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ABOUT SOKAL | JEWISH STONES UA
A brief description of the Jewish community and cemetery of Sokal, Lviv Oblast, Ukraine, together with information about the Jewish headstone recovery project there, and the documentation project which created this database. Relevant information sources are at the end of this page.
About the Sokal Jewish Community

Merchants' stalls in the old Sokal marketplace. Source: Sokal Yizkor Book.

The editor of the 1968 Sokal Yizkor Book, Dr. Abraham Khomet, assembled a detailed history of the Jews in Sokal "from ancient times to the Holocaust". The first record of Jews in Sokal was a testament of the starosta of the town in 1570, in which it was written that only two Jewish families were permitted to live in Sokal, in only two houses; the first settlers appear to have come from nearby Belz. The limitation of two families was formalized in 1578 by the Polish king Stefan Batory, although the actual population grew slightly as other Jews from Belz sought to make a living in Sokal. With the town in economic stagnation, in 1609 an agreement between the Christian and Jewish communities and confirmed by Sigismund III Vasa allowed Jews, for the price of 100 Polish złoty, the right to construct 18 houses and a synagogue in the town, and to organize a cemetery. The Jewish community then grew very rapidly and soon became independent of and larger than Belz.


The storefront of Osias Lieber in Sokal. Source: Sokal Yizkor Book.
Sokal suffered the same difficulties of other Polish towns and villages during the 17th and 18th centuries, from frequent devastating fires to raids by Cossacks; Jews were affected by these troubles in addition to ongoing constraints on their livelihoods and residence. A wooden synagogue built in the early 17th century burned down in 1637; it was replaced between 1648~1687 with a brick structure. The annexation of the Ruthenian Voivodeship and the introduction of innovative royal patents by the Habsburg monarchy dramatically changed the economic and social life of Jews in the new Kingdom of Galicia, lifting restrictions on settlement and trade in many towns and cities but imposing limits on Jews in villages. As a result, many Jews relocated from villages in the region to the city of Sokal. Austrian censuses between 1880 and 1900 recorded the growth of both the city and the Jewish community, from 2408 Jews among 6725 total residents (~36%) in 1880 to 3778 Jews among 9609 residents (~39%) in 1900.


Sokal cheder students at play. Source: Sokal Yizkor Book.
Through the 19th century the Jewish community strengthened and developed in complexity. According to Khomet, during the middle of the century most of Sokal's commerce was controlled by Jewish merchants and craftsmen, though competition from Ukrainian and Polish businessmen grew in the last decades. Sokal became a leading Galician exporter of grains, potatoes, cattle, and durable goods. Rabbinic, Hasidic, and assimilated Jews established their own schools but some also attended municipal schools, and the city built and improved its social services, including a large hospital in 1878. The Jewish quarter in Sokal , concentrated in the northern areas of the city around the 1856 fortress-style Great Synagogue, a large beit midrash, and many other houses of prayer and study, was largely destroyed in a devastating fire in 1901, but the Jewish community rebuilt their homes and continued their progress in integration into Austrian society. As the economic life in Galicia worsened in the early years of the 20th century, several Jewish philanthropic societies were formed to give aid to craftsmen, the poor, and others.


The dean of the Sokal yeshiva, at right. Source: Sokal Yizkor Book.
When World War I broke out in August 1914, Sokal was taken by Russian forces in the first weeks and continued to occupy the city for an extended period; the Russian military staff made Sokal a regional headquarters. Refugees from many towns and villages on the shifting front battle lines in eastern Galicia moved in and out of Sokal as the war progressed; in 1916, 75 Sokal Jews who had earlier been deported to Russia were returned to the city along with another 4000 homeless Jews from the region. Although all aspects of life in the city were disrupted by the war and many people were displaced, the city was not burned as some other places had been. The world war ended in November 1918 but Sokal continued to be buffeted by the subsequent Polish-Ukrainian War, which finally ended in July 1919; Sokal and Galicia became a de facto part of the Second Polish Republic, formally decided four years later.


