Zhvanets is a town in Kamenets district of Khmelnitskiy region. The town’s estimated population is 1,529 (as of 2001). It is situated on the iver Dniester 20 kilometers away from the district center. It has been a town of Kamenets district since the mid 1920s.

Before Revolution it was a shtetl of Kamenets ueazd, Podolia gubernia.

Beginning

The first mention of  Zhvanets that appeared in historical record was in 1431. In 1646 the town received  Magdeburg right.

It is known that there was a conflict between the Jews and bishop Chizhevskiy in 1663.

Zhvanets castle in the middle of XIX century

In 1768, the Jewish community of Zhvanets was robbed by the Haydamaky (a popular uprising of ethnic Ukrainians against the Polish magnate). In 1770, the Greeks and the Armenians left the shtetl after a devastating epidemic of the plague. Zhvanets was  exempted from all the duties and payments for 12 years.  Jews started to settle in Zhvanets around this time.

According to Polish Lustration of 1784, there were 617 Jews in Zhvanets. In 1765, the Jewish population of 1,134 people (1,567 in kahal district) decreased because of external events (Haydamaky and others).

In 1822, all the craftsmen in the shtetl were Jewish. 127 of them worked in the workshops and 565 didn’t.

In 1848, the Jews were ordered to move to other shtetls because the fortress had been built in Zhvanets. The synagogue was closed by the authorities waiting for Jews to leave the village. However, it didn’t happen and the Jewish community of Zhvanets had been asking the authorities to renew the synagogue for several decades.

Zhvanets entrepreneurs list from Russian Empire Business Directories by 1913

In 1859, the community purchased the house for the synagogue. In 1880 the rabbi of Zhvanets was Alter-Chaim Elis (1856 – ?). In 1885, the Jewish entrepreneurs built a sawmill.  In 1887, there were four synagogues, and in 1890 there were six of them.

In 1901, a Jewish primary college was opened, in 1902 a two-year village college, in 1905 a college for girls. In the early 20th century, six Jewish schools and two colleges were functioning. Private libraries and Zionist clubs were opened as well.

Graduating class of the Hebrew-language Moriah school in Zhavents, 1910

In the early 20th century, there were five synagogues and praying houses, and a Talmud-Torah in Zhvanets. A society caring about poor Jewish children was functioning. The shtetl which is situated three kilometers away from the river Zbruch and the border had an exclusively convenient location. They received wood from Galitsiya and Bukovina in Zhvanets. It was taken farther down the river Dniester into the South-Western part of Russia. The main occupations of the shtetl were forestry and bread trade.

Synagogue in Zhavents, 1920’s. Photo by Zholtovskiy taken from myshtetl.org

Before World War I there were about 600 Jewish families, 350 houses, and seven praying houses. A Talmud-Torah, both female and male, used to be here. 400 children studied there. Zhvanets library that had more than 5000 books had great popularity.

In 1905, a Jewish self defense detachment was formed in Zhvanets.

Jewish house in Zhvanets with Jewish family on the front of it, 1920’s

With the start of the war,  the bread and forest trade came to an abbrupt halt. This caused the economic situation and quality of life for the Jews of Zhavents to deteriorate. On the 12th of June 1915, about 2500 Jews were evicted from the shtetl by the order of the military command. They majority were re-settled in Kamenets, Kitaygorod and Staraya Ushitsa. 600 people were sent to Kremenchug. On June 14th 1916, the Jews of Zhvanets got the permission to come back to the village.

Zhvanets on Polish postcard, beginning of XX century

After WWI

In 1921, there was a Jewish school with the canteen for it’s students.

In 1925, Zionists organization counted nine people. In 1926, the soviet authorities declined rabbi Z.Alterovich’s  request concerning the registration of the synagogue.

In the end of 1920’s, photographer Zholtovskiy visited Zhvanets and made few photos of Jewish buildings whoch were published in 2000’s:

In the mid of the 1920s, a Jewish village council with Yankel Lerner at the head was formed. In 1926, 150 artisans were registered in Zhvanets. Among them there were hatters, tailors, roofers, tinsmiths, blacksmiths, and others. Most of them were Jewish.  The societies of artisans (85 people), traders (87 people), and butchers also existed in the shtetl. The cooperative of disabled people and agricultural credit society “Red Plough” were functioning. Joint helped poor families.

Jewish houses in Zhvanets, 1920’s:

OZET department (Society for Settling Toiling Jews on the Land) consisted of 110 people. It organized the groups for settling in agricultural colonies in the areas of Krivoy Rog, Kherson, Chongar, and Jewish Autonomous Region. A Jewish high school was established  with three teachers and 121 students. There also was a literacy school, an amateur theatre, and a Jewish library  in the village.

In the late 1920s, a Jewish collective farm was formed with Y. Shneiderman at the head. The poorest people united into the collective farm “Frontier Peasant”.

Holocaust

On the seventh of July 1941, Zhvanets was occupied by Hungarian troops. Only several families managed to evacuate to the east.  Some men were recruited to the Red Army and some joined it voluntarily.

The Germans organized three ghettos in Zhvanets. Some residents of the ghetto were shot in Zhvanets together with the prisoners of war.  Others were moved to the ghetto in Kamenets-Podolskiy and were later killed.

Zhvanets was liberated on the 25th of March 1944.

After WWII

After its liberation in 1944 a few Jewish families came back from the evacuation to Zhvanets. The Jews who were discharged from the army returned there as well. In the 1970-1980s, the most of Zhvanets Jews left for Israel and other countries.

Three monuments devoted to the victims of fascism are established in Zhavanets but I haven’t found any photos.

At present only the remains of a synagogue and one traditional Jewish prayer house are left in Zhvanets.

The local people bring the wrecks of the gravestones to Jewish cemetery which were stolen and used in the household by their ancestors:

Famous Jews from Zhvanets

Iyekhezkel Rabinovich (1892, Zhvanets – ?), an essayist, an interpreter. He got traditional Jewish religious education,  graduated from the gymnasium. In 1911-1914, he studied Philosophy and Law in Istanbul, then he moved to the USA. There he became an active participant of the Zionist movement.

Zhvanets Jewish cemeteries

Three Jewish cemeteries used to be in Zhvanets but only two of them are preserved partly in the village.

Site of destroyed oldest Jewish cemetery:

About 100 gravestones of the period between 1894 and 1924 are located on the New Jewish cemetery. It locates on the western outskirst of the village on the front of Khotin castle:

New Jewish cemetery. Photo from book

The earliest of the gravestones is dated back to 1729, the latest one is 1790. There are 30 gravestones on the whole. Many of them are decorated.

Below is the map of settlements which has more that 1000 of Jewish population according to 1897 census in Chernigov Gubernia.

In 1897, there lived 114.452 Jews.

Part of Chernigov gubernia was moved to Russia in 1920’s and became a part of Bryansk region. These shtetls wouldn’t be described in this website due to lack of information and difficult political situation.

Chernigov
8799 Jews according to 1897 census (32% of total population)

Berezne
1357 Jews according to 1897 census (14% of total population)

Borzna
1516 Jews according to 1897 census (12% of total population)

Glukhov
3853 Jews according to 1897 census (26% of total population)

Gorodnya
1249 Jews according to 1897 census (29% of total population)

Kozelets
1634 Jews according to 1897 census (32% of total population)

Konotop
4426 Jews according to 1897 census (24% of total population)

Krolevets
1815 Jews according to 1897 census (17% of total population)

Korop
873 Jews according to 1897 census (14% of total population)

Mglin (now on the territory of Russia)
2674 Jews according to 1897 census (35% of total population)

Novgorod-Severskiy
2956 Jews according to 1897 census (32% of total population)

Novozybkov (now on the territory of Russia)
3836 Jews according to 1897 census (25% of total population)

Nezhin
7630 Jews according to 1897 census (24% of total population)

Oster
1596 Jews according to 1897 census (30% of total population)

Sosnitsya
1842 Jews according to 1897 census (26% of total population)

Starodub (now on the territory of Russia)
5109 Jews according to 1897 census (41% of total population)

Pogar (now on the territory of Russia)
1159 Jews according to 1897 census (23% of total population)

Surazh (now on the territory of Russia)
2398 Jews according to 1897 census (60% of total population)

Klintsy (now on the territory of Russia)
2605 Jews according to 1897 census (21% of total population)

Korzhovka (now on the territory of Russia)
985 Jews according to 1897 census (41% of total population)

Mena
1659 Jews according to 1897 census (26% of total population)
Почеп 3172 Jews according to 1897 census (33% of total population)

Repki
3049 Jews according to 1897 census (91% of total population)

Tagancha is a village in Ukraine in Kanev district, Cherkassy region. The settlement’s estimated population is 1,413 (as of 2001).
In XIX – beginning of XX century it was a shtetl of Kanev Yezd of Kiev Gubernia.

Beginning

Tagancha first appears on the map of the territory adjusted to Kiev in the early XV century. We can assume that Jews appeared in Tagancha at the beginning of the XVI century but there isn’t any documentary evidence. During Bohdan Khmelnitskiy’s uprising (1648-1654) neighboring Kanev was the center of Kanev regiment. The Jewish community was supposedly destroyed by Cossacks during this time.

Tagancha in the middle of XIX century on the painting of Napoleon Orda

In 1750, the Haydamaky detachment led Aleksey Liakh killed one Jewish trader who served the Polish gentry. This is the first mention in historical record of the Tagancha Jewish community.

Tagancha on the map, end of XIX century

In 1678, Tagancha became the property of great Polish magnate Volodymyr Pototskyy. In 1742 the town changed ownership to magnate Mykhaylo Vyshnevetskyy. The Jews came back to the village together with the Poles.

There are no records about what happened the Jewish community during this period. According to Pokhilevich, in 1863 there were 2,225 Orthodox Christians, 358 Jews and 85 Roman Catholics in Tahancha. In the late 19th century, the Jewish community numbered 953 people (21% of total population).

From the late XVIII century until 1918, a Jewish cemetery operated in Tagancha.

In 1887, the rabbi of Tahancha was Pinchas Eliyahu Bokogovsky (his father was a rabbi in Berdychiv).

In the early 20th century there were two synagogues in the shtetl.
More than 1000 Jews lived in Tagancha before the revolution in 1917. Their houses, workshops, and stores were mainly located in Ploske (“flat”, a part of the village). The Jews had two synagogues and a prayer school. Their occupations were craft and trade. They supplied Tagancha residents with different goods and products.

Tagancha entrepreneurs list from Russian Empire Business Directories by 1913

Pogroms

First pogrom was organised by local pisants in 1919. There were 8 Jews killed.
On the first day of the pogrom several people were killed and the head of the Klivanskiy council as well. During the following attacks when there was nothing left to be robbed, the bandits began to burn Jewish houses. The whole shtetl was burnt down.

Second pogrom was organised by Denikin’s soldiers with active involment of local Ukrainians. 8 Jews were killed and entire Jews population escaped to Korsun.

From the book “Pogroms in Ukraine” by V.Segiychuk:
“In 1920, People who lived in Tagancha asked us to return to the village. Ten Jewish families agreed to settle back in Tagancha and moved there from Korsun. They had been living there for two months, when one night the local peasants attacked the settlers and slaughtered all ten families. They didn’t spare even children, they threw them into the well. These peasants had been planning to destroy all ten families before.
Several dozen of Tagancha Jews were thrown into the deep wells. There were alive people among them though. People say their number was about one hundred. After the execution the wells were filled. It is known that some Jews tried to escape through the forest to Korsun. They were caught in the tract of Krutaya Gora and thrown into a nearby well at the bank under the mountain. There were killed 58 Jews.”

When there was no one alive 24 Jewish houses were burnt on the 24th (11th) of September.

Now it is difficult to find out who organized the second and the bloodiest pogrom in Tagancha. According to one version it was Petliurite ataman Terentiya Fursenko (Yaryy) and the second one is that it was a Bolshevik detachment of Fedorenko. However, it was known that Fedorenko defended Jews and saved their community from the pogrom. The main organizer of the pogrom was the local Ukrainian population.

In Korsun, there were killed 14 Tagancha Jews in 2 pogroms and 200 died because of deseases.

After Civil War

After the pogroms there were no Jews in the village.
Since then old residents of Tagancha connect all the misfortunes, accidents, and troubles that fall upon the village with the God’s punishment for the bloody crime committed against the Jews.

Ruins of Jewish house in Tagancha, 2016

In 1924, a Jewish collective farm named after “Tagancha” was formed in outside the village Novozhitomir, Sofiyevka district, Dnepropetrovsk region. It is unknown whether its founder was a member of the destroyed community in Tagancha or wasn’t. It was financed by organization Joint. In its digitized archives we find the following pictures of the Jewish collective farm “Tagancha”.

Jewish cemetery

During the war, the cemetery was destroyed. The tombstones were taken away and soon the construction of residential houses began. Currently, the territory is built up with residential buildings. Among the local residents interviewed by Lo Tishach, only one woman knew about the Jewish cemetery. According to this woman, it used to be located on the site of house number 40 and a few other houses along Petrenko Street.

After the War

During the war in the winter 1942, a column that consisted of several hundreds of Jews was being driven through the village from the unknown place of the left bank of the Dnieper. All these people were shot in Korsun.

Vasyl Doroshenko stated that he met some Tagancha Jews in Korsun and Kiev. They perceived any mention of Tagancha with horror, pain, anger and indignation because of that awful “Massacre of St. Bartholomew”.

Local historian Vasiliy Doroshenko and military trainer Tzvi Arieli during our visit in 2016

In the 1990s, local historian Vasiliy Doroshenko and the head of Tagancha village council Alexander Pozhdem applied to Korsun Jewish community with the initiative to establish a monument to the destroyed Jewish community in the centre of the village. Unfortunately, there was no result because of the changing of the head of the council.

Ruins of Jewish house in Tagancha, 2016

The local legend of “Jewish Well”.

Legend was recorded by a Tagancha resident Moisey Oniskovich Gvozdenko, born in 1890 by the students of Tagancha school in September 1968.
Yaryy’s band marauded through Tagancha. It terrorized the local population especially the Jewish community. They thought that the Jews had gold.
In the autumn 1919 they organized a pogrom against the Jews. They slaughtered children , women, elders and threw them into the wells in Ploske (so called Jewish place). Then they burnt their houses ot the ground. Some of the Jews tried to escape to Korsun with their children. But bandits caught them near Kruta Mountain , killed them and threw their bodies into the well. After the massacre was over the well started to speak human language:
– Dear people! Don’t drink this water, it’s my children’s blood.
The shepherds who came to drink ran away.
Since then it was renamed into Jewish well. Soon the well fell into decay, was sad, crystal source dried out, it was covered with silt and sedges, and became a forgetful grave of innocently killed people. The exact place of the well is currently unknown.

Famous Jews from Tagancha

Aaron Abramovich Kravtsov (1896 – 1942) – painter, graphic artist, illustrator.

Leonid Davidovich Tubelsky (1905 – 1961) – writer, playwright.

Jewish cemetery

During the war, the cemetery was destroyed. The tombstones were taken away and soon the construction of residential houses began. Currently, the territory is built up with residential buildings. Among the local residents interviewed by Lo Tishach, only one woman knew about the Jewish cemetery. According to this woman, it used to be located on the site of house number 40 and a few other houses along Petrenko Street.

