Jewish Bialystok was almost completely erased in the Holocaust. Poland’s fourth largest city before the war, it was a teeming metropolis with a Jewish majority, a fact that gave its local culture a very Jewish flavor. Yiddish theaters, Yiddish newspapers, Yiddish schools – much of the city’s life was lived in Yiddish.

Schools were Shaul Goldman’s domain. Born and raised in Bialystok, Goldman helped found the Yugnt Fareyn, a charitable organization that built the first secular Yiddish-language school in Bialystok. He was also instrumental in founding the Sholem-Aleichem Public Library, one of the largest in Poland. His good works as an educator and as a Bund representative for the people of Bialystok were many.

This website was created to explore the legacy of Shaul Goldman, the Bund, and the Yiddish secular schools in Bialystok. 

The Strashun Library was one of the most important libraries of Jewish learning in pre-World War II Europe, Its founder, Matityahu Strashun (1817-1885) was a major book collector, who owned thousands of Hebrew texts and manuscripts, including religious writings, fiction, poetry, scientific works, Jewish and Karaite historical works, travel accounts, and Hasidic texts.

This website presents some of the treasures of the library and tells the dramatic story of its destruction in World War II, the rescue of some of its books, and a project to digitally reunite the collection online.