In front of the Korn house in the Jewish quarter. Source: Sokal Yizkor Book.
The Polish 1921 census records 4360 Jews in Sokal among 10,183 total residents (~43%). Social reorganization after the wars was retarded by the late conclusion of local hostilities relative to other parts of Europe and by ongoing irregularities in elections. The global economic crisis and depression which started in 1929 destroyed the income of many Jewish families in Sokal, causing a sharp rise in poverty. Jews hoping to emigrate for economic reasons were stymied by restrictive immigration rules in Europe; the Jewish population of Sokal actually grew in numbers but dropped as a percentage of the total population due to Polish colonization programs in eastern Galicia.


Members of the Gordonia Zionist youth group in Sokal. Source: Sokal Yizkor Book.
Both Moshe Maltz (in the Sokal Yizkor Book ) and the USHMM (inthe Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos ) documented the events of World War II and the Holocaust in Sokal. From the start of the war, while Sokal was under Soviet occupation, Jewish refugees fled several of the adjacent cities as well as areas of western Poland under German occupation and settled temporarily in Sokal, swelling the Jewish population to over 6000; a year after the war began, many of the refugees were deported eastward. The German military occupied Sokal in June 1941, and set up posts of military and then civil administrations, security police (Sipo), and other police organizations. Eleven Jews were shot by German soldiers on the first day of occupation, and many more were killed in Sokal individually and in groups over the next year, randomly or for a variety of charges, including suspected Communism. In September 1942, 2000 Sokal Jews were deported to the death camp at Bełżec; more than a hundred were shot in town during the same aktion.


Members of the HaShomer HaTzair Zionist youth group on the Bug River. Source: Sokal Yizkor Book.
A Jewish ghetto was established in October 1942, fenced with barbed wire and guarded by police, and about 3500 Jews from surrounding communities were gathered into the ghetto in conditions of severe overcrowding. Jewish houses were taken by Germans and others, and the synagogues were used to store grain and fertilizer. At the end of October a second aktion deported another 2000 Jews to their deaths at Bełżec, leaving some 4000 in the ghetto. Hundreds died during the following winter from starvation and disease. The ghetto was liquidated in June 1943 with the shooting of about 3000 Jews. After the Germans were driven from Sokal in July 1944, surviving Jews returned to the city from hiding places in the city, in forests, and in nearby villages; only around 30 of the community lived to see the city again.

About the Sokal Jewish Cemetery


A section of the 1854 cadastral map of Sokal, showing the Jewish cemetery (in red) and the Great Synagogue (in blue). Source: TsDIAL and Gesher Galicia.
The Sokal Jewish cemetery was established early in the 17th century on a plot just over 500 meters east of the Great Synagogue and the Jewish quarter. The cemetery appears on historical maps of the city, including on an 1854 Austrian cadastral (tax parcel) map and with expanded boundaries on a ca. 1925 Polish street map. During the German occupation of WWII, the Great Synagogue was destroyed and headstones were removed from the Jewish cemetery to be used as paving stones; Moshe Maltz reported that when he walked the city in summer 1944 after the Germans fled westward, he had to tread on stones with Hebrew lettering, and later he ground wheat for Passover matzos on a small stone which had earlier been cut from a Jewish matzevah. However, the Jewish cemetery was still intact as a burial place at that time; Maltz buried his sister who had died in hiding during the war in the Sokal Jewish cemetery before he was repatriated to Poland in 1945.


A section of a ca. 1925 street map of Sokal, showing the Jewish cemetery (in red) and the Great Synagogue (in blue). Source: Biblioteka Narodowa and Polona.
In the 1968 Sokal Yizkor Book, a lamentation in the editorial committee's forward urges, "Let us mourn over both the old and new cemeteries, the resting place of all who were holy, pure and precious for generations upon generations, whose graves were desecrated, and bones scattered to the four winds, their headstones uprooted to be used as pavement for roads..." In addition, on page 25 of the Yizkor Book , there is a photo or a gathering of people and some form of monument captioned, "During Prayer at the New Sokal Cemetery before it opened in 5693 (1933)". However, there is no other known record of a second or "new" Jewish cemetery in Sokal. It is possible that the original Jewish cemetery in Sokal was expanded more than once, and the "new" cemetery was simply newly-consecrated ground in an adjacent plot, but that cannot be determined now. It is unlikely that this reference is to the Jewish cemetery in Tartakiv, the burial site for a nearby Jewish community allied with Sokal's and represented in the Yizkor Book.