Genealogy

In Cherkassy Archive store next documents regarding Jewish history of Tagancha:

Fund 729. Tagancha peasant council, Tagancha shtetl of Kanev district, Kiev province (1908 – 1915)
Fund 396. Jewish society of Tagancha (1855-1862)
The following surnames are mentioned in the archive cases:
Aptekar, Aronovich, Balamut, Belotserkovskiy, Blinder, Bursuk, Vaysblit, Vishnev, Galperin, Gershengoren, Gimpelevich, Goldinbarg, Goldstein, Golosinskiy, Golfman, Dlugach, Dubasharskiy, Dubinskiy, Dubnikov, Duvinskiy, Dudman, Zhitnitskiy, Zhuravskiy, Zaslavskiy, Zvanskiy, Kagalovskiy, Kagasov, Kamenetskiy, Kaminskiy, Kanevskiy, Karasinskiy, Karmazin, Kartashevskiy, Klevanskiy, Klivanskiy, Koba, Koganov, Koretskiy, Korsunskiy, Korkh, Kotliar, Kravtsov, Krakovich, Krugliak, Levin, Lifshits, Lysianskiy, Liutrovnik, Liakhovetskiy, Medinskiy, Mets, Monastyrskiy, Moshlevskiy, Nemirovskiy, Ostrovskiy, Pokotilovskiy, Prusak, Raykin, Raytburt, Rovin, Rogov, Rokita, Rudovskiy, Sabatovskiy, Sakhnovskiy, Sigalov, Sitnitskiy, Skvirskiy, Soltanov, Spektor, Subbotovskiy, Tubolskiy, Ulanovskiy, Fishbein, Furman, Tsukrov, Chudnovskiy, Shapiro, Sharovskiy, Sherting, Shimberg, Shkolnik, Yarovinskiy.

Lysianka is district center in Cherkassy region, Ukraine. The city’s estimated population is 8,161 (as of 2001).
In the XIX – early XX centuries, it was a shtetl in Zvenigorodka district of Kiev province.

Beginning

Jews appeared in Lysianka in XVII century.
In 1702, The Haydamaky rebels killed almost all the Jews in Lysianka. The Jewish population of Lysianka suffered a lot in 1768 during the period “Koliyivshchyna”.

Burials in the Jewish cemetery which date back to 1761 prove the existence of Jews in Lysianka in the XVIII century.

By 1867 there were three synagogues in Lysianka and in the 1890s there was a Jewish almshouse. In the 1890s Mordko Teplichnyy was a rabbi, in 1895 Mordko Weitburd was rabbi’s assistant. In 1907 Moyshe Weiserman was the rabbi in Lysianka and in 1914 his role was filled by Meyer-Aron Berkvich Pribysh.

Lisyanka entrepreneurs list from Russian Empire Business Directories by 1913

In 1882, the Jewish community of Lysianka sent a petition about the opening of a Jewish primary college (gymnasium) in Lysianka. The peasants wrote that the Jewish community had been paying candle-taxes but it financed the college in Zvenigorodka. It was very inconvenient to send children there to study. Kiev authorities refused.
In 1900, Yosel Aronovych asked the regional council for permission to open a private Jewish college but he was denied. Before this he had gotten permission to open the same type of college in Bila Tserkva. Yosel began to teach children unofficially in Shlioma Kurzhnir’s house but the police found out and stopped the lessons.

In 1909, Jewish Talmud-Torah was opened in the synagogue which was located on the place of the former bookshop. 120 boys studied there at the expense of the Jewish community.
There were two synagogues in Lysianka.
By the request of the Minister of National Education, Emperor Nicholas II prohibited Jewish entry into the state colleges of Lysianka and Korets, Volyn region.
In 1900-1904, Yakov Isaakovich Belinskiy worked as a doctor in Lysianka. In 1912, the Jewish credit cooperative society was functioning in the shtetl. In the early 20th century the main occupation of the Jewish population in Lysianka was trade.

Brothers Bezbrozh from Lysianka. They were born in XIX century. Photo from Rootsweb

Civil War pogroms

During the Russian Civil War pogroms took place in Lysianka. These pogroms together with famine and epidemics led to the decrease of the Jewish population of the shtetl. On the 5th of July 1918, about 40 Jews were killed and 50 heavily wounded during the pogrom which was organized by the peasant rebels.
Later the detachments of the Volunter Army carried out a pogrom in Lysianka.
Below is the extract from the memories of Ihor Akselrod “Long-suffering Lysianka” which was published in the USA:
“Unsatisfied people from the nearby villages rushed into the shtetl and committed slaughter and pogroms. The Jews were hiding in cellars but very few of them managed to survive. Lysianka rabbi told about the slaughter and brutal murder of lawyer Erlikhman. Germans troops entered the shtetl to establish order. According to the decision of the german military court 40 of the perpetrators of the pogrom were shot.

Former shtetl’s market square in the end of 1940’s

When the rabbi was speaking at the funeral of Erlikhman even German soldiers and their commandant started to cry. However, the next day the Germans left and the slaughter started all over again. During this period the Jewish population of Lysianka decreased by 1,000 people.”

Between the Wars

In the 1920s, the local mikvah was destroyed.

JDC report about state of Lisyanka Jewish community in 1923 was published in Joint Archive:

In 1925 five families of immigrants originating from Lysianka organized a Jewish collective farm “Lysenkovskiy” in Kherson region.

Below are the memories of 90 year-old resident of Lysianka Mariya Afanasiyivna Yablukova about Jewish life in 1930’s:
“ The Jews in Lysianka lived in Sanatorna, Pochtova, Horkiy streets before the war. We used to go to school together with the Jewish children and sit at the same desks with them. My classmates were Vira Kaplun, Sonia Shmorgun, Freyda Royzenblid, Kheyva Holtsman and Khayka. Kaplun sew men’s wear, Lesia (I forgot her name) sew women’s wear, Yankel sold meat, the Krymchanskiys made candies.”

Holocaust

On the 24th of July fascists came to Lysianka.

The policemen painted yellow stars on the Jewish houses. A curfew was enacted for all citizens of the village Ukrainian and Jewish. Anyone breaking this order would be shot or hung. Any Ukrainians who will let Jews into homes, to hide them or their belongings, or help them would be shot. The members of the family which disobeyed this order would also be shot. The Jews weren’t allowed to leave their houses they were tracked, humiliated, and robbed.

On the 1st of August 1941, the Germans announced that all Jews of Lysianka district were to be shipped Germany along with their documents and valuable things.

On the 4th of August 1941, the entirely Jewish population were gathered in Lysianka and sent to Pochapyntsi forest in a column.
They said they were going to the station in Korsun first and then to some other place. Those who couldn’t walk were taken in the drays. When all the Jews were led along the streets people went out and watched them. They especially remembered a family and a young woman with the baby in her hands and her grey-haired mother. When the exhausted column was passing the last houses of the village the old Jewish woman realized where they were led. When she saw a group of women she began to beg the policeman to let her give the baby to these women. The exhausted old lady took jewelry out of her purse and gave it to the policeman. He took it and hit her on the back with the butt of his rifle.
One Jewish woman secretly left her baby in the rye on her way. It was Sunday, the Ukrainians were heading for the market to Lysianka and heard the crying baby. They picked the baby up. It’s fate is unknown.

The Jews were stopped near the forest where the summer camp for farm calves used to be. There was a well which the cattle drank from. The people said the first family that had died was the one with the little baby. The fascists snatched the baby from mother’s hands and threw him into the well. In despair mother rushed after her baby with shouts, the old Jewish woman followed her daughter and grandchild.
The fascists committed an awful massacre.

Well in Pochapyntsi forest

They snatched the babies from their mothers and smashed them against the trees and then threw their still live bodies into the well. The women were crying and getting grey. The old men, teenagers, and women were led farther to the Czech grave near Makar’s garden. When they finally arrived at the pit, the fascists ordered the Jews to leave their belongings and undress. The Jews were grouped at the edge of the pit and shot. Those who appeared to be still alive were shot with pistols.

392 people were killed in the Pochapyntsi forest. They all were from Lysianka district. Among them were Jews, communists, and prisoners of war.

There was a building of the synagogue in Lisyanka

The whole Petrushchanskyy family from Lysianka died during the war. Wife Esther Yakivna and two children were thrown alive into the well in Pochapyntsi forest. Her husband Yosyp was mobilized and died at the front.

From the personal archive of the history teacher of Pochapyntsi secondary school Mykhaylo Teofanovych Lavreha:
Only several Jewish families remained in Lysianka after the massacre. Among them was Lev Horovskyy. At first the fascists took his beloved dog and then in August 1941 they shot him at the border of the farm garden and the forest. His grave is still preserved. In the summer of 1941, a column of cars with Jews from Lysianka was passing the village to Horodyshche. One car broke down on its way down at the local hospital. The soldiers started to fix it when the Jews had got out. The Germans took 28 shovels from the locals, gave them to poor Jews and made them dig the graves for themselves. This place is situated near the old forestry and the drugstore. It is in disorder.
Some locals hid the Jews. One old woman Motria Lazarenchykha hid a woman and little girl who survived the mass shooting. People also remember one woman who was hiding the Jews for gold. All others saved them out of the kindness of their hearts.

Monument on the Holocaust mass grave in the Pochapyntsi forest

Khaya Hutnyk , the head of Lysianka Jewish community recalled the massacre of the Jews in 1941: “When the Germans had driven all the Jews to the well, they ordered them to take the gold jewelery off. At the same time they surrounded the Jews with sheepdogs. One young Jewish woman Fayina Liakhovetska was holding her little daughter on the hands and two elder sons were holding her skirt. Suddenly the soldier grabbed the little girl and threw her into the well. People started to shout but he ran towards the second child. At that very moment the mother rushed to the officer with the shout and hit him so heavily that his eye jumped out of its sockets. Several officers ran up to her, grabbed the children and threw them alive into the well. Then, they began to throw all whom they brought, adults and little children. Then, a Ukrainian family was taken out of the car, father, mother and daughter. They had the board on their necks. “Partisan” was written on the boards. They were also thrown into the well.

About 500 Jews were killed in Lysianka district. They were from Vynograd, Lysianka, Boyarka, and other villages, there were the refugees from the western regions of Ukraine as well.

We know names of only 16 perished warriors from Lisyanka district:

After the War

Approximately 20 Jewish families lived in Lysianka after the war. The Olshanskyys, Holempers, Spectors, Krymchanskyys, Bronevetskyys, Vekslers, Hutnyks, Promyslovskyys, Kushnirs, Bohoslovskyys, Shaposhnyks, Honcharovs, Vyshnevskyys, Meyerskyys, Holubchyks, Basovskyys, and Hofmans were among them. They had different occupations, such as cattle storage, sewing peaked caps, making candies. They were barbers as well.

The amount of Jewish population in Lysianka has shortened sharply. The majority moved to big cities Cherkassy, Zvenyhorodka, Vinnytsia, Kyiv, Uman, Leningrad.

On this place was Lisyanka Synagogue

During Gorbachov’s Perestroika (restructuring) Jewish families began to immigrate to Israel. The family of Petro Isakovych Veksler also left for Israel.

In 1998, 25 Jews lived in Lysianka. In the 1990s a Jewish community was organized. Its first head was Chaya Berkovna Hutnyk (1936 – 2014). Alexandra Holubchyk was the next head.

As of 2016, 11 Jews live in Lysianka.

Famous Jews from Lysianka

Leo Birinski (real surname Gottesmann, 1884-1951) was a playwright, a scriptwriter and a producer of Jewish origin.

Leo Birinski

Dibner Bern (1897, Lysoanka – 1988 , Winton, the USA) was an engineer and a historian.

Riva Davydovna Bisnovataya (1919, Lysianka – 2004, the USA) was a Soviet cinema activist, a sound engineer.

Lisyanka Jewish cemetery

The cemetery was partially destroyed during the Second World War; after the War, in the 1940s-60s, burials in the row next to the road continued.

Inscription on the oldest gravestone:
פה נוח
ר’ דובבר יוסף
אסטראווסקע
נפטר כ’ תשרי שנת
תערב תנצבה
Борко Островскій
29 сентября 1911

Here buried
Is Reb Dovber Joseph
Ostrovskiy.
Died on Tishrey 20, 5672.
May his soul be bound in the bond of life.

Some info was taken from Lo-Tishkah website.

Stepantsy is a village located in Kaniv district of Cherkassy region. The villag’s estimated population is 2,770 (as of 2007).
In XIX – beginning of XX century it was village of Kaniv uezd of Kiev gubernia.

Beginning

The first mention of Jews in Stepantsy dates back to 1765, when 12 people lived here.

In 1845, Stepantsy was bought by Rogozinskiy for his daughter Antonina. She was married to Liudvik Klementyevich Khamets.

By 1863, the local population consisted of 2,370 Christians and 3,171 Jews.

In 1882, Jews were expelled from the village by the authorities.  Jews could come back to the shtetl only after Kiev trader Iona Zaytsev had rented the land from the local Polish landlord Khamets in 1903.

PreRevolution school in Stepantsy

The letter is invitation to wedding in Zolotonosha which was send to Burshtein , Stepantsy from 6 September 1891 (photo taken from kehilalinks)

Invitation to wedding, 1891

In 1897, the total population of Stepantsy was 7,436 people, of which 3,389 were Jews. The rabbi of the community was Nachman He-Chasid.

In the early 20th century the majority of the enterprises and shops in Stepantsy belonged to Jews. They owned five synagogues as well.

In the end of 1910’s, Srul Haimovich Gaishinskiy was a shoihet in Stepantsy and David Shokel was a Rabbi.

Civil War pogroms

The first pogrom in Stepantsy was on the 2nd of February 1919. It was organized by Ataman Golub’s band. His band consisted mostly of the local Ukrainians.

In August 1919, the Jews became the victims of another pogrom which lasted one week and was carried out by various local gangs. 119 Jews were killed, 411 were seriously wounded, and approximately 50 houses were burnt down. In a week 10 people were killed and 25 wounded in Denikin’s pogrom. A lot of women were sexually assualted.

The period between January 1920 and September 1920 was quite painful for the poor Jews of Stepantsy. Anarchy persisted in the countryside with various maurauding armed gangs constantantly raiding the villages. Many Jews died of diseases and malnutrition. Thus they began to sell their houses for nothing because they didn’t have anything to live for. The peasants pulled the houses down and took them away.

Stepantsy entrepreneurs list from Russian Empire Business Directories by 1913, part 1

Stepantsy entrepreneurs list from Russian Empire Business Directories by 1913, part 2

In November 1920, ataman Yaryy organized pogrom in Stepantsy. 17 people were killed and those who had survived were ordered to leave the village in a three-day period.

It was severe cold on this tragic day. The poor, tattered Jews with their exhausted children and miserable belongings escaped from their native shtetl.

Former Jewish house. Now it is Post Office

Within several hours all the Jews left Stepantsy and only 100 year –old Jewish cemetery watchman refused to leave his dear cemetery. In three days his dead body was found. He had died of cold and hunger.

2,500 Jews escaped to Boguslav. Many of them died of diseases or moved away. In the same year 1920, 1,000 Jews from Stepantsy lived in Boguslav.

