polish-Soviet war, the Soviet Russia recognized
the Polish control of the area.
From
1922 to September 1939, it was the capital of the
Tarnopol Voivodeship
that consisted of 17
powiats.
The policies of the Polish authorities, especially the
assimilationist ethnic policies, affected all spheres of public
life. Ukrainians, who according to the 1939 Statistical Yearbook
of Poland, made less than half of voivodship's population, were
restricted in their rights and were prosecuted for any attempts
to oppose the
Polonization.[citation
needed]
This created a strong backlash and strengthened the position of
the militant
Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists
whose local Ternopil branch was led by
Roman Paladiychuk
and
Taras Stetsko,
the future leader of OUN,
In 1939 it was a
city of 40,000; 50% of the population was Polish, 40% Jewish and
10% Ukrainian.
During the
Polish Defensive War
it was annexed by the
Soviet Union
and attached to the
Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic.
The Soviets continued the campaign against the Organization of
Ukrainian Nationalists aided by the information given to them by
the former Polish authorities. The Soviets also carried the mass
deportations of the Polish part of the population to
Kazakhstan.
In 1941 the city was occupied by the Germans who continued
exterminating the population by murdering the Jews and sending
others to forced labor in Germany. In april 1944 the city was
retaken by the Red Army, the remaining Polish population has
been previously expelled. During the soviet reoccupation in
march and april 1944 the city was encircled and completely
destroyed. In march 1944 the city has been declared a
fortified place by Adolf Hitler, to defend until the last
round was shot. The stiff german resistance caused extensive use
of heavy artillery by the Red Army, resulting in the complete
destruction of the city and killing of nearly all german
defenders. (55 survivors out of 4,500) Unlike many other
occasions, where the germans had practiced a scorched earth
policy during their withdraw from the territory of soviet union,
the devastation was caused directly by the hostilities. After
the war Ternopil has been rebuilt in a typically soviet style.
Only a few buildings have been reconstructed.
Since 1991
Ternopil is a part of independent Ukraine and along with other
cities of Western Ukraine. Ternopil has became an important
center of Ukrainian national revival.
Jewish Ternopil
Polish Jews
settled in Ternopil beginning at its founding and soon formed a
majority of the population. During the 16th and 17th centuries
there were 300 Jewish families in the city. The Great Synagogue
of Ternopil was built in
Gothic
Survival style between 1622 and 1628. Among the towns destroyed
by
Bohdan Khmelnytsky
during his march of devastation from
Zolochiv
through Galicia was Tarnopol, the large Jewish population of
which carried on an extensive trade. Shortly afterward, however,
when the
Cossacks
had been subdued by
John III of Poland,
the town began to prosper anew, and its Jewish population
exceeded all previous figures. It may be noted that
Hasidism
at this time dominated the community, which opposed any
introduction of
Western culture.
During the troublous times in the latter part of the eighteenth
century the city was stormed (1770) by the adherents of the
Confederacy of Bar,
who massacred many of its inhabitants, especially the Jews.
After the second partition of Poland, Ternopil came under
Austrian
domination and
Joseph Perl
was able to continue his efforts to improve the condition of the
Jews there, which he had begun under Russian rule. In 1813 he
established a Jewish school which had for its chief object the
instruction of Jewish youth in
German as
well as in
Hebrew
and various other branches. Controversy between the traditional
Hasidim and the modernising
Maskilim
which this school caused resulted four years later in a victory
for the latter, whereupon the institution received official
recognition and was placed under communal control. Since 1863
the school policy was gradually modified by Polish influences,
and very little attention was given to instruction in German.
The
Tempel für Geregelten Gottesdienst,
opened by
Perl in
1819, also caused dissensions within the community, and its
rabbi,
S. J. Rapoport,
was forced to withdraw. This dispute also was eventually settled
in favor of the Maskilim. As of 1905, the Jewish community
numbered 14,000 in a total population of 30,415. The Jews were
engaged principally in an active import and export trade with
Russia through the border city of
Podwoloczyska.
In 2005, "Anne
Frank: A Lesson from History" was touring Ukraine. One of the
cities was Ternopil. This event, organized in part by the Jewish
community of Ternopol, opened in collaboration with the
Ukrainian Center for Holocaust Studies and the Anne Frank Museum
in Holland.This exhibition narrates the story and tragic destiny
of Jews during World War Two. Over the past month, hundreds of
community members and local residents of Ternopol visited and
learned from this captivating display.
Notable People
Twin Towns
Ternopil is
twinned
with:
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