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Thursday, August 6, 2020

OTTOMAN EMPIRE TAKES ON POLAND AND LITHUANIA and Got To Meet Russia

Nadene Goldfoot                                             
THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE AT ITS GREATEST
The Ottoman Empire lived for 400 years. It was a state and caliphate that controlled much of Southeastern Europe, Western Asia, and Northern Africa between the 14th and early 20th centuries. It was founded at the end of the 13th century in northwestern Anatolia in the town of Söğüt by the Turkoman tribal leader Osman I.

The Turks of the Ottoman Empire teamed up with Germany and lost the 1st WORLD War (1914-1918), losing all this land to the Western forces, the Allies. The Middle East and Eastern Europe went to the United Kingdom, France, Italy and USA.  The Axis were the Ottoman Empire, Austria-Hungary, Germany. 
Did we know this history?  Polish–Ottoman War (1672–1676) was a conflict between the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth and the Ottoman Empire, as a precursor of the Great Turkish War. It ended in 1676 with the Treaty of Żurawno and the Commonwealth ceding control of most of its Ukraine territories to the Empire. Ottoman forces, numbering 80,000 men and led by Grand Vizier Köprülü Fazıl Ahmed and Ottoman sultan Mehmed IV, invaded Polish Ukraine in August 1672. 

So the lands occupied by Jews were invaded by the Muslims of eastern Europe.  Russia would later keep Jews out of Russia proper; allowing them to live in the Pale of Settlement.   The Pale of Settlement was a western region of Imperial Russia with varying borders that existed from 1791 to 1917, in which permanent residency by Jews was allowed and beyond which Jewish residency, permanent or temporary, was mostly forbidden. This was under the decree of Catherine the Great. 
                                                            

                                                                 

Lazdijai, Lithuania was the birthplace of my paternal grandmother, Zlata Hattie Jermulowske b: January 11, 1886 when it was on the border between Poland and  Lithuania, at that time a part of Lithuania, she said.  Zlata immigrated to the states in 1900 at about age 14.  She came  speaking only Yiddish and had had no education.  She ended up in Council, Idaho, a mining town in the mountains of Idaho where her half-sisters and brothers had found a spot for them.  Zlata worked in a nearby mining town of Cuprum, serving food and washing dishes.  She married at 19 to  34 yr old Nathan Abraham Goldfus.  


Lithuania was established by Sigismund II Augustus in 1570 and granted Magdeburg Rights by Sigismund III Vasa in 1587.

Lithuania was mostly in the Russian side (purple). 

Large numbers of Lithuanians had emigrated to the United States in 1867–1868 after a famine in Lithuania. Between 1868 and 1914, approximately 635,000 people, almost 20 percent of the population, left Lithuania. Lithuanian cities and towns were growing under the Russian rule, but the country remained underdeveloped by the European standards and job opportunities were limited; many Lithuanians left also for the industrial centers of the Russian Empire, such as Riga and Saint Petersburg. Many of Lithuania's cities were dominated by non-Lithuanian-speaking Jews and Poles.

Partitions of Poland, (1772, 1793, 1795), three territorial divisions of Poland, perpetrated by RussiaPrussia, and Austria, by which Poland’s size was progressively reduced until, after the final partition, the state of Poland ceased to exist.

Lazdijai (Lazdey) in Yiddish is located in the SW part of Lithuania with several big lakes nearby at the junction of roads leading to Mariamol and Alite and was established in 1570 by King Zigmunt.  It was part of the Polish Lithuanian kingdom up to 1795; then became part Russian and part Prussian.  From 1807-1813 it belonged to the Great Dukedom of WArsaw and was part of the Bialystok district.  In 1827 the population was 1988 living in 272 houses.  By 1887 about 1500 Jews had been affected by fires.  

Jews lived in Lazdijai by end of 16th century (since late 1500s.)  In 1879 200 houses were destroyed by fire and owners became homeless.  In 1886 another fire consumed  250 Jewish houses;  in 1888 another 70 houses.  

Those territorial divisions were altered in 1807, when the emperor Napoleon of France created the duchy of Warsaw out of the central provinces of Prussian Poland, and in 1815, when the Congress of Vienna created the Congress Kingdom of Poland. However, the main result of the partitions—i.e., the elimination of the sovereign state of Poland—was in effect until after World War I, when the Polish republic was finally restored (November 11, 1918).
                                                                   

Where  is Lazdijai, Suwalki, Lithuania/Poland?  Lazdijai (About this soundpronunciation  PolishŁoździeje) is a small town in Lithuania located about 7 km (4.3 mi) east of the border with Poland.  

 Lithuania and Poland formed a Commonwealth in 1569. Initially, it was successful in deterring enemies. However, the political union led to gradual Polonization of the Lithuanian nobility as Lithuanians of the time regarded Polish culture to be superior.

By the 17th century, Poland-Lithuania was weakened due to a unique yet hard-to-manage political system of "Noble democracy" where a consensus was a prerequisite for any important decision. The Commonwealth lost a series of wars that wiped out its great power position. In the late 18th century (1772-1795) the country was completely partitioned and annexed by Prussia, Austria, and Russia with the main Lithuanian lands falling under the Russian rule.
The Russians banned Lithuanian language and suppressed Catholic religion. There were two unsuccessful revolts to restore Poland-Lithuania (1831 and 1863) but eventually the National Revival established a goal for Lithuania independent of both Russia and Poland. The restoration of statehood for Lithuania finally became possible after both the crumbling Russian Empire and the Germans surrendered in World War 1(1914-1918).

The last and most tenacious of the Polish uprisings of the mid-19th century erupted in the Russian-occupied sector in January 1863 (see January Uprising). Following Russia's disastrous defeat in the Crimean War, the government of Tsar Alexander II enacted a series of liberal reforms, including liberation of the serfs throughout the empire. The high-handed imposition of land reforms in Poland aroused hostility among the conservative landed nobility on the one hand, and a group of young radical intellectuals influenced by Karl Marx and the Russian liberal Alexander Herzen, on the other.

 Repeating the pattern of 1830–31, the open revolt of the January Insurrection by Congress Poland failed to win foreign backing. Although its socially progressive program could not mobilize the peasants, the rebellion persisted stubbornly for fifteen months. 

After finally crushing the insurgency in August 1864, Russia abolished the Congress Poland altogether and revoked the separate status of the Polish lands, incorporating them directly as the Western Region of the Russian Empire. The region was placed under the dictatorial rule of Mikhail Muravyov-Vilensky, who became known as the Hangman of Vilnius. All Polish citizens were assimilated into the empire. When Russia officially emancipated the Polish serfs in early 1864, an act that constituted the most important event in history of nineteenth-century Poland, it removed a major rallying point from the agenda of potential Polish revolutionaries.
On November 3, 1941, 1,535 Jews were murdered in Lazdijai, including 485 men, 511 women and 539 children The perpetrators were members of the Rollkommando Hamann, local policemen and Lithuanian nationalists.
In 1990 Lithuania declared independence from the Soviet Union, and new check points between the borders Poland and Lithuania were established and Lazdijai became the center that oversees and continues to regulate these operations. It is the birthplace of Lithuanian politician and producer Arūnas Valinskas and of Russian-American composer and violinist Joseph Achron.

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