Kopys

Kopys is a village in the Rajon Orsha ( Wizebskaja Woblasz ) in Belarus on the Dnieper. In 1994, the place still 5,200 inhabitants, four years later only 1,200. At the beginning of the 20th century had Kopys ten churches and a synagogue.

History

The first documentary mention of the place, which has been preserved, dates back to 1059th

Denis Vasilyevich Davidov in 1812 made ​​Kopys numerous prisoners, as he cut a French train.

On June 29, 1941, the Germans marched into Kopys. In December of the same year the entire Jewish population was forced to move into a ghetto, which was established two kilometers away from the village in a flat mill. On January 12, 1942, the approximately 250 people who had been detained in the ghetto shot. The day before Tevie Shmerkin and his son Abram had fled from the ghetto, where Abram Shmerkin had been wounded. The two joined the partisans in the area. 1973 a memorial stone at the site of the execution of the ghetto inmates was built.

Economics and Jewish inhabitants

From the 15th century the production of ceramics for Kopys is busy; In the 19th century the first factories were established in which tiles were manufactured for stoves and fireplaces and statues. Well known was about the company of a man named Peselnik, which was founded in 1860 and in 1898 employed 131 people. Other factory owners were called Ginzburg, Shevelev, Gurevich, Alperovich, Kosoy, Shapiro, Magin, Schalyta, Soloveichi, Zaretsky and Ioffe. At the beginning of the 20th century, worked about 800 people in the ceramic factories, about a third of employees were Jews.

In addition to the ceramic factories existed from the early 19th century, a brewery in Kopys, and there were two mills in the village. Also, wine was produced in Kopys. The Kapust Chassidim come from Kopys.

15 of 18 ceramic production facilities that existed in the second half of the 19th century, were in the hands of Jewish owners. Kopys had for several centuries a high Jewish population: The first all-Russian census in 1897 Kopys had 3,384 inhabitants, of whom 1,399, ie 40 %, were Jewish. In 1926, nor 1176 of 3584 inhabitants were Jewish; in 1970 Kopys had only four Jewish inhabitants.

Sons and daughters of the town

• Alexander Lukashenko