After the Civil War

I haven’t found any information whether some of the Jews returned to Stepantsy in the 1920s.

In the 1980s, the native of Stepantsy General Lev Skvirskiy wanted to establish a monument in the village in memory of the destroyed Jewish community. However, he didn’t manage to do it for some unknown reasons.

I visited Stepantsy in 2016 but I couldn’t gather any information concerning the Jewish community. Only several  photos of the destroyed Jewish cemetery were taken.

Famous Jews from Stepantsy

Lev Solomonovich Skvirskiy (1903, Stepantsy – 1990) was a Soviet commander, lieutenant-general (1944). During the Great World War he was a chief of the 26th army (May 1943 – January 1945).

Lev Skvirskiy

Lev Israilevich Gorlitskiy (1906, Stepantsy – November, 2003) was a Soviet designer of heavy armour.

Lev Israilevich Gorlitskiy

Iona Mordkovich Zaytsev (1828, Stepantsy – 1907, Kiev) was a sugar manufacturer and philanthropist.

Iona Mordkovich Zaytsev

Aba Borokhovich Finkelshtein (1899, Stepantsy – 1978, Moscow) was a bibliographer. He worked in Yiddish newspaper “Der Emes” and magazine “Sovetish geymland”.

Archive records

There are the following documents concerning the Jews of Stepantsy in State Archive of Kiev region:
– 1/295/57083: About the permission given to the Jews of Stepantsy village to rebuild the school. 1863.
– 1/295/59564-a: About Stepantsy box-taxes. 1865.
– 283/12/37: With the description and reports of merchant Moisey Zaytsev, Stepantsy mead factory. 1871.

Zarichanka (Liantskorun by 1947), is a village in Chemerovtsy district of the Khmelnitskiy region. The village is located on the river Zhvanchik and the tributary Letavka.

In 1793 it was incoperated into the Russian Empire. By the late XIX – early XX century it was a shtetl in Kamenets district of Podolye province. In 1923-1928 it was a district center. According to the census of 2001 its population was 892 people.

In 2000 a local resident Ruslan Kozak (born in 1979) tried to write down the history of Liantskorun while he was studying in Kamenets-Podolskiy University. A lot of facts about the life of Jews from Zarechanka were mentioned in his work.

Beginning

The name Liantskorun appeared in the first half of the XVIII century when the family Liantskoronskiy owned the village and managed to elevate it to the status of a town and eventually organize fairs in it.

The Jewish community of Zarechanka was formed in the XVI century. The Jews who were almost completely eliminated during the Bohdan Khmelnitskiy uprising started to repopulate Ukrainian lands only after 1667 when the Truce of Andrusovo had been signed.

Liantskorun entrepreneurs list from Russian Empire Business Directories by 1913

In the 1750s, the followers of  Jacob Frank (founder of the Frankivite sect)  lived in Zarechanka. When they had a meeting led by their founder, they were revealed. It was at night on January 27, 1756. The sectarians were arrested. The investigation was started by the rabbis from Sataniv, Smotrich and Liantskorun.  The Polish magnates  punished the Jews who had denounced the sectarians and offended the Frankist movement. Those Jews were flogged. Torah and Talmud books were taken to Kamenets-Podolskiy and burnt on the Trade square in public.

By the late XVIII century the east side of the town was inhabited by artisans. Then there was the Jewish houses grouped behind the river Zhvanchyk and next to them there was a square with the church on it.

In 1770, the tide of plague (famine) covered Liantskorun without any reason. Thus, in 1775, the amount of Jews living in the town decreased to 254 people though in 1765, there were 609 people, men and women. By 1811, the amount of Jews in Liantskorun hadn’t increased, there were 33 guild Jews, 164 peasants, and 104 male artisans.

In the second part of the 18th century the residents of Liantskorun managed to acquire the right to hold fairs in the town. This caused a quick development in trade and attracted  new Jewish residents  as well.  The exact number of Jews living in Liantskorun at this time is unknown, but there were 300 Jewish houses there in 1808. because of the Jews the town gradually became a center for trade, even rivaling Kamenets as a market town.

Big Synagoge in Liantskorun, photo by Zholtovskiy 1930:

In 1818, 358 peasants and 380 Jews lived in the shtetl.

In 1867, there were four synagogues and a Jewish cemetery in Zarechanka. The main occupation of the Jewish population was handicrafts.

In the 1880s, the shtetl belonged to a villager with the Russian origin Ivan Olexandrovich Baziuk. 712 Christian men and 733 women lived in his possession. Jews also lived there – 649 men and 666 women.

Another synagogue in Liantskorun:

In the late 19th century there was a cheder, and in 1892, Berka Bronstein was appointed rabbi. In 1911, “neleg” a Jewish Zionists’ group appears headed by I. Bronstein. In 1913, there were five synagogues.

In the 1880s, the shtetl was quite industrially developed.

48,2% out of 2,356 residents were Jews. People of this nationality had been engaged in craftsmanship for ages. Therefore, they made the shtetl rise economically.  Jews owned the brewery, the watermill, the towns only pharmacy, the district police quarters, and crafts production stores.

A Jew Ios Aranov was elected to be the village headman in 1884, Kisel Shmul-Beprikevich Dzektser was his assistant.

Jewish mill on Zhvanets river in Liantskorun. Photo from kampot.org.ua

In the book by Naum Bernstein “Orinin: My Shtetl” Annie Gittleman is mentioned. She was born in 1910 in Liantskorun, got married with Vainstein from Orinin and emigrated to Canada. She had four sons.

In 1915, Zelman Melikhovich Shtelman was elected as the village headman in Liantskorun, Mendel Ideliovych Melman and Zus Abramovych Berman were his assistants, Yankel Khaskelevich Zimerman was in charge of collecting money.

I haven’t find information about Jewish pogrom in Orinin in 1917-1920.

Bridge in Lyantskorun

After Revolution

On the ninth of September 1925, the Soviet government gave permission to form national village councils.

In 1926, a Jewish village council was organized. Israel Kaper was its head. There was the Jewish People’s Court in Zarechanka. The OZET department taught the Jews the foundations of agricultural works. The artisans’ and tailors’ unions were functioning at that time. There also was an agricultural community “Grain-grower”, which consisted of 24 families (110 people), they had cultivated 60 acres of land. Since. 1934 there was a Jewish collective farm named in honor of the XVIIth Congress of the Communist Party.

Jewish houses in Liantskorun, photo by Zholtovskiy 1930

1,788 Jews lived in the village in this period.

During NEP (the New Economic Policy in the 1920s) 121 artisans got  permission to do their private business. This permission was given only till the 30th of September 1926. The majority of these artisans were Jewish tailors, milliners, hairdressers, cobblers, bakers, painters, carriers, blacksmiths, tinsmiths, skinners, carpenters, soap-boilers.

In 1926, when NEP was almost over the Soviet government wanted to turn the Jews into farmers. From November 28 –  December 31 1925 33 Jewish families registered  to move to other districts for grain growing.

In 1925, the poor Jews got some help from organizations (landsmanshaften) in the USA which also financed the activity of the illegal heder.

In the 1920s, Zionist units “Ge-Khaluts” and “Foreyn” were functioning, the program “Ha-Poel ha-Tsair” was spread and the magazine “OSM” was published.

Jewish neighborhood in Lianskorun, 1930

In 1925, children’s organizations “Yalde Tsion” and “Ha-Tsofe” were formed. A Jewish school with A village library and reading-room was opened. People could find books in the library in the Yiddish, Russian, and Ukrainian languages. Some educational programs and the amateur theatre were preformed there as well. People could visit different lectures.

In 1934, three village councils were in Liantskorun. Ukainian, Polish, and Jewish councils were united in one.

Before the war in 1939, 915 Jews lived here.

Holocaust

Zarichanka was captured by the Germans on the ninth of July 1941. There is some information that the local population tried to help the Jews but there is nothing to substantiate this fact. The market place was turned into the Ghetto. All of the Jewish population were gathered there.

In the summer 1942, all the Jews moved to the Ghetto in Kamenets-Podolskiy and were killed together with the local ones.

Holocaust memorial in Lianskorun, 2016

After the War

I haven’t been able to find any information about the Jews who came back to the village after the War…

The Jewish cemetery was situated in the centre of the village. It was destroyed in the 1950s-1960s. There is a park there now.

It is a fact that there were no Jews in village in 1980’s.

Ruslan Kozak take copies of the documents in Khmelnitskiy State Archive about next Jewish building in Lianskorun in 2000’s:

Famous Jews from Liantskorun

Mordhe Alperson (1867, Liantskorun, Podolye province – 1947, Mauricia, Argentina), a prose writer, a playwright. He tried himself in different professions. In 1891, he emigrated to Argentina with his family. There he was one of the organizers and founders of Jewish agricultural colony Mauricia. Alperson was fond of farming even when he was very old. He also printed the articles about the agricultural organizations in Jewish colonies.

Archive records

The archive documents concerning Liantskorun are kept in many archives of Ukraine. In 2000, Ruslan Kozak copied the plan of the synagogue and the mikveh in Khmelnitskiy archive.

In Kiev archive:

442/52/378: Case about the eviction of Jewish smugglers with their families from Liantskorun. 1873-1875. The surnames mentioned are Volko Kiderman, Gershko and Ayzik Gubermans, Srul Groysberg, Ide Leyb Shmukler, Fishel Gitelman, Ios Gitelman (Kushnir), Srul Zherder, Faybish Charkovskiy, Volko Shurinets (Kiderman) with his family has a house in Zbrizh.

As a result, 40 Jews together with their families were evicted from Liantskorun.

442/183/89: a complaint of the members of the Jewish community in Liantskorun A.German and Ts. Yulius against a local policeman. 1869.

The following surnames are also mentioned: Alter Berman, Itsko Yusym, Zavel Fingel, Mot Ziat’tser, Leybko Gelman, Yios Guberman, Yankel Galsbarg, Mortko Nudelman, Moshko Groysberg, Srul Fingerman, Shlioma Royzentul, Abramko Fishman, Ide Bekman, Alter Fingerman, Shulim Zambel Waserman, Ide Leyb Shmukler, Fishel Fishman, Zus Kliger…

Buky is a small town in Mankovka district, Cherkassy region. The town’s estimated population is 2,134 (2007). Since 1793 it’s been a part of the Russian Empire. In the XIX – early XX centuries, it was a shtetl of Uman district, Kiev province.

Beginning

The first mention of Buky in historical record was in 1554.

In the early 18th century a synagogue was built in Buky and two more ones in the late XIX.

In the 1740’s, count Kiselev sold his Buky-Antonovka estate to duke Liubomirskiy who had attached nearby village Antonovka to Buky. At that time there were 496 households in both settlements. 3,133 people lived there including 260 Jewish households which contained 1,558 people.

Buky entrepreneurs list from Russian Empire Business Directories by 1913

In 1893, the Jews were prohibited to pray in new synagogues because the latter ones were situated at intervals less than it was allowed by law from the church.

In 1909, there was a Talmud-Torah and a private Jewish women’s college, in 1912 – a Jewish craft savings-and-loan society.

In the early 20th century there were four synagogues in Buky. Three of them were small buildings, and the main synagogue was located in the center of Buky, it was made of stone.

Story of the main Synagogue was taken from Moishe Olgin’s book:

They decided to build a new Shul, a magnificent one. They tore down the old one and the new one took 2 years to build. It turned out to be the Temple of Jerusalem. The high walls, stained glass, the sculptured Holy Ark, the names on the wall. Really a stately house of worship. You could fit 10 old Shulen in this one. When the building was done and the congregation came together to pray Mincha for the first time, they called out to our Jew to go up and pray, he looked around and answered, “No, I won’t pray: the Shul is too big for me”. 

Site of Big Synagogue in Buky. It was destroyed in 1960’s

An old Jew from my village, a distant relative, told me how they built the big synagogue. With a special fondness, he told me how they made the repository of the Holy Scrolls which was carved out of copper and silver. This repository was about three aisles wide and stretched from the ground up to the ceiling. It was adorned with leaves, grapes, lions and eagles. My relative told me that he saw them hammer this whole scene with his own eyes.

Before the Revolution Buky became a rather large shtetl with the population of 5,461. It was one of the main trading centers for grain in Kiev province.

Moishe Olgin described shtetl Buky before World War I in his book:

Those two long green rows are shops which are in the center of the market. Opposite them are a group of houses – Abraham Koretzky’s inn. other inns, and the large clothes store. On the other side, in a corner, the synagogue surrounded by fences. A little further, the cluster with green towers.

Further up, you can smell the iron. This is the street of the blacksmiths. Each trade has its own street in 3 my village. I don’t know why, but people in similar trades like to live near one another. Perhaps this was because of the Gentiles.

Old PreRevolution building in Buky

On the hill, on the other side of Torhovitza, were the builders who made wheels and wagons. Below, on a side street, lived the leather crafters.

Also, there were mentioned names of some shteetl’s Jews:

…Ari Wolf, a doer in the burial society and the sexton… …Yankel the water-carrier…

Lubomirskys, the dukes (who own the village), Laybzy Dyzyk, the recluse, the miracles of a doctor in Talne who performs operations of which there are only one in the world.

Itzhak Yehushe, a talented scholar, who is also a God-fearing person.

Former shtetl’s centre

There were Klezmer group of  Chaim from Sakalivka. He was a true artist, with half opened, dreamy, red eyes, and a pale, thin face, and long, white, thin fingers. He knew nothing about what was going on in the world. A child could have led him around by the nose. His wife, a practical Jewish woman, had aggravation from him because nothing worried him. The true “doer” in his band was David Masais, a short dark Jew who was not really a great fiddler, but an expert in Hebrew. Another “personage” in his band was Arel, the drummer, who always said, “We’re playing the wedding”, as though he was the big shot

Esteemed and treasured were Pinchas Makarever or Abraham Aradovsky or Abraham-Ber, the cantor. They were venerated, valued, and loved because they had a heart, a soul and a brain, and didn’t think much about worldly attractions.

Pinchas Makarever lived in Buki, in the Ukraine, in the second half of the nineteenth century. He had a number of children, among whom were Cheved Feldstein (mother of Sol, Ben and Martin Feldstein) and Chana Greenblatt (mother of Sheila Cheimets) and so is ancestor to their progeny, as well as to assorted Normans of Buffalo, Boston, etc.

Pinchas Makarever (1826 – 1910)

Another sort was Abraham Oradovsky. He was a very polished, fastidious, and exact Jew. He was removed from the world and never mixed into community affairs. He was never seen in the streets. His large house with high balcony and his large dry goods store faced the market. His store was always full of people, but Abraham Oradovsky sat in another room and studied. He did so secretly. He was a distinguished scholar

Abraham Ber, the cantor was also a doctor. Laybtzy Dyzyk and Beryl Dyzyk were most welathy person in shtetl. Zalman Zvanitsky study by himself and became a big lawyer in Uman.

Old Shlomo, Mordechai’s son, studied not for a diploma or for a chariot with four horses, but for enjoyment and fire that’s hidden in pure knowledge. Old Shlomo was originally a child prodigy, a young genius. He would sit night and day over the Gemorah and Book of Verses.

Efraim Priderke tried eight times in a row and finally entered the university. Now he’s a doctor somewhere

Revolution

In the summer 1919, elements of the Voluntary Army (UNR) organized a pogrom in Buky.

