By 1914, the Minsk Jewish population was 45,103, a little less than half of the total population of Minsk (106,673). At that time in Minsk, sales and services were controlled by Jewish people. 78% were store owners, 72% were truckers, 94 % were tailors and 86% were shoemakers. With the Russian Empire’s growing economy, new hotels opened in Minsk. By 1914, there were 25 hotels, 24 of which had Jewish owners. At that time, the hotels offered “all modern amenities”, such as hot water, phones, floral deliveries, transportation from the hotel to the Minsk railroad station and restaurants on hotel premises.
Hotel Europa in the year of 1921
The following last names are mentioned among the hotels’ owners listed: Yeruzalimchik, Likhterman, Shapiro, Sutin, Savitskiy, Dreitzer, Maisels, Shwartz, Polyak, Khashin, Shifrin, Futera, Levin, Kruger, Gordon, Danishevskiy, Rozin, Rozental, Saulevich, Bentzman, Belmovich and Tomchin.
Below is a detailed list of Minsk’s hotels including their addresses and numbers of rooms per hotel:
Susan Urban
May 22, 2014
Your description of Jewish proliferation in various professions in Minsk is poorly stated. Instead of “At that time in Minsk, sales and services were controlled by Jewish people. 78% were store owners, 72% were truckers, 94 % were tailors and 86% were shoemakers.”, it would be better to say “At that time in Minsk, sales and services were controlled by Jewish people. 72% of all truckers, 78% of all store owners, 86% of all shoemakers, and 94% of all tailors were Jews.” (While you’re at it, you may as well list the professions in order of increasing percentage of Jews.) Also, the title of this post has a capital I in Minsk. Finally, whenever you refer to Minsk in your blog posts, it would be a good idea to clarify whether you’re talking about the city or the gubernia. (The same applies to other gubernias that are named after their capital cities.) P.S. Thank you for this Website!
jhrgbelarus
May 23, 2014
Hi Susan,
Thanks for your attention. I am from Belarus and English is not my native language. I was wandering if you will be willing to edit my future posts?