Krustpils (until 1917 – Kreitzburg), since 1962 a part of the city of Jēkabpils (Republic of Latvia).
Founded in 1237. In the 16th–18th centuries, it was a town of the Duchy of Inflanty within the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, it belonged to the Dvinsk District of Vitebsk Province. From 1918 to 1940 it was part of the Republic of Latvia, and from 1940 to 1991 – of the Latvian SSR.
In 1847, 1,090 Jews lived in Krustpils; in 1897 – 3,164 (75%); in 1920 – 1,204 (63%); in 1925 – 1,331 (38%); in 1930 – 1,149 (36%); and in 1935 – 1,043 Jews (29%).
Jews had lived in Krustpils since the late 17th century, when the first synagogue was built. In 1772, Jews made up 46% of the population. Rabbis of Krustpils included Yaakov Ha-Kohen in the 1820s, followed by his son Tzadok Ha-Kohen (1823–?), and in the 1850s Moshe-Hirsh Ziv, author of the commentary on Maimonides Philosophy of Moshe (Vilna, 1866).
By the late 1890s, Krustpils had a Jewish elementary school and a mutual aid society; in 1910, a state Jewish public school and a savings-and-loan society were established, and in 1913 a Jewish library opened. A local branch of the Bund was active. By 1913, Jews owned the town’s only pharmacy, sole wholesale drug depot, five shops (including all three textile stores), and a bookstore. In 1910, the town’s rabbi was Moshe-Hirsh-Dovid Gilbelbrandt. In 1918, an association of Krustpils immigrants was founded in the United States.
In the 1920s, Jews who had fled during World War I began returning, with aid from the Joint Distribution Committee. Their main occupations were small-scale trade and crafts. In 1921, eight synagogues operated in Krustpils, including a Hasidic one. In 1922, a primary school with Yiddish instruction was opened (it joined the Tarbut network in 1926). Zionist organizations were active, including Ha-Shomer ha-Tzair, Beitar, and the youth society Herzliya. In 1922, local Jews donated 2,100 rubles to the Jewish National Fund.
By 1935, Jews owned about 50% of all local shops (out of 217 total); two of the town’s four physicians and one dentist were Jews. Rabbis of Krustpils in the 1920s–mid-1930s included Reuven Levin and Yitzhok Gvautin (?–1941).
On June 29, 1941, Krustpils was occupied by the Wehrmacht. During the summer and autumn of 1941, the town’s Jews and Jewish refugees from other parts of Latvia were murdered.
After 1944, about 200 Jews returned to Krustpils. A memorial monument with inscriptions in Russian and Yiddish was erected over the mass grave where the victims’ remains had been reinterred.
Notable people born in Krustpils:
– D. Druk
– Yakov Borisovich Bykin (1888–1938, Moscow), political figure; member of the Bund (1904–11), later of the RSDLP (from 1912); lived in Switzerland (1912–18); held trade-union and party posts in Belarus, Voronezh, and Yaroslavl provinces (1919–29); First Secretary of the Bashkir Regional Committee of the VKP(b) (1929–37); member of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee and the Central Executive Committee (1923–28); awarded the Order of Lenin (1935); arrested and executed in 1937.
– I. Meizakh, who lived and worked in Krustpils.