About 200 Jews were killed during the pogrom. This atrocity was carried out by Ataman Tsvetkovskiy’s band in October 1920. But I haven’t find some confirmation if this information in books or another sources.

During one pogrom, there were killed two elderly Jews at the same time – Avrum Steinberg and Nukhim Margulis. After the murder of Nukhim Margulis, bandits came to the house the second time and wanted to kill his wife and children. When the bandits had already raised a revolver, a peasant who happened by ran up to them and said: “What are you doing? Kill the children first, don’t leave them orphans!’ With these words the peasant seized the gun out of the bandit’s hand and saved that family.

School building in Buky. It was used as prison during WWII

Most local Jews have fled from Buky, and the local peasants were doing as they please; acting on the precept and example of the bandits, they have plundered the property of the Jews.

In book of Moshe Olgin was mentioned next atrocities of local bandits:
“Moishe Olgin’s first cousin Mordecai Novaminsky and his wife had been beheaded in the Pogroms, their heads wrapped in a Torah“.

During the pogroms, the shtetl was ransacked and burned.

Between the Wars

As a result of the pogroms, the Jewish population declined to 281 people. (1923). In 1926, the Jewish population was 762 people (25%).

In the mid 1920’s, former residents of Buky founded a Jewish agricultural colony named after Rakovskiy in Kherson district. It included 27 people.

In 1930, a collective farm named after Lenin was formed in Buky. Another collective farm named after Frunze started its work in village Pavlopol, Buky district. 25 peasants’ families and 20 Jewish families from Buky were in it. The Piatigorskiys family was among them. Duvid was a breeder and Brukha worked as a lead-woman.

View of the Buky from the right bank of Tikich River

In the late 1933, this little collective farm was incorperated into larger one named after Lenin. The Jewish population of the village returned to Buky.

After the 1930’s, the synagogues were closed. The main synagogue was converted into a cultural center. On July 19th 1941, the village was occupied by the German troops. Some Jews managed to evacuate to the East. Men who were liable for military service were called up or joined the Red Army voluntarily.  About 60% Jewish population remained in Buky under German occupation. In July-October 1941, German military commandant’s office was ruling the shtetl. A village council with the senior man (Starosty) at the head was formed and an auxiliary Ukrainian police that consisted of the locals as well. The latter took an active part in all “Jewish campaigns”.

Holocaust

In November 1941, the power came to the German civil council. Buky became a part of Tarashcha gebiet (district) of Kiev general district, Reichskommissariat Ukraine. Soon after the

Soon after the occupation the German military commandant’s office ordered the village council to register all the Jews. They were obliged to wear a band with a star of David on their arms and do different kinds of hard work. Already in August of 1941, the first campaign was held in the village. Several dozen Jews were shot. The execution was carried out near the river Gornyy Tikich.

Holocaust mass grave in Buky which was build up by private houses

Already in August of 1941, the first campaign was held in the village. Several dozen Jews were shot. The execution was carried out near the river Gornyy Tikich on the South-West of the village outskirts. Now there is a granite monument with the sign “ To the Fascists’ victims from the mourning relatives and countrymen”.

In the autumn 1941, Jewish intellectuals were shot on the cattle burial ground 100 meters from the village. Those who remained alive together with the Jews from neighboring villages were driven to the ghetto. It was organized in the former landowner’s farmhouse 1.5 km. from the village center.

In May 1942, all disabled Jews were shot and able-bodied ones worked in the quarry. This labour camp was eliminated in 1943 by shooting all the prisoners.

A Holocaust survivor Olga Rudaya recalled: “In the morning we were driven from the camp to a quarry, Buky – Antonivka. The quarriers stabbed the rocks, and we drove the trucks and put the stone in stacks. Then it was sent to build roads. How did we survive? How did we manage to stay alive? A great thanks to the quarriers, they and their wives gave us food. We the survivors are greatly indebted to them”.

Now there is a monument designed as a metal pyramid on its place. A granite monument is established without the indication of victims’ nationalities at the river Gornyy Tikich.

The shootings also took place on the Jewish cemetery. The children of mixed marriages were shot in Buky too.

Unmarked Holocaust mass grave near Christian cemetery in 100 meters from Jewish cemetery

Altogether, about 500 Jews perished during the occupation.

Common grave of Minzberg family in Buky Jewish cemetery:

After the war one Ukrainian woman recollected her old neighbor who had been hiding for a long time during the occupation of the village. Finally, he decided to give up. When she met him walking along the street she asked him surprisingly:
– “ Where are you going? They will shoot you!”
– “Let it be, my dear. I’m tired of such living…”

Full list of Holocaust mass graves was created by Lo-Tishkah project: 1 2 3 4

After the War

After the war about 25 Jewish families came back to Buky from the evacuation.

Here is a list of the Jewish families that lived in Buky after the war. It was noted down from Lidiya Andrushchenko’s(1925-2005) memories:
– Shulym and Inda Plotinskiy with their children; daughters Mania, Oma and son Izia. Shulym was a miller. Their children left for Israel and Moscow.
– Isrul and Zlota Mukomol with their son Misha who left for the USA. Isrul sewed service caps.
– War veteran Isaak Shwartsburd and his wife Liza with their children Boris and Nelia who left for Israel and the USA. He worked as a supplier. Liza survived during the shooting of the Jews from Buky, she got out of the pit. She was saved by the Ukrainian woman from the village of Talnoye district. During the raid Liza was captured and sent to Germany for the forced labor. However, she managed to survive and came back.

Former Jewish houses in shtetl’s centre

– Barber Isaak Ruban with daughters Zoya, Fania, and son Mitia.
– Supplier Velvl Ruban with two sons and a daughter.
– Duvid and Brukha Piatigorskiy with four children.
– Duvid and Khaya Albiter.
– Motia and Vita Shvydkikh
– Typesetter in the press house Bentsion Babich with his family
– Barber Gershl Zubatyy with his wife and daughters Klara and Dora.
– Fira Tomshiver lost her husband at the front. She raised three sons Abrasha, Shurik, and Misha
– Brothers Geyzburg’s families, Abram Borisovich’s and Naum Borisovich’s. The elder brother worked in a district consumer union and the younger one was a barber. There was one more Geyzburg, he was a cobbler.
– Khana Verbovskaya raised her two children, a son and a daughter, herself. She worked as a head of the canteen. Her husband died at the front. Son moved to America together with his family, and daughter left for Israel.
– Photographer Semen Davydovich Dayman with his wife Mania and son David.

Bushes on the site of second synagogue in the former shtetl centre

– Tailor Leyba Zhygun with his wife Roza and son Misha (war veteran) and daughter Bronia
– Tsolyk and Marim Vishnevetskiy with their son Shura who worked as a head of the post office in Buky. Tsolyk survived in occupation
– Zarnitskiy family, Nuta and Brushka. He was a seller in the shop and a good roofer. She was a dressmaker.
– Shulia and Basia Veksler. He was a great blacksmith, and worked together with blacksmith Benia Kogan. There was a married couple of teachers, Yefim Borisovich and Bronislava Moiseyevna Kogan. He was a Biology teacher and she taught Mathematics. They left for Australia with their children.
– The Krasilovskiys, Popkovs, Biedermans, Polishchuks, Fishmans, Gekkers, Albieters, Antonovskiys and many other families…

This map of Jewish houses was created in 2010’s by pupils of Buky School according to memories of old people:

Map of Jewish houses in Buky after WWII

Map description:
1. Jewish cemetery; 2.Site of synagogue; 3.Misha Albiter; 4.Kogan (on the second floor – Alla Lomakina, Larisa); 5.Gershko Zubatiy; 6. Suhar, Manya, daughter Betya; 7. Senya Daiman; 8. Geyzberg; 9.Sandler; 10. He worked as a guard; 11.Zhigun; 12.Mariya Markovna Linetska; 13. Tula i Khona Berbovetskiy; 14.Tsolik; 15.Basya (her husband was blacksmith); 16.Fira (worked in trade); 17. Bella; 18. ; 19.Moth Shvidkiy; 20.Shulim; 21. Made a hats; 22.Lisa Shvarsburg; 23.Krashaniy; 24.Aron; 25.Dud and Bruha Pyatigorski; 26. Froiko Pyatigorskiy; 27.?; 28.Shaison – most of these people burried on Buky Jewish cemtery

After Buky district had been eliminated and attached to Mankovka, many families began o leave for Uman, Zvenigorodka, Zhashkov, and other larger cities of the USSR.

Children and relatives of those who had lived in Buky before the war used to come to the cemetery. They looked after the graves. The Jews of Buky had collected money and established a stele in memory of perished and deceased people.

In 1960, the synagogue building became unfit for further use. Nobody wanted to repair it and the building was demolished. Nuta Zarnitskiy was a seller in the shop and a good roofer. One day he was asked to fix the roof of the former synagogue which later became a cinema. He started to work and suddenly felt down from it and died.

In 1997, the most recent act of vandalism took place, when local residents drove into the forest on an excavator and dug up the Holocaust mass graves in search of gold. In 1997-8, the fences were stolen, the obelisk was overturned. It currently lies 50m away.

In 1998, two Jewish families lived in Buky.

The Jewish community was registered in 1999. Lidiya Markovna Andrushchenko was its head up to her death in 2005.

In 2012, Jewish volunteer from Boyarka Jeremy Borovitz together with the students of school in Buky created a small film about the history of the Jews of Buky.

In 2016 only one elderly Jewish woman lived in Buky…

Famous Jews from Buky

Mikhail Olgin, Iosef Neyman are pen-names of Moshe-Iosef Novomisskiy (1878, Buky – 1939, New York), a writer, editor, active participant of Jewish labor movement of Russia and communist movement of the USA.

Moshe Olgin

Moyshe Khashchevatskiy (1897, Buky – 1943), a Jewish poet, translated classical Russian, Ukrainian, and German poetry into Yiddish. He died at the front.

Moyshe Khashchevatskiy

Genealogy

Lidiya Andrushchenko’s memories about big Kagan family from Buky:

Before the war my father had a big family, my grandfather and grandmother Gershl and Riva Kagan. They had five daughters and two sons. Mordkha, my father, Liova, Ella, Bronia, Rakhil, Mania, and Ida.  All daughters, my grandgather and grandmother died during the German occupation, their children also died. Their husbands died at the front. My father died at the front too. Only uncle Liova stayed alive, he managed to evacuate with his family and lived in Kazakhstan in Aktiubinsk.

From my mother’s side there were two uncles. They both left for America in the 20’s in search of a better life. Elder brother Gidalya moved first then his younger brother Fishl went after him. They had been corresponding with their mother up to the beginning of the war; they sent her parcels, photos. Uncle Fishl got married there in 1941 and sent us a big wedding photo where he was with his bride. They both were young and very nice. The war stopped the correspondence.

List of Jewish families in Buly from 1818 available by this link.

Buky Jewish cemetery

Cemetery locates in southern edge of the town. Over the bridge. 500 meters from the road to Popivka. Behind the Orthodox Christian cemetery. There are only post-WWII graves. All preWar graves were destroyed.

Common view on old part of Jewish cemetery (destroyed)

Graves on new part of cemetery:

Remains of gravestones on old part of cemetery:

Zvenigorodka is a city and district center in Cherkassy region. The city’s estimated population is 17,400 (as of 2016).
It was first mentioned in historical record in 1545. According to another version it existed during the Kievan Rus period. In 1569 Zvenigorodka was in Kiev district, Kiev province in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. It was incorperated into  the Russian Empire in 1793. In the XIX – early XX centuries Zvenigorodka was a district town of Kiev gubernia.

Beginning

In 1765, there is mention of a single Jewish tenant living in Zvenyhorodka among 134 homes in the village.

In the late XVIII century almost all the inns, mills, and distilleries of Zvenigorodka were rented by the Jews. The names of the tenants are present in Polish documents from 1792: Mendel Shmuylovich, Chaim Mortkovich, Moshko Genikhovich, Yankel and Leyzor Peysakhovich, Abram Mortkovich, Moshko Leybovich, Moysa Fabishovich, Abel Leybkovich, Runin Zelmanovich, Eli Davidovich, Mortko Peysakhovich, Chaim Leyzorovich. The list of names in these Polish documents contain only given names and patronymics as Jews were not assigned surnames until the beginning of the XIX century.

House of merchant Ginsburg

According to the population census, in the mid-19th century, there were 2,341 Jews in Zvenyhorodka, 4,620 Orthodox Christians, 271 Roman Catholics and 47 Old Believers. Trade and industry were in the hands of the Jews who also founded a tobacco factory and a plant for making candles. There were 11 Christian merchants but 35 from the Jewish community. Many Jews worked in the fields during harvesting.

Zvenigorodka entrepreneurs list from Russian Empire Business Directories by 1913

Historical documents reveal information about industry in Zvenigorodka in the 1890’s.  Aron Abramov’s brewery had 15 workers who local residents. Veniamin Iyerusalimskiy’s and Bentsion Sosnovskiy’s owned steam mills. The water mill that belonged to the town and was rented by Shumer Fefshtein. The cement plant was rented by the widow Vaintrub’s. And a soap factory was rented by Gershko Kogan.

River Gniliy Tikich in Zvenigorodka

In the late XIX century, there were five synagogues, a mikvah and a printing house, which belonged to Nuhim Yakovlevich Zotulovsky.

From 1892, the community rabbi and head of the rabbinical court was Joseph Halpern, in the 1890s, while the county rabbi was Tsal Shmulevich Dobrov. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the Jewish population of Zvenyhorodka increased to about six thousand (40%).

There was commercial college before Revolution

On the 15th September 1902, Jewish social hall Ha-Torah opened. The building was rented. 1,500 roubles were gathered for it’s maintenance plus 900 roubles of charitable contributions.  The teachers consisted of Naum Izrailevich Yurovskiy, Aron Shayev Grinberg, and Shlomo Izrailevich Kamenetskiy.  In 1913, V.Kamenetskiy founded a private men’s college.

In 1910, seven synagogues operated, there was a Talmud Torah, three Jewish schools for boys, a Jewish hospital and a benevolent society, as well as the Jewish cemetery.

Civil War

Zvenyhorodka suffered from three pogroms. In 1918, as a result of the first pogrom, 27 Jews were killed and 50 wounded. The second attack took place in August 1919. The pogrom was organized by units of the Volunteer Army. In January 1920, the troops of Ataman Tuz vandalized Zvenyhorodka.

Site of destroyed synagogue on the front of current synagogue

Between the Wars

In 1922, a Jewish self-defense unit consisting of fifty people operated in the town. In 1921, an office of the Jewish Section was opened in Zvenyhorodka. (the organization’s goal was to spread communist ideology among the national minorities). There was a Zionist organisation in the town and in September 1922, a group of Zionists were arrested. According to the Russian Jewish Encyclopedia, in 1926, the Jewish population of Zvenyhorodka numbered 6,584 people (36,5%).

