Motal

Motol (Моталь, Russian and West Polesian: Мотоль, Motol, מאָטעלע Motele), also Motal, is a township in Ivanava Raion of Brest Region located about 30 kilometres west of Pinsk on the Yaselda River in Belarus.

History
Founded as a royal city of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in 1554 by Queen Bona Sforza. A part of the Pinsk ‘ekonomia’ or royal land, in the late 18th century it was also part of the Pińsk powiat of the Brest Litovsk Voivodeship.

After the Partitions of Poland, Motal became part of the Russian Empire. It was in the Kobrinsky Uyezd of Grodno Governorate until the collapse of the Russian Empire in 1917. Between World War I and World War II it was in the Drohiczyn powiat of the Polish Polesie Voivodeship. It is near the center of Polesia which constituted an irregular rectangle of roughly 110 mi from east to west and 50 mi from north to south.

Motal was a Shtetl. In 1937, Motal had 4,297 inhabitants, of whom 1,354 were Jews. (Reinharz, 1985). During the war an Einsatzgruppen perpetrated a mass execution of the local Jewish community. The Destruction of Motele (Hurban Motele) was published in Hebrew by the Council of Motele Immigrants in Jerusalem in 1956. It was edited by A.L. Poliak, Ed. Dr. Dov Yarden. The book has 87 pages and contains memoirs and events leading up to the destruction of the Jews of Motele in 1942.

Anshe Motele Congregation, an Orthodox Jewish synagogue, was founded in Chicago on Sept. 3, 1903, by 14 immigrants who named it after Motel.

Economics
The largest company in Motol is Agromotol.

Education
Motol has 2 secondary schools and an art school.

Notable people

 * Chaim Weizmann, Israel's first President
 * Saul Lieberman, rabbi and a scholar of Talmud
 * Leonard Chess (Lejzor Czyż) and Phil Chess (Fiszel Czyż), founders of Chess Records
 * Étienne Wasserzug, French biologist
 * David Bartov, Israeli judge and the head of Nativ
 * Serguei Palto, Russian physicist

Motal in literature

 * The Slaughterman's Daughter by Yaniv Iczkovits