When the Third German Reich attacked the Soviet Union in 1941, the Einsatzgruppen launched a campaign to exterminate the Jewish population in the Polish Eastern Borderlands. As a result of their criminal actions, the Jewish community in Motol (now Belarus) ceased to exist in just a few days. In the interwar period, it numbered almost 3,000 people. Only 23 people survived the massacre. Despite the Holocaust, the memory of the Motol Jews and their long history continues.  

The first information about Jews in Motol dates back to the 16th century, but it was not until the 17th century that Jewish settlement in Motol developed in earnest. The life of the local Jewish population developed most dynamically in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Statistics prove it – at the beginning of the 19th century, there were only 152 Jews in Motol, and at the dawn of the independence of Poland, there were 1140. 

According to the memoirs of Chaim Weizmann (1874-1952), the first president of Israel, who was born in this town, it was “one of the darkest and most forgotten corners of the Jewish settlement zone designated by the Tsarist authorities. This quasi- metropolis, muddy in spring and autumn, icy in winter, dusty in summer, had no post office, no railways, no hard access roads, and had such primitive living conditions that modern people in the West cannot imagine at all”.

Nonetheless, as Małgorzata Szejnert rightly pointed out, the Weizmanns were quite successful; his father was a successful timber merchant, his uncle floated timber to Gdańsk and took Chaim on a raft. Thanks to waterways that could lead all the way to the Baltic and the Black Sea, neither the future president of Israel nor his family felt that the world was closed to them. The family lived in a seven-room house with a garden.

The life of the town within the Jewish quarter was dominated by two rival Jewish clans – the Chemerinskis and the Pinskis. Weizmann was descended on his mother’s line from the family of the former. He grew up in a large household, having as many as fourteen siblings. Chaim was the third child in succession. He spent his childhood in Motol and then left to attend secondary school in Pinsk, where his entire family soon also moved.  

In Motol, the Weizmans’ house is partially preserved, having been moved to Bannyj alley. It is possible to enter it and see the museum exhibition inside.  

Today, Motol is an agro-town and bears little resemblance to that of the early 19th century.