Interesting JDC report from Zvenigorodka, 1923:

Zvenigorodka was one of the most important corn-trading centres in the uyezd of Uman. The greater part of the Jewish population was engaged in the corn trade either as merchants, commissioners, shippers or as employees. There was 7 steam-mills, 2 oil-presses and several grits mills. Primitive industry is also being carried on, principally shoemaking, tanning and cart making. There is also one primitive cast-iron foundry. Now the population is chiefly occupied with small

Former Jewish house

Now the population is chiefly occupied with small trade, quite a number of people are engaged in the purchase and transport of horses to Moscow, Kharkov and Ekaterinoslav. Owing to fortunate circumstances, Zvenigorodka did not suffer from any pogroms. Before the Revolution Zvenigorodka had a population of 30,000, of which 12,000 were Jews. The general population has not changed, but the Jewish population increased to 15,000. This increase is due to the fact that at present 350 Jewish refugee families are concentrated in Zvenigorodka. Many refugees have already left the town and returned to their native places, but many remain. There are 200 Jewish artisans, 200 workers and about 300 without definite occupations in the town. The town has the following social-welfare institutions: 4 Children’s Homes (one of which is Jewish), 1 nursery, 1 Sanatorium for tubercular children with 28 children (no Jewish children), 1 Hospital for eye diseases, 1 dental ambulatory, 1 bacteriological station and one Home for Aged with 28 inmates, mostly Jews.

According to the Russian Jewish Encyclopedia, in 1926, the Jewish population of Zvenyhorodka numbered 6,584 people (36,5%).

In the 1920’s, there were three synagogues in Zvenigorodka, the majority of the Jewish population attended them.
There were many craftsmen, tinsmiths, tailors, and cobblers. Some of them worked in cooperatives and some at home.
Around 30 Jewish families founded a collective farm in the town. In 1931, there was also an agricultural school with training in Yiddish. Two primary schools in Yiddish and a vocational school were established. In 1927, a school for needy children was opened and an orphanage operated.

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A Jewish school had been in Zvenigorodka by 1939. In 1939, it was closed and reconstructed into the Russian school.

Gulkin street (now Proletarskaya street) was completely inhabited by the Jewish families that lived in one-storey buildings.

In 1939, 1,957 Jews lived in Zvenyhorodka.

Holocaust

Over 3,000 citizens of Zvenigorodka were mobilized to the Soviet Army.

Zvenigorodka was occupied by the Wehrmacht on the 29th of July 1941.

In the late September or early October 1941, the detachment of operative command five shot about 100 Jewish men in Zvenigorodka.
On November 3rd 1941, “Jewish residential area” (an open ghetto) was organized in Zvenigorodka. The ghetto was located between Shevchenko, Komintern, Zhdanov, Pionerskaya and Karl Liebknecht streets. Three-four families would live in each house. The Jews were obliged to wear yellow stars on their clothes. The Germans appointed the head of Judenrat  (Jewish council) and five-six brigadiers. Those were Jewish. They delivered the orders to the ghetto.

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On the 16th of August 1941 the town pharmacist Skybynskyy was taken out of his home and shot in his garden. The same day Krasylovskyy was brutally murdered. Then engineer Kanevskiy and lawyer Yablunovskiy were killed. Bookbinder Yanishevskiy was put into a barrel with stones and rolled along the streets. He died. On the ninth of 1941 Krasylovska was killed in the yard of her own house. A local Ukrainian policeman named Kyslenko together with the Germans made her daughter dig the pit and shot her mother in front of her.

There was a ghetto in 1941-1942

On May 5th 1942, 150 able-bodied Jews were selected to work in the camp in Nemorozh village.
On May 17th 1942, the Jews from Katerinopol and Olshany were settled in Zvenigorodka. After the concentration of the Jews from the outskirts in Zvenigorodka on the 18th of June 1942 1,375 Jews were shot and 100 people were sent to the camp to Iskrenoye village. Only 80 artisans were left in Zvenigorodka and executed later.

In Febuary 1942 all prisoners from a concentration camp in Nemorozh village were shot. The people were gathered at the edge of Gubskiy forest. They dug a pit on the meadow and then shot everybody from the Nemorozh concentration camp. They left the place for 50 more people who were selected from Smilchentsi concentration camp. Several captives managed to escape during the shooting. Total amount of those who were shot in Gubskiy forest on the second of November 1942 is approximately 200 people.

During the Holocaust approximately 3,000 Jews died in Zvenigorodka.

Buzia Sigalova, Mariya Konstantinovskaya (1900-1956) with her daughter Shelia (1931-2000), Mania Torgovetskaya (her 11 month old daughter was killed), Lidiya Andrushchenko (1925-2005), Liubov Krasilovskaya, sisters Liza and Grunia Khilkivskiy, Betia Medved, Mikhail Khutorianskiy, Alexandr Shwartsman, I. Feldman, Asia Yakovlevna Zukina, Mania Torhovetska, A.S. Lement, Liza Yakovlevna Medvynska, A.P. Lemberska survived from Nemorozh camp. Appoximately 30-40 people escaped with their lives.

Zvenigorodka was freed on January 28th 1944.

After WWII

Many Jews returned to Zvenigorodka after the War but I haven’t find information about Jewish life before 1990’s.

One local Jewish Veteran Mikhail Taranov and residents Liubov Krasylovska (1920, Zvenigordka – 2013, Haifa), and Liza Kerzher determined the names of 581 Jews from Zvenigorodka, killed by the fascists.
Mikhail Naumovich Gutmakher is a non-staff worker of a History Museum in Zvenigorodka. He is doing his best to revive the history of the Jewish population of Zvenigorodka and its district.
Yevgeniya Solomonovna Braslavskaya was a primary-care physician of Zvenigorodka district hospital. She’d been working at the same section for 45 years.

In 1993, a Jewish community was formed. The arrival of American Sally Grach caused the unification of Jews. They gathered in the flats, rented rooms in the local hotel.

Jewish community was registered in 1994.

Leonid Yakovlevich Braslavskiy – Head of Zvenigorodka Jewosh community

Community recieved building of PreRevolution synagogue in 1999.

Synagogue and community center in Zvenigorodka

In the summer 1999, Gudkin family from the USA presented a Torah-scroll to the community. The USA sponsors financed the reconstruction of the synagogue building which was built in 1891. The Jews from community “Temple-Shalom” (Succasunna, New Jersey) with rabbi Joel Sofin at the head were working the whole week together with the local Jews in 2001. They were painting, arranging Torah ark, landscaping the yard of the synagogue and the Jewish cemetery.

Small Jewish museum in one room of synagogue:

Famous Jews from Zvenigorodka

Grigoriy Markovich Chernobylskiy (1889-1937) was a Soviet scout, worked in the People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs (NKVD), shot in 1937.

Iosif Markovich Ostrovskiy (1895-1937) was a activist of NKVD, had occupied several responsible posts for 15 his year-career.  The last one was the head of Road Board in NKVD USSR, was shot in 1937.

Yakov Samoylovich Magaziner (1883-1941, Kiev) was a professor of Kiev State Conservatory. He was one of the founders of the musical ten-form school for talented children. He taught the violin in musical colleges of Kiev, in Kiev conservatory (the 1930’s). Yan Frenkel and many other famous violinists were his students.

Yefim Isaakovich Vodonos (born in 1939, Zvenigorodka) is a Russian art’s historian and critic, a museum employee and a teacher.

Chaika Semenovna Watenberg-Ostrovskaya (1901, Zvenyhorodka – 1952 Moscow) – a translator, was accused during the trial of the leaders of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee and shot on August 12, 1952.

Nathan (Agmon) Bystritsky (1896, Zvenyhorodka – 1978, Tel-Aviv) – an Israeli writer.

Horatio Osipovich (Naftali-Hertz) Ginsburg (1833, Zvenyhorodka – 1909, St. Petersburg) a banker, social activist and philanthropist.

Boris Eltsin (1875, Zvenyhorodka-1937) a Russian revolutionary.

Jacob Samoilovich (1889, Zvenyhorodka -1941, Kiev) a musician, violinist and teacher.

Zvenigorodka Jewish cemetery

There are old and new (post WWII) part. Most old gravestones were stolen or destroyed during the XX century.
The cemetery suffered during the war. There are many anonymous graves of Jews who died in ghetto in 1941-1942. For example, Liubov Krasilovskaya buried her parents there herself but after the war she couldn’t find the grave.

Former house of the watchman and enterance to the cemetery

In the 1960’s, the Jewish community financed building of the house for the cemetery watchman and had been maintaining it by the 2000’s.

This cemetery contains the most ancient Jewish tombstone in Kiev and Cherkasy oblasts, which dates back to 1805. Inscription on the oldest gravestone (1805):

פנ
אשה
החשובה
הצנוע מרת
פייגה בת
מהו דוד נפט
יום ב לחודש
סיון בשנת
תסקה לפק
תנצבה

Here buried
Is a respected
And humble lady,
Feiga,
Daughter of our
Teacher and rabbi David,
Who died on Sivan 2, 5565
Let her soul be bound in the bond of life.

Holocaust mass grave

Dibrova forest, 20 meters from the wood. There are three mass graves of Jews, located about 10 meters away from each other in Dibrova forest (see map above).

The monuments on the place the mass execution of Zvenigorods ghetto were established in 1981 on Liubov Krasilovskaya, Mikhail Taranov and Mykola Kobrynskyy’s initiative for cost of Zvenigorodka Jews.

In the 1990’s, the children’s grave was dug up by some marauders. Thus the head of the Jewish community had to bury children’s bones himself.

Mass grave of Nemorozh labor camp

The mass grave is located in the forest, 150 meters from the road. Not far from Murzintsy bus stop.

The Jews from Zvenyhorodka and a labor camp in Nemirozh were shot here. The erection of the monument was initiated by Mikhail Taranov. The money was collected by the Jews from Zvenyhorodka. The monument was erected in 1986-1987.

Memorial in Gubskaya dacha

Chervonianskaya was a Jewish colony located nine kilometers from Fastov, in Kiev region. Now it was a village called Krasnoye, Fastov district.
Before the Revolution it was a Jewish agricultural colony in Vasilkov uezd of Kiev gubernia.

It was founded in 1851 on state land. In 1898, there were 44 Jewish families, 312 people. The residents had 378 dessiatines (1,040 acres) of land.
The colony was destroyed during Denikin’s pogrom in 1919 but it was reestablished at the expense of AgroJoint (US funded) organization in the 1920’s. Several typical houses based on a American project were built here. During my visit in 2016 only one of those houses was preserved in its original appearance.

Former Jewish house which was built for JOINT money in 1920’s

I haven’t found any information about the Jews of Chervonianskaya colony after the 1920’s.

In 2016, the locals didn’t even know that their village used to be a Jewish colony.

Archive records

This information was collected by Fastov historian Vladimir Dorosenko.

This list of the Jewish families of Chervonianskaya colony by 1858 was find by Fastov local historian Vladinir Dorosenko in Kiev Archive:
(First name, patronymic, last name; Amount of people living in)
Usher Avrumovich Frangtsman (16),  Moyshe David Altman (21), Srul Bir Blinder (15),  Ios Alkunovich Slavinskiy (30), Srul Gershkovich Barash (31), Ios Borukhov Kagan (21), Ios Moshkovich Kagan (20),
Moyshe Aron Talskiy, mother Sheyna Esther Volkova age 68 (25), Avrym Ios Khait (16), Aba Volkovich Grinbarg (15), Yankel Aronovich Khirman (29), Avrum Chaimovich Khazan (9), Mikhil Leyzorov Kolomiyskiy (7), David Froimovich Matus (30), Avrum Ios Yaroslavskiy (21), Leyba Shulimovich Logovinskiy (13), Meyar Peysakhovich Kundel (8), Moshko Teteruk (12), Srul Ayzik Fastovskiy (13), Ayzyk Yankelovich Pavalotskiy (19), Borukh Yankelovich Mikhalzon (9), Moshko Volkovich Salganik (13)

One another rebuilded Jewish house in former Jewish colony

In total in Chervonianskaya colony: 393 Jews

Results of 1897 census in Kiev regional archive. Fund/inventory/case: 384/5/105
Altman , Blinder , Voloshyn , Goldshtei , Kagan , Kundel, Logvinskiy, Salganik , Tyvish , Frantsman, Freydman , Khazan2 , Khazanovich , Khazin , Yaroslavskiy, Barysh, Blinder, Dubovskiy , Zhurnovskiy , Itskovskiy , Kagan, Kolomenskiy, Ludmer , Pavolotskiy, Slavinskiy, Teteruk , Fastovskiy, Frantsman, Salganik, Kagan, Grinbarg, Frantsman, Talskiy, Khayet  Zaretskiy, Logvinskiy, Blinder, Nebylitskiy, Khirman, Skliarskiy, Mikhelzon, Fastovskiy, Teteruk

Kadlubitsa is a former Jewish colony, now it is a part of Fastov, Kiev region. Before Revolution it was a Jewish agricultural colony in Vasilkov district, Kiev province. Since 1925, it’s been Kadlubitsa Jewish National village council of Fastov district, Belaya-Tserkov region.

Information for this article was collected with the help of Fastov local historian Vladimir Dorosenko.

Beginning

Kadlubitsa was founded in 1850 as an agricultural colony by Jews from Fastov. According to a local legend, the name ‘Kadlubitsa’ comes from the word ‘kadosh’ (Hebrew – sacred).

There were 29 households, 434 residents (207 men and 227 women) in 1900. Their main occupation was grain production. Some local Jews were engaged in trade and reselling goods, visiting fairs at nearby villages and towns.

Jewish family Sheynis, Kadlubitsa Jewish colony, 1914

In total, the colony had nearly 1,047 acres of arable land, which was owned by the local “colonists’ society”.

In 1900, a synagogue was functioning in Kadlubitsa.

In 1904, Mirim Nayshtut got the permission to build “the appliance for lard smelting at the Kadlubitsa colony”.

No Jewish cemetery was allocated to the colonists, so the one in Fastov had to be used. Before 1917, Kadlubitsa boasted 65 houses.

Civil War

In September 1919, a pogrom happened in the colony. It was organized by the units of Voluntary Army, and 23 Jews were killed as a result, with seven Jewish orphans taken into the families of the peasants from nearby villages, which gave those peasants access to the colonists’ land. All buildings were burnt down.

Group of colonists in Kadlubitsa after the pogrom, 1919

Between the Wars

In the early 1920s, the colony was rebuilt, with the works funded by the JOINT (Jewish Joint Distribution Committee). Over 50 houses were built, some of them typical American houses lining both sides of the road.

Colonists relax after work in Fastov district, supposely in Kadlubitsa. Photo from JOINT archive

The total cost of the work was $18,000.

Jewish village council in Kadlubitsa, 1930

During the same period, there was a primary school in Kadlubitsa.

In 1929, a Jewish collective farm “Roiter poyer” (“The Red Plowman”) was founded. The residents of Kadlubytsya and surrounding villages worked at this collective farm, registered at Chapaeva Str., 256.

Holocaust

On July 20, 1941, the colony was occupied by the Wehrmacht.

Some Kadlubitsa residents managed to safely drive their cattle away from the area before the occupation. Among those who did so was Yakov Moiseevich Shliak.

16 Jews who remained in the village were shot at the edge of the woods in late autumn 1941. The bodies were piled into a shallow grave as the ground was already frozen, and, as the spring arrived, one could see streams of blood running down the hillock. On this place, Germans killed Jewish children from Fastov and refugees from Zhitomir.

Kadlubitsa Jews were killed on this site

A local Pole Vladimir Yasvenov saved a Jewish girl called Anna, I was not able to discover any[Y1]  further details of this event.

