The Odyssey to Stolin

from thence am I (Judges 19:18)

Stolin is a small town in the south of Belarus, north of the border with Ukraine. Both my parents were born and raised in Stolin when the town was part of Poland prior to the Second World War. My parents left for Israel (then the British Mandate in Palestine) in the Thirties. My parents almost never talked about their home-town. On the bookshelf at home in Tivon was a memorial book for the Jewish community of Stolin. The book contained old black and white pictures, testimonies, and letters. As a child, I felt that the book had magic in its pages. I always knew that one day I will make the trip back to Stolin. The opportunity knocked in the summer of 1999. I was fortunate that my spouse and my two sons elected to join me in the journey.

We reached Stolin in July 1999. Two maps guided us to the city -- one in English and the other in Russian. Both maps are 1:750,000, not too detailed. We were armed with portions of the two memorial books that were published in Israel in the Fifties. We followed the map of the Jewish ghetto and the guidance of the testimonies and the pictures in the books. We had a Russian (only) speaking guide, who was briefed in advance on the locations we wanted to visit.

Old Map of Stolin The Old Jewish Cemetery The Street Fork The Brown-Brick Warehouse The market The Tarbut School and the Orphanage The Bor -- Mass Grave The White Synagogue The Streets of Stolin The South Entrance to Stolin The House of the Rabbi The corner of Polesskaya and Sovetskaya

This site documents our visit. The site includes all pictures that we took in Stolin and few old black and white pictures. If a picture is worth a thousand words, the reader should find plenty of information. To save bandwidth, the following pages include miniature (thumb-nail) pictures. Click on each picture to view the full-sized details.

To follow the places that we visited in Stolin, the reader may use the mouse to locate the areas in the Stolin map. Alternatively, the menu at the bottom of each page details those areas, and the order in the menu is similar to the order of our journey.

Menu: South Entrance to Stolin; Market; Rabbi's House; Brown-Brick Warehouse; White Synagogue; Streets of Stolin; Polesskaya-Sovetskaya Corner; Tarbut School and Orphanage; Street Fork; Old Jewish Cemetery; Bor -- Mass Grave.

Read about Slonim, Belarus.

Find more about Stolin on the Web.

Send comments to shacham at(@) shacham dot(.) net