A ceremony in Sokal in 1933 for the dedication of the new Jewish cemetery. Source: Sokal Yizkor Book.

Today the Sokal Jewish cemetery does not appear on maps, and in satellite views of the site one sees only residential houses and gardens. At some time during the postwar Soviet period, what remained of the cemetery was taken over for private residences and the residual headstones were removed and repurposed.


Savchuk and Nazar among jumbled Jewish headstones at the old municipal cemetery in Sokal in May 2023.
Where the majority of the displaced headstones from the Sokal Jewish cemetery are today is unknown; there should be thousands of matzevot somewhere, under roads and sidewalks, in building foundations and other structures, or lining the banks of the Bug River and smaller streams. Only two jumbled deposits totaling perhaps 100~300 loose Jewish headstones and fragments are currently known:

No information is currently available about when or where these stones were found, who moved them and how, or whether there were additional stones still remaining at the same displacement place.


Some of the Jewish headstones under trees and brush off the road east of Sokal.
About the Sokal Jewish Headstone Recovery Project


Left: a prewar photo of the Great Synagogue in Sokal, from the Yizkor Book. Right: part of the headstone recovery and documentation team in front of the synagogue in 2023.
There has been interest in recovering and better protecting the displaced headstones from the Sokal Jewish cemetery for a number of years, complicated by the absence of a suitable location at which to safely collect the stones and perhaps construct a memorial monument. In May 2023, Oksana Savchuk, a Sokal resident and local multicultural heritage activist, and Oleksandr (Sasha) Nazar, director of the Sholem Aleichem Jewish Cultural Society of Lviv, visited the two known Jewish headstone deposits in Sokal and then met with Sokal city officials to discuss options and plans for cooperation. At that time it was decided to arrange a trial recovery of stones and their transfer to the site of the Great Synagogue ruin north of the town center, which sits in a park-like area accessible to the public. Tentative plans call for a memorial monument for protection and display of the recovered stones adjacent to the synagogue outer walls.


Examining two Jewish headstones at the old municipal cemetery in Sokal during the recovery work.
At the end of August 2023 a first day of headstone recovery work was organized at the Sokal old municipal cemetery by Savchuk, Nazar, and the City of Sokal. Machinery and workers were provided by the City for clearing brush covering the piled headstones. A flat-bed truck with a hoist was arranged by Nazar and paid by the Sholem Aleichem Jewish Cultural Society of Lviv; Nazar also brought a hand truck. Lifting straps and hooks were brought by Rohatyn Jewish Heritage. Wooden pallets on which to stack the headstones were arranged and paid for by Savchuk. Volunteers who separated and lifted the headstones included Savchuk, Nazar, Iryna Nebesna from Ternopil, and Stanyslav Kyryllov, Marla Raucher Osborn, and Jay Osborn from Lviv. Savchuk also arranged with a Sokal high school teacher to permit two of her students to participate in the recovery as hired hands; they proved strong and careful in their work, and their cost was paid by the volunteers.


Using the hoist to raise pallets of headstones onto the truck.
The recovery work was led by Nazar with other volunteers helping to clean and prepare the stones for stacking on pallets; Nazar and Kyryllov worked with the truck driver to load the pallets onto the truck and unload them after transport. Overall it took about five hours and two transfers to the synagogue to stack, load, and unload 25~30 intact and fragmented headstones. A large but unknown number of headstones remain at the old municipal cemetery site in Sokal.


Scenes from the Jewish headstone recovery effort in Sokal in August 2023.
About the Sokal Jewish Headstone Documentation Project


Recovered headstones waiting by the synagogue.
During the course of cleaning and stacking headstones for recovery in August 2023, volunteers captured photographs of some of the recovered stones as well as some of the exposed stones which remained at the old municipal cemetery; photographers included Nazar, Savchuk, Nebesna, and the Osborns. From the images, transcriptions of the complete or incomplete Hebrew epitaphs were made by Nazar, Tetiana Fedoriv of Zbarazh, and Arie Lisakoff of the Sholem Aleichem Jewish Cultural Society of Lviv. Translations of the epitaphs to Ukrainian were made by Fedoriv and Nazar, and to English by the Osborns.

Images and data from the first headstone recovery in Sokal were used to trial the data entry process in the development of this database, and became the inaugural data set.

References/Sources