After the war, a large concrete memorial with no inscription to commemorate the dead was erected there.

After WWII

After the war, most Jews returned to the colony from evacuation.

Sasha Elbert with the help of some locals recovered the bodies of Kadlubitsa residents from Holocaust mass grave and moved them from the woods to the Jewish cemetery where their ancestors rest. He had son Davyd and grandson Petia.

Fastov Jewish historian Vladimir Boroshenko (1930-2015) near the grave of Kadlubitsa Holocaust victims on Fastov Jewish cemetery

Former Jewish collective farm “Roiter poyer”

In 2016, I managed to locate a list of post-war Jewish residents of the colony which was created by head of street committee:

Kirka Khava Praysman Samoil Lvovych Shapiro, his sons Izia, Sasha (emigrated to Israel), and Lionia (currently living in Canada) Khanna Bronitska Khasia Royzenvaser Hanna Shmulivna Yasvenova; Liolik Rozenvaser, his sister Klara; Moysha Tryliskyy, his daughters Zhenia, Tania Sasha Elbert, lived in village Ofirna, in 1980 went abroad. Shmelkin owned a large estate; his land was on the other side of pond, people called it “Vishenky”– “cherries”. Salganik had a large household and his own creamery Yoska (surname is unknown) Naum and Borys Shapiro Elik Markman

This house was build for JOINT money in 1920’s and rebuilt in XXI century, 2016

Khaskil and Rakhilia Nayshtuk, their children Borys and Liova Borys Salhanik, their children Hrisha and Basia Basia, Sonia, Roza Vilchyk Yakov Saliovych Shmelkyn, his wife Rakhilia, their daughter Sonia Liza Mohylnytska, children Raya, Olia Khanusia Honopolska, her son Khrum Brushka (surname is unknown) Tsyhan Yasha Khana Khirman Mitia Sruliovych Khirman Ika Hraysman, sisters Liusia, Mika Udlia Shliak, grandson Yakiv Muysiyovych Roza and Elik Polyovyy Khanna Zabolotska Illia and Buzia Praysman Mutsyk and Khanna Kizikov

In 2016, there was living only one last Jew…

Genealogy

Both lists were find and published by Fastov local historian Vladimir Dorosenko.

The list of colony residents of 1858 with the number of the dependents:

Chaim Berkvich Zhitomirskiy (12), Berko Gershkovich Reyzenvaser (17), Avrum Khaskelev Karelshtein (18), Duvid Yankeliyevich Kaminik (11), Kelman-Srul Leybovich Nayshtut (10), Shaya-Ios Berkovich Elberuv (20), Shlema Yankolevich Kaminnik (10), Moshko Zelmanovich Markman (14), Zus’ Shlemov Kasminnik (6), Volko Kelmanovich Reyzenvaser (10), Shulim Berkovich Zhitomirskiy (6), Moshko Srulevich Nayshtut (18), Chaim-Gdal Gershkovich Shapira (15), Duvid Moshkov Shilshtut (16), Shimon Zelmanovich Tarnopolskiy (21), Leyba Shoyvich Bilinskiy (11), Mordko Berkovich Shliak (22), Srul Davidov Shapira (11), Shmirel Duvidovich Brodskiy (5), Leyba Moshkovich Markman (8), Elia Gendzemovich Ribalskiy (10), Chaim Shneyerovich Ayzemberg (28), Nuta-Bir Shayovich Brodskiy (16), Khaskel Borukhovich Kagan (25), Gershko Volkovich Giberman (13), Moshko-Aron-Srul Yankilievich Rovinskiy (7), Elia Itskov Mizikov (8), Chaim-Leyb Shimonovich Levis (18), Khaykel Shmulievich Kagan (24), Yankel Gershkovich Mazur (12), Elia Moshkovich Smoliarengko (8). In total, 430.

Pound in Kadlubitsa, 2016

Below is the list of the Jewish families residing in Kadlubitsa colony in 1897 with the number of the dependents:

Blinder, Brodskiy (2), Wayntrob, Vinokur, Godik, Dubinskiy, Dubovich, Zhitomirskiy (2), Itskovskiy, Kagan, Kaminik, Korelshteyn (2), Kukis, Lipets, Lipnitskiy, Markman (3), Nayshtut (8), Novakovskiy, Pechenyy, Pokras, Praysman, Ravich, Rovner, Rozenberg, Rozenvaser (2), Rybalskiy, Smoliarenko, Tarnapolskiy, Fastovskiy, Tsarovskiy, Shapira (3), Shilshtut (3), Shults, Ayzenberg (3), Akselrud, Belilovskiy, Ben’, Brodskiy 3, Vinitskiy, Goldshmid, Kagan 7, Margulis, Markman (2), Mizikov (4), Nayshtut (3), Ostropolskiy, Pokroshevskiy, Praysman, Reyzenvaser (2), Rovinskiy (2), Rybalskiy, Salganik (3), Tsygan, Shapira, Shliak (4), Shmelkin, Shmilkin, Shteinberg

Tarashcha is a city located in Kiev region, center of Tarashcha district. The city’s estimated population is 13,307 (as of 2001).

In XIX – beginning of XX century it was the center of Tarashcha Yezd (county) of Kiev Gubernia.

Holocaust information was provided by local historial Leonid Lashenko.
Much more information can be found in Yiddish book “Tarashcha, a History of a Small Shtetl in Kiev Guberniya”.  It was published in USA, 1930’s.

Local historian Leonid Lashchenko, who provided much information for this article

Beginning

A Jewish community has existed in Tarashcha since the mid-XVIII century.

In 1722, Tarashcha received a status of a shtetl. In 1765, 134 Jews lived in Tarashcha. According to the lustration of 1789, the Jews owned 31 houses in the market and 41 houses in the side streets.

By the early XIX century, more than 5,300 Jews lived in Tarashcha. Jews constituted 46% of the total population. Leontiy Pokhilevich in his book “Tales of the inhabited areas of Kiev province” says that 3,580 Christians, 3,670 Jews lived in the shtetl in 1864. There were three merchants of the third guild among the Christians and 18 among the Jews.

Last building of the synagogue in Tarashcha

In “The Brockhaus and Efron Encyclopedic Dictionary” of 1898 stated that 11,322 people lived in Tarashcha. 5,968 of them were Christians and 5,181 Jewish.
In the 1860’s, Israel-Froim Gelman was a rabbi in Tarashcha.

There were three synagogues in the city of Tarashcha at the turn of the century, and 11 total in all of Tarashcha district.

Tarashcha market square, 1910’s. Roof of the Big Synagogue is on the background

A Talmud-Torah and one private Jewish men’s college were functioning in 1910.
Munish Moyshe-Aronovich Kuptsov was a rabbi in 1913.

Tarashcha entrepreneurs list from Russian Empire Business Directories by 1913

Civil war

Tarashcha was badly damaged during the 1918-20 riots.
The first pogrom took place on June 20, 1918, and consisted of robberies only.
The second pogrom took place on April 1, 1919; peasants from surrounding villages attacked Tarashcha with pitchforks and sticks, robbed residents’ houses and demanded money. An announcement was posted on a telegraph pole saying that if the Jewish population did not contribute 100 thousand roubles, they would all be massacred.

Tarasha self defence on the funeral of pogrom victims

On June 16, 1919 a gang of 800 people led by Yatsenko came to Tarashcha. The looting and destruction continued for 2 days. All shops were smashed and destroyed and the losses constituted over 10 million roubles. 2 people were killed. On June 20, it was rumoured that another gang was about to enter the town. Almost the entire Jewish population – 4,000 people – fled to Rokitne. The rumour turned out to be false, but no more than 15 Jewish families remained in the city. A further three pogroms took place between July 1919 October 1920. More than 50 Jews were killed, many were beaten and raped and houses were looted.

Pogrom victims in Tarashcha, 1919

Between the Wars

In the 1920’s, there was a Jewish collective farm Der Leniner Weg (Lenin’s way) in Tarashcha.

Jewish collective farm in Tarashcha. Photo from JOINT archive

This JDC report described the state of Tarashcha Jewish community in 1923:

Tarashcha is a town in Kiev Gubernia, Blelotzerkovsky District and is situated 18 versts distance from the railway station Olshanitzy. It was formerly considered one of the large centers of trade in grain. The great number of primitive workshops, and to a certain extent technical production, sufficiently provided the population with earnings and there were almost no paupers in the town.

During the period of pogroms which took place throughout the Ukraine, Tarashcha became one of the central points Invaded by bandits and it underwent a whole series of pogroms and devastations. Beginning with 1917 and up to 1920, the population underwent 48 changes of authorities accompanied by pogroms and ravages. As a result of the above-mentioned pogroms 211 persons were killed ( a list of names is here to attached), 170 wounded and all the Jews without exception pillaged.

Jewish bath, 1923. Photo from JDC archive

Jewish bath in 2017:

At present there are in Tarashcha 4500 Jews out of whom 40% are wage-earners, 40% small traders and the remaining population consists of workmen, who have for the most part no definite occupation. The economic conditions of the inhabitants have become considerably worse. There are many unemployed, even among the workmen and artisans. Bow great the need is, may be seen from the fact that the $450 received from the Landsmanschaft, had to be divided among 274 needy families. The following persons are especially in needs 49 widows (list of names is hereto attached, 95 homeless orphans(list attached) and about 50 Aged… read more

During the induced famine in 1932 – 1933 (The Holodomor), according to the official data 701 people died in Tarashcha.We don’t know the exact amount of Jews among them.

Former Talmud-Torah

In the 1920’s, a Jewish school was formed, and in 1937-1938 it was closed. Math teacher, Motia Selitrennik, (1904, Bar – 1941, Tarashcha) was it’s principal. He lived in the official apartment together with his family near the school. His wife Sheyva Nutovna Orekhovskaya ( 1912, Pokotilovo – 1941, Tarashcha) was also a teacher.

Document of Tarashcha city council with stamp in Yiddish, 1934. Courtesy Leonid Lashchenko

According to the census of 1939 1,140 Jews lived in the shtetl. The families of Feldmans, Faynbergs, Zilbermans, Guralniks, Rezniks, Shreyders and many others were among them.

Jewish family Zhukovski from village Zhydivska Greblya of Tarashcha district

Holocaust

German troops entered Tarashcha on the 22nd of July 1941. The exact amount of the Jews who remained in Tarashcha under German occupation is unknown. Though, we can assume that approximately 500-600 people remained.

Soviet POWs near Tarashcha House of culture, 1941

Right after the occupational power had appeared the Jews were forced to leave their houses in the central streets and settle in the ghetto. It was a special camp which was organized in the place down Bohdan Khmelnitskiy street, in Proletarska one. The burnt out remains of the technical college of mechanical engineering was also attached to the ghetto. Several families had to live together in one house. The camp was surrounded by barbed wire and guarded. All the Jews had to wear a band with a Star of David on their sleeves.

Site of former Jewish ghetto

The men of 14-60 were forced to work. This was mostly cleaning the streets, auxiliary construction works, dismantling of destroyed buildings, supplying the establishments with water. The latter was delivered in a big barrel on the wheels. The ghetto didn’t receive food. The prisoners who still had some valuable things exchanged them for products. The guards closed their eyes at children who left the ghetto for the town to carry out those exchanges. Many of Tarashchas Ukrainians shared their products without any fee.

On August 2nd or 3rd, 1941 the tracks with middle-aged prisoners left Tarashcha. Those were men. They were ordered to take all their valuables and clothes with them. They were said they were going to Germany to work there. This fact is known from Grigoriy Reznik a Tarashcha resident. They all were shot in Bila Tserkva. Only children, women and elder people were left in the ghetto.

The most massive shooting took place in September (the exact date is unknown) in so called Hlybokyy Yar near the market. The pit was dug beforehand and was about two meters wide and ten meters long. The Jews were led under escort of the Germans with the dogs and policemen to the ravine along Lenin and Paris Commune streets. At the bottom of the ravine they sat down to the right of the path. Groups of several people were led to the corner of the ravine where they were made to undress. Then there was a queue to the pit where the shooting was going on. It was carried out by a specially trained executor, a German officer. He was sitting in front of the pit on a convertible chair. People were led up to him and the executor shot at the back of the head. A table where they loaded the pistols was standing nearby.

The ravine was located almost in the center of Tarashcha. The gardens of the locals were there, shepherds led their cows there. When the column of Jews was brought down the ravine the boys climbed up the trees and could see the beginning of the execution.

Groups of several people were led to the corner of the ravine where they were made to undress. Then there was a queue to the pit where the shooting was going on. It was carried out by a specially trained executor, a German officer. He was sitting in front of the pit on a convertible chair. People were led up to him and the executor shot at the back of the head. A table where they loaded the pistols was standing nearby.

– A young woman with two ten year-old boys was brought to the ravine first, – eyewitness Serhiy Kindratovych Yakovenko said. – The children began crying as they were about to die..Their mother tried to calm them down. She behaved as if she was waiting in line for bread and not for death. Obviously, she wanted everything to be over as soon as possible. Three shots were made and the bodies rolled into the ravine. Poor people were led to the ravine and shot in the head. Some of them resisted and then the bullet reached them inside the ravine. Some people lost their conscious and fell down still alive.
A few dozens of Soviet prisoners of war were shot together with the Jews that day.

According to the information of different eyewitnesses from 150 to 300 Jews were shot that tragic day in September 1941.
The Germans didn’t touch all the valuables and clothes. They were taken away by the locals. When the Jews came back from the evacuation they recognized their children’s and other relatives’ clothes on other people, especially on policemen’s children.
Then the groups of five-ten Jews were also shot several times by the same German.
However, the chasteness didn’t manage to shoot all the Jews that day. Many local Jews survived. Samiylo Selitrenik, a boy of ten, escaped from the ghetto. In 1991, he came to Tarashcha to the place where his relatives were shot.
The seven or eight year-old boy lived with his parents in Nadiya Nazarivna Atamanenko’s flat in Radianska street. He wasn’t given up by his neighbors.

Killed in Tarashcha:

A girl of ten survived in Bohdan Khmelnitskiy street near “zasolka”. When the Germans came for their parents she popped out of the window and was hiding in Stavyshche area. In 1944 she used to come to Tarashcha.
Tarashcha resident Lidiya Klymivna Servinska , born in 1915 saved four or five year-old Jewish boy right from the place of the execution. He ran out of the column and rushed into the crowd of people. The woman brought the boy to her brother to Ulashivka and was hiding him in the attic. She took him to the healer to take fright off. The boy’s name was Zhora. After the war a young Jewish man came after him saying that he was his relative.
A Jewish woman Zina managed to survive living in the village of Potoky with her three children. Her neighbors did not denounce her though the whole village knew her nationality. Sewer Fruma Barska from Salykha village hadn’t been arrested approximately by November 1941.
Lisovychy resident Kuzma Afanasiyovych Dobrovolskyy helped to hide one elderly Jewish couple.
Tarashcha resident Kateryna Denysivna Servinska was hiding Berta Kardynska who used to work as a telephonist. She was also hiding at Mykhaylo Karpovych Burkivskiy.

Y. S. Boyarchukova was hiding Jewish woman Sheer. Jewish blacksmith Sheer (or Borodianskyy, according to other data) was hiding in a haystack in Tarashcha suburbs.
A resident of Velyka Berezianka Antonina Ivanivna Onopriyenko accidentally found a Jewish family in the attic of the pigsty. They were hiding there. She told about it to her parents Ivan Avramovych and Fevroniya Tarasivna. They didn’t give the escapers out though they could have been shot. Further fate of this family is unknown.
Next time the column of the Jews caught in different places was led to be shot from the Naberezhna side. They were also said that they were going to Belaya Tserkov, that all others had already been shot and they wouldn’t, they would work. They were going along Naberezhnaya in the direction of Belaya Tserkov. Then suddenly turned and headed for the same ravine.
Another small column was led along Lenin street, next time – along Paris Commune street. Those were elderly people and children. A rabbi was walking the first.

Total amount of the Jews who were shot in Tarashcha is now difficult to determine. According to very approximate calculation 400-500 Jews from Tarashcha became the victims of those bloody actions.

List of perished Jewish soldiers and civilians (not full):

In the late 1960’s, a large monument was established in the ravine where the shooting took place. There was a five-pointed star, sickle and hammer, a Jewish menorah and inscriptions in Hebrew and Russian on it. This monument was made by architect Besarabov.

Memorial ceremony on the Holocaust mass grave, 1991. Courtesy Leonid Lashchenko

Post WWII period

After the war some Jewish families came back to Tarashcha. There were the Altmans, Merkotans, Trubers among them. However, community life didn’t revive.

A Jewish community was registered in Tarashcha in 1997. In 1998, it included 49 Jews. Yakiv-Yosif Yelevich Altman (1997-2003) was its first head. His children left for Germany. Emma Izrailevna Chizhevskaya was his deputy. Petr Melnichenko (1941 – 2011) was the next head of the community. Vladimir Shcherbinka has been its head since 2011.

In 2016, only five Jews lived in Tarashcha.

Local historian Leonid Lashchenko with Jewish gravestone in the field near Tarashcha, 2016

Genealogy

Fund 1162 Tarashcha rabbinate is in Kiev Archive. It includes 38 cases of 1845-1917.
Tarashcha archive was destroyed in 1941 and we are not aware of how many valuable documents were demolished.

1804 and 1835 censuses are available online.

In the census of Tarashcha Jews of 1835, there are the following surnames, Dolinskiy, Trakhtenbard, Ostrov (or Ostrovskiy?), Tiutiunik, Leshkovich, Grodskiy, Vakhnenko, Sigilov, Refert, Chudnovskiy, Kats, Nakhmanovich, Kanevskiy, Ostrovskiy, Kozarovskiy/Koziarinskiy, Kagan, Liashkovich, Zabor/Zabara, Ovadenko, Brodskiy, Polovinchik, Alexandrovskiy, Satanovskiy, Golbard, Sigiliov, Zabara, Kats, Evriy, Mekhorinskiy, Gilirman/Gilerman, Kotliar, Bobrutskiy.

Famous Jews from Tarashcha

Abraham Yefimovich Zlatotsvetov (Goldfarb, 1900 – 1970), a  Soviet general.

Abraham Yefimovich Zlatotsvetov

Aron Izrailevich Liumkis (1904 – 1988), a painter

Abraham Katsev (1916, born in Chernina village, Tarashcha district), a poet

Yefim Moiseyevich Livertovskiy (1910-1978), an engineer-mechanic, specialist in the weapon area.

Vladimir Mikhaylovich Yurovskiy (1915-1972), a composer

Menukha Ram (Rivka Valdman, 1916), a writer

M. Gaysinskiy (1898 – 1976), born in Tarashcha, a chemist

Yefim Moiseyevich Livertovskiy (1910, Tarashcha, Kiev province – 1978, Moscow), an engineer-mechanic, specialist in the weapon area

Morris Cohen – born in New York in a family originating from Russia. A Soviet intelligence officer, Hero of Russia; obtained information about the development of the atomic bomb in the United States. His father came from the town of Tarashcha.

Mois Gaysynsky (b. Tarashcha, 1898 – d. Paris, 1976) – a chemist, author of the world’s first monograph on radiation chemistry.

Isai Feldman (b. Tarashcha, 1937) – a zoologist, author of more than 80 scientific papers and 2 monographs. He was awarded 2 bronze medals of the USSR for his achievements in the field of veterinary science. Now lives in Detroit.

Alexander Zlotnik (b. Tarashcha, 1948) – composer, People’s Artist of Ukraine.

Boris Tomashewski (b. Tarashcha, 1868 – d. USA, 1939) – an actor, director, playwright, founder of American Jewish theatres, where performances were in Yiddish.

Pinchas Gelman (b. Tarashcha, 1880 – d. Dnipropetrovsk, 1921) – Rabbi of Dnipropetrovsk, deputy of Katerynoslav City Council, the founder of several yeshivas in Dnipropetrovsk. Among his students: Israeli Minister of Education Zalman Oren.

Israel Sivorinovsky (possibly Severinovsky), b. Tarashcha, 1913 – d. 1941 – Soviet submariner.

Jewish cemetery

Cemetery was established in the XIX century and still in use. The cemetery expanded in the early XIX century and the old sections were gradually demolished and built upon; it is not known when.

Old part of the cemetery:

There are approximately 70 gravestones in the old section of the cemetery and around 100 in the new section. While all of the gravestones in the new section are well-kept and undamaged, more than 75% of those in the old section are damaged and/or broken. Most gravestones are made of granite and brick, while some are made of broken bricks using concrete as mortar. Many such tombstones are destroyed as a result of natural erosion and the vegetation growth. Inscriptions are in Russian, Hebrew and Yiddish.

The Germans demolished the monuments on the graves in the Jewish cemetery with their tanks in 1941-1944. They used them for fencing Gebitkomissariat (a district council).

The oldest gravestone dates from 1895 – its inscription is as follows:

[…]
אריו יהודא
ב”ר מרדכי הכהן
נפ [.] כסלו
תרנו תנצבה
19 ноября 1895 г.

(Trans. Arye Yehudah, son of rabbi Mordechai Kohen, died on […] Kislev 5656. May his soul be tied in the knot of life).

New part of the cemetery:

Rabbi Raphael of Bershad (1751-1827) – a student of Rabbi Pinchas of Koretz, a student of the Besht. For a long time Rabbi Raphael lived in Tarashcha. He is buried in Tarashcha. Ohel was reconstructed in 2003-2004 by Rabbi Meir Gabai.

One Holocaust memorial monument locates here. There is no information about time of erection. At the front of the column there are memorial inscriptions in Russian and Hebrew. On the back there is a partially-erased inscription in Russian. It would seem from the words that remain that this was previously a non-Jewish tombstone which was re-used. The memorial inscriptions on the pillar read as follows:

פ”נ
הקדושים הנחרבים
והנמכתים ע”י האכזר
היטלר בשנת תשב
פה טארשטה

(Trans. Here lie the sacred [martyrs], killed and executed at the hands of the cruel Hitler in 5702, here, in Tarashcha).

Здесь покоится прах
еврейских граждан
погибших от рук немецко-
фашистских бандитов
в 1941 году. Тараща

(Trans. Here lie the remains of Jewish citizens killed by the German Fascist murderers in 1941, Tarashcha).

Part of this information was taken from Lo-Tishkah website. Another part was collected during the visit in 2016.

Holocaust mass grave

The mass grave is located in the central part of the town, opposite the market. Local residents call it the ‘small Babi Yar’/Tarashcha Babi Yar.

The inscription on the memorial reads:
Здесь покоится прах еврейских и русских граждан
погибших от рук немецко-фашистских бандитов
во время оккупации г. Таращи в 1941г. (Trans. Here lie the Jewish and Russian citizens killed by the German-Fascist murderers during the occupation of the town of Tarashcha in 1941).

Obraztsovaya was a former Jewish Agricultural colony. It was located in territory which is now a part of Fastov, Kiev region, Ukraine.

Information for this article was collected with the help of Fastov local historian Vladimir Dorosenko.

It was founded in 1854 as a Jewish agricultural colony in Vasilkov district, Kiev province. In 1854, 15 Jewish families (263 people) lived in Obraztsovaya, in 1898 – seven Jewish families (35 people). The colony was built at the expense of Abraham Markovich Brodskiy. Every family was given 15.5 desiatine (appr.42.6 acres) of free state land. In 1875, there were 75 Jewish men in Obraztsovaya. The absence of experienced agriculturalists and lack of equipment and cattle made most of colonists lease their land.

Site of Obraztsovaya Jewish colony, 2016

In 1898 – 1899, three families engaged in agriculture, two of them had horses. In 1900, the society of corn-growers in Obraztsovaya owned 102.4 des. (281.6 acres) of land. Two Jewish families had lived in the colony by the beginning of World War I. The rest left the colony after a fire in the early 20th century. In 1916, 16 Jewish men lived in Obraztsovaya. All the buildings of Obraztsovaya were destroyed in 1919 in a pogrom committed by forces loyal to the Russian White Army General Denikin. The Jews escaped to Fastov.

The colony wasn’t rebuilt unlike neighboring Kadlubitskaya and now there is a field for grazing cattle.

Genealogy

The list of Jewish families,1858.

Nukhim-Volf Kosyy (9), El Gertsovich Dubenskiy (28), Matus Yankelevich Daych (14), Ayzik Moshkovich Shmelkin (22), Leyzar Yankel Shimonovich (19), Shneyer Moshkovich Lukashevskiy (10), Itsko Leybov Salgannik (12), Srul Moshkovich Leshchinskiy (17), Luzer Chaimovich Godik (14), Ekhel Leybovich Salgannik (13), Srul Moshkovich Leshchinskiy (21), Ios Fraimovich Litvinskiy (19), Aron Gershonovich Praysman (26), Srul Shmuliyovich Shekhtman (17), Itsko-Gersh Sruliovich Pritsner (22). In total, 263

Ivankov is a city in Kiev region, center of Ivankov district. The city’s estimated population is 10,678 (as of 2012). Ivankov is located on the Teterev River, a tributary of the Dnieper.

In XIX – beginning of XX century it was the shtetl of Radomyshl Uezd, Kiev Gubernia.

Ivankov is approx. 80 km from Kiev and in 50 km from Chernobyl.

Most data was taken from the publication of the head of Ivankov Jewish community Nelli Grigorovich “Born in shtetl”. In it, she organised various sources into a single narrative, interviewed dozens of people and collected hundreds of photos.

Nelya Grigorovich at the opening ceremony in village Sydorovichi of Ivankov district

Beginning

A settlement has existed on the site of Ivankiv since ancient times. Originally named Trudynov, it became Pasynkovschina in 1524 and has been known as Ivaniv since 1589 (later Ivankiv) after the owner of the territory, Ivan Proskura.

A Jewish community was established in Ivankiv in the first half of the 19th century, which is likely to have been associated with the creation of the Pale of Settlement. In 1847 the Ivankiv Jewish community numbered 642 people (Pohilevich mentions 560 people in 1864). In 1897 there were 3,037 inhabitants in the town, of which 1,577 were Jews.

In the early XIX century, the Jews from Ivankov owned two trading stalls and a mill.

The town suffered from frequent fires in the XIX century. A particularly strong fire broke out on March 31, 1891, and, according to historical documentation, destroyed the yeshivot. In 1893, the community received permission for their reconstruction.

In 1865, there was a synagogue in Ivankov. By the late XIX century, Mordkhe-Doyv Levitskiy had been a rabbi in the shtetl for 35 years. In 1899, Froim Kovalenko (1875-?) replaced him, in 1906 M.-D. Levitskiy’s son Yankel Levitskiy (1884-?). By 1900 there were two synagogues in the town. They are no longer standing.

According to some sources, Ivankov often suffered from fires. On March 31, 1892, a fire destroyed several synagogues. As a result, 14 people died and all wooden buildings burnt down. Only the building of one synagogue was left untouched. After the fire, Moshko-Mordko Lipovich Vaynstein on behalf of the whole Jewish community applied to the Building Council of Kiev Province asking for permission to build another synagogue, with building plans attached. In 1895, it was completed.

Plans of the Ivankov synagogues:

At that time, the construction of Jewish prayer schools continued both in the shtetl and in the nearby villages.

The Jewish community of Ivankiv was engaged in crafts and trade. In 1913, Jews owned virtually all of the shops – 19 grocery shops, four clothes shops, two haberdashery shops, four ironmongers and three leather goods shops. In addition, the Gorenshtein brothers owned a saw mill with 29 employees.

Another devastating fire occurred in Ivankov in 1911. The market square with several Jewish stalls was moved to the northern outskirts of Ivankov following that fire, and remained there until the middle of last century.

There were 2 synagogues one in front of the other on this street.

In 1912, several Jewish savings and credit societies operated in Ivankov.

There is archive evidence of the first industrial operations in Ivankov and the area. The agricultural boom in the Polissia region gave rise to furriery, which was actively taken up by the local Jews. The local Jews were also involved in building mills, soap factories, and timber industry. Some projects were successful, some less so but the evidence is there of the Jewish population of the region actively engaged in the local economy.

The following sources are kept in the Kiyv State Archives:

• In 1908, Esther Sapozhnikova tried to register a manufacture built earlier. For some reason, she failed to gain the registration.
• Aron Mordukhovich Rozman’s application for opening a tannery in 1911
• Chaim Nakhumovich Braginskiy’s application for a soap factory in 1910
• Shmul Leybovich Kutsenok and Gersha Berkov-Nukhov Rabichev’s application for opening a mill with a gas generator engine. The application failed because of the anti Jewish legislation approved on May 3, 1882. According to this legislation, all Jews were prohibited from buying or leasing land in villages.
• Locals’ complaint against Mordukh Pichunko’s steam mill in Ivankov
• Khaykel Shlemov Slavinskiy’s application to build a leather goods’ factory in Ivankov in 1916.

Ivankov entrepreneurs list from Russian Empire Business Directories by 1913

Before the revolution, there were 400 houses, 60 stalls, two leather production factories, a mill, a hospital, four synagogues, a savings and loan society, Bikur-Khoylim, Talmud-Torah, and a Jewish library in Ivankov. About 2,000 Jews lived in Ivankov, 50% of the total population.

Civil War pogroms

In 1918, the Soviets arrived in Ivankiv. From 1918 to 1921, gangs led by Struk and Loznyuk were active in the vicinity and were involved in clashes with the Red Army. These gangs of up to 1,000 people carried out raids on Chernobyl, Malin, Ivankiv and Khabne (now Poliske). During the raids, the Jews were often threatened and ordered to pay large sums. Resistance was punished; 150 people are known to have been shot in the Ivankiv synagogue. The rabbi of the town at that time was Y. Levitsky.

Old PreRevolution house in the center of Ivankov near site of synagogues

Shulim Ariyev Braginskiy’s (born in 1864) and P. Rabinovich’s memories of the pogroms in Ivankov:

The first pogrom was organized by the members of Strukva Tarasilov’s gang who instigated pogroms in the Ivankov area. As a result, about 200 people from nearby villages congregated in the shtetl. They demanded money, shoes, clothes, and other goods from the local Jews for the gang’s upkeep.

Three weeks later, on the first Sunday after the Passover, in April 1919, local pesants and gang members started a pogrom. The Jewish quarter of Ivankov was destroyed. 20 Jews were killed. After the pogrom, the Jews escaped to Kiev and Razvozhevskiy district. Most refugees straved to death or died of typhoid.

The second pogrom took place in July 1919. Its organizers were ataman Struk and Zakusillo, who looted and burned Jewish houses. The local Jews escaped further afield, to Kiev, Chernobyl, Malin.

Yet another pogrom was carried out by Orlik in December 1920. He looted and destroyed all Jewish houses which survived the previous two pogroms. Eight people were killed. The locals were overjoyed when the Jews were finally completely expelled from the shtetl.

After that, only four families remained in the shtetl, ten people in all.

Former Jewish quarter in Ivankov

The local Christian population was hostile to the Jews, who had suffered greatly during the pogroms. No Jewish self-defense was set up in the shtetl. 40 people were killed during three pogroms, resulting in many orphans and no aid available.

Here are the memories of the pogrom, recorded in the 1930s:

It has to be noted that some Ukrainians tried to help their Jewish neighbors.

Between the Wars

In 1929, 19 peasant households formed a farming collective, including the Ivankov collective farm “Victory”. Ovsiy Davydovych Lumelskyy was its secretary.

Three-wooden buildings were located in the centre of the shtetl, where Jewish families lived. The shops were on the ground and first floors, with the living quarters at the top floor.

There is a covered well behind the people who gathered in the square. A firefighting station was nearby. In the background of the photo there is a house of Elia Yermak.

In 1932, the first edition of newspaper “Red Ray” was published in Ukrainian but first it was called “Proletarische Fon” (Proletarian Flag) and was published in Yiddish. The issues from 1930 and 1931 are found in the archives. The chief editor was Livshyts, the reporters Lubman, Feldman and the press photographer Katsman and others. This is how we know that in 1932 two synagogues were open in Ivankov.

A Jewish collective farm was founded in Ivankov in the early 1930s, with Shusterman registered as the head. Again, the local newspaper provides the names of the farmers. Boris Kotliar, Nisla Lerman, Niunia Faktorovich, Avrum Braginskiy, Meyer Kaplan, Avrum Belotserkovskiy, Gershko Gorokhovskiy, Serebrenikov, Srul Kupershtein, David Galinskiy, Beniamin Kordonskiy, Peysia Rabinovich, and Yankel Gokhvat.

Funny story about Jewish collective farm in local newspaper, 1930’s

In 1935, the collective farm loses its Jewish identity and is renamed after a revolutionary hero Postishev but Jewish names are still there in newspaper reports.

In 1937, the newspaper published a propaganda article with the following:

“Today we are publishing a story told by the old Jews of Ivankov, a 99 year old Motl Yudytskyy, a 74 year old Leyba Shimanovskyy, a 72 year old Gershko Lerman, a 74 year old Moshko Volodynskyy, an 80 year old Ovsiy Honopolskyy, a 66 year old Ovsiy Starobiskyy, a 65 year old Brukha Kupershtein, a 70 year old Khana Yudytska, a 68 year old Yu. Honopolska are telling us about their past lives, how poor, miserable and full of hardship it used to be.”

It is possible to glean some insight into the life of the Jewish community of Ivankov in these propaganda publications.

“800 Jewish families used to live in Ivankov. They were mostly artisans, tailors and cobblers. Some of them had a little land but it was very rare. Some had cows, but there was nowhere to graze them. “

The newspaper pages for 1938 and the following years of Stalinist purges are full of speeches by B. Narodytskyy, V. Zhalovnik, H. Lifshyts, Khabenskyy, Bilotserkivskyy, Baytman, D. Kupershtein, A. Lantsman, Zh. Simakhodska, M. Kozel, S. Simakhodskyy, Sh. Krayzman, Ya. Shusterman, A. Feldman, N. Lerman, Lubman, and other Jews.

In 1939, 430 Jews (68% of the population) lived in Ivankov.

Holocaust

From September 1, 1942 Ivankov is the center of the Kiev General District, Reichskommissariat Ukraine.

At the end of September 1941, the Jewish population of Ivankov was ordered to gather on the central square of the town and bring their valuables with them. They were taken in trucks to the place where they were going to be executed. Ten or more Germans took part in the execution, with the participation of the Ukrainian police. Children were shot first, then women and men. 302 Jews died that day, according to other information there were 366 dead. The names of 202 victims have been identified.

In the autumn 1941, 72 Jews were shot near the local hospital in Ivankov. In January 1942, the children from mixed families with at least one Jewish parent were shot.

The shootings took place in Berezina Maslyakova, at the Jewish cemetery, and in Peremishche, which is located three kilometers away from the shtetl. Seven children were shot behind the bridge across the river Teterev on the Kiev highway. The Jews from the nearby villages were also shot in Ivankov, three families of 12 people, from the villages of Volchkov, Rozvazhev (Mizel family).

In the Autumn 1941, a Jewish partisan Baranovskiy was arrested and then executed.

More than 500 Jews were killed in Ivankov. The town was liberated on November 10, 1943.

German invaders entered the town on August 23, 1941. Part of the Jewish population had managed to evacuate by that time.

In 2002, a granite monument was erected on the shooting site.

Another shooting took place in Bolotnia, in the woods in the grounds of the district hospital on the outskirts of Ivankiv.

About 40 Ivankiv Jews were killed at the front during the war. Their names are listed in the village ‘Park of Glory’.

After the War

Having heard the news of liberation of Ivankov, the Jewish families who managed to evacuate started to come back home. Some of their houses were completely destroyed, some were looted, some were taken down for firewood for those who had to stay in the shtetl during two years of German occupation.

The center of the shtetl was populated by the Jewish families as it used to be before the war. The following families were mentioned in the records: Narodytskyy, Zhalovnik, Dymarskyy, Polishchuk, Zhurakhivskyy, Kuperstein, Horokhovskyy, Helfand, Lumelskyy, Spivak, Biloruskyy, Khazan, Feldman, Miretskyy, Halinskyy, Shtemberg, Yampolskyy, Shklovskyy, Finkelberg, ,Simakhodskyy, Staroseletskyy, Kofman, Karpman, Sapozhnikov, Hazman, Serebrenikov, Bronfeld, Kordonskyy, Veprynskyy, Lishchynskyy, ,Vayzman, Belson, Prytsky…

Those Jews who received the news of the death of their relatives chose not to come back to Ivankov, they settled in other places in the Soviet Union.

Many Jewish men were conscripted, fought in the front line and came back disabled, such as  Yudkovich Kozel, Beniumen Avramovich Kordonskyy, Lev Ovsiyovych Veytsel. Olexandr Borysovych Kofman, Yosyp Lvovych Hazman, Naum Yosypovych Leshchynskyy, Matviy Hrohorovych Finkelberg, and Mykhaylo Lazarevych Zhalovnik also returned after serving in the army.

Alla Sapozhnikova, Semen Mendelenko, Lionia Hazman, Bela Veprynska, Lilia Horokhovska, Liuda and Fila Polishchuk, Arkadiy Vaprynskyy, Polina Leshchynska, Boria Feldman, Boria Finkelberg, Boria and David Kofman, Grisha Halinskyy, Mark Prytsko, Leonid Spivak, David and Yosyp Veytsel were among those who were born in ivankov after the war.

The center of the shtetl has changed a lot with all prewar housing in the central Karl Marx street demolished.

In her book, Nelia Grigorovich recalls many Jewish families of postwar Ivankov. Most of them have already passed away.
Those are Gavriil Alexandrovich Sandler (1922 – 1993), his daughter left for Germany;
Olexandr Yukhymovych Shliak,
Borys Zakharovych Biloruskyy, his two brothers Yakov and Oleksandr died at the front, his daughter lives in the USA;
Yosyp Pavlovych Lytvak was in charge of the local department store, his daughter Galina lives in Ivankov;
Yukhim Borisovich Spivak with his family; Yosip Lvovich Gazman;
Ira and Naum Polishchuk lived with the family of his son Vladimir Naumovich Polishchuk and his daughter-in-law Anna Abramovna;
Yakov Gelfand with his wife Anna; Mikhail Serebiannikov;
tailor Naum Dymarskiy with children Aron , Boris, Roza, and Fira;
widow Raisa Bronfeld (her husband was killed in the war) with children Arkadiy and Tamara;
Leya Spivak with her son Yefim Borisovich and his family;
David Karpman with wife Esther and sons Roman, Yuriy, Leonid, and Mikhail;
Mark and Malka Kuperstein with daughters Mariya and Sophiya;
Froim Galinskiy with wife Bashiva and son Misha who left for the USA, elder son Boris died at the front;
Shay and Nukhim Krayzman with wife Rahil and daughters Mariya and Galina;
Avraam Kaplan with wife Mariya and children Nina and Mikhail;
Matvey Grigoryevich Finkelberg with wife Nina and son Boris; Arkadiy Yosipovich Litvak’s family;
Man’ Yudkovich Kozel (came back from the front without one leg) with wife Sophiya and son Valentin (left for the USA);
vets Mariya Bokvskaya and Dmitriy Bogoliubov; Raisa Moshkovna Simakhodskaya with family;
Mira Petrovna Semnova with husband Yefim Solomonovich Drobner and son Petr (lives in Israel);
Etia Abramovna Sapozhnik with children Izia, Alla, and Semen;
Aleksey Abramovich and Mariya Isayevna Staroseletskiy with two daughters;
Yefim Borisovich and Rita Yakovlevna Verpinskiy; Matil Beringolts with the family;
Shulim and Fania Babichenko with children Yefim, Yakov, Leonid, and Raisa (lives in the USA);
Yakov Narodnitskiy’s widow Mariya (her husband died at the front)with daughters Liza, Zina, and Fania;
Musiy and Liuba Narodnitskiy; Biniuma and Sarah Kardonskiy with children;
widow Mariya Veprinskaya with children; Reveka Kordonskaya; Fania Feldman with sons Roman and Izia;
widow Tsilia Kupestein with two children;
Boris and Sophiya Gendler; Fania Zhilovnik with sons Motik, Fima, and Kolia; Tula Olevskiy with the family;
Semen and Galina Miretsko (Semen’s first wife and their child were shot by the Germans);
widow Sophiya Brusilovskaya with children Liusia, Maya, and Felix;
Iosif Lvovich and Sarah Abramovna Gazman with son Leonid (lives in the USA);
Esfir Shusterman with the son (the other son and her husband died at the front);
Shtemberg family with children Petr and Evgeniya (live in the USA).

After the war Isaak Grigoryevich Gorokhovskiy was a formal head of the community and its rabbi. All members of his family moved to the USA. An illegal minyan consisting of Polishchuk, Pritsko, David Lumelskiy, and others congregated at his house.

Former house of Gorohovskiy family. Illegal minyan was gathering here.

In the 1960s, the bodies of those Jews who had been shot were transferred to the Jewish cemetery of Ivankov. Froim Galinskiy, David Ovseyevich Lumelskiy, and Musiy Fayvelevich Naroditskiy organised the re-burial. The location of the mass grave was pointed out by a local called Miroshnichenko who collected cartridge cases remaining after the war. His evidence helped to find the place of execution.

As a result of emigration and assimilation, the Jewish population of Ivankov plummeted.

The Jewish community was officially registered in 1994, when only 50 Jews lived here. Nelia Grigorovich has been the head of the community ever since. By 2002, the community acquired an office but fewer than 20 Jews remained in Ivankov…

Members of Ivankov Jewosh community in 2000’s

In 2003, the monument to the countrymen who died in the Holocaust was erected in the center of Ivankov, paid for by a  local businessman Volodymyr Ivanovych Skreda. The monument is the target of regular vandalising attacks.

Famous Jews from Ivankov

Hana Borisovna Shmayenok (1913, Ivankov – ?), an actress, and a film-maker.

Moisey (Moyshe-Aaron) Yakovlevich Beregovskiy (1892, Termakhovka village, near Ivankov – 1961, Kiev), a musicologist, a collector and keeper of the Jewish musical folklore. He was born in the family of the religious teacher,  arrested in 1949 and freed in 1955.

Nekhemiya Rabichev (Rabin) (1866, Sidorovichi village, near Ivankov – 1971, Israel) – Israeli social and political activist, the father of the Prime Minister of Israel Yitzchak Rabin.

Genrikh Markovich Khabinskiy (1931, Ivankov) – a painter.

Chaim Khazaz (1898, Sidorovichi village, near Ivankov – 1973, Israel), Israeli writer and a playwright.

Ivankov Jewish cemetery

Ivankiv Jewish cemetery is still used by the Jewish Community of Ivankiv. Currently the territory is owned by Ivankiv village council. On April 15, 2009, the Jewish community filed an appeal to the council requesting the transfer of the land to their ownership. The appeal was due to be considered on a session in late April 2009. Awaiting latest update.

Korosteszow (Polish), Korostysiv, Коростишів (Ukrainian), Коростышев – Korostyshev (Russian)

Korostyshev, is a town and district center in Zhitomir region.

It was founded in 1471 and was included into the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. Since 1569 it was a town in Zhitomir county, Kiev voivodeship (province) in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. In 1793 it was incorporated into the Russian Empire. In XIX – early XX centuries, it was a shtetl in Radomysl district, Kiev province.

Beginning

Jews have been living in Korostyshev since XVI century. In 1602, a synagogue was functioning there.

In 1772, the kahal paid 1,240 zloty of poll tax. The kahal was the third largest in the region by the number of Jews after Berdichev and Chudnov.

In the late XVIII century, rabbi Meir lived in Korostyshev. He was a student of one of the righteous men of Chasidism in Ukraine Zeyev-Volf from Zhitomir (?-1798). In the early XIX century, M.- N. Tverskoy’s grandson Moyshe (1789 – 1866) founded Chassidic dynasty in Korostyshev. After his death his son Mordkhe (1842-1916) continued the dynasty, then his grandsons Menakhem-Nokhum-Iosef-Bentsion and Yitskhok-Avrom-Moyshe kept their family tradition . In 1885, there were three synagogues in Korostyshev. Since 1892, Shraga Gorodetskiy was the rabbi in Korostyshev. In the 1900’s Menakhem Bialyk was a rabbi.

Grave of Rabbi Tverskoy on the destroyed Old Jewish cemetery in Korostyshev. It was reconstructed by Hasidim according to memories of elderly local Jews in 2000’s.

In 1894, N.M. Bialik owned three sawmills. In 1895, I.D.Baru had a match factory. In 1912, a Jewish savings-and-loan society was functioning in Korostyshev.

Korostyshev photos of An-sky ethnographic expedition:

In 1914, there were six synagogues in the shtetl. Aron-Srul Berkovich Ratner was a rabbi. All four doctors were Jewish. A Jewish hospital worked. Kurisis was a doctor there and his daughter helped him . The locals knew her after her husband’s surname Zeltsman.

All four doctors were Jewish. A Jewish hospital worked. Kurisis was a doctor there and his daughter helped him . The locals knew her after her husband’s surname Zeltsman.

Former synagogue in Korostyshev

A considerable part of Korostyshev population was engaged in crafts. There were more than 100 sewers and tailors, and 40 bricklayers and stove-settlers in the shtetl. More than 17 smiths were advertising their services and products. There were four of them in the small area between Kiev-Brest highway and teachers’ seminary. Most of them belonged to the Jews.

Inside some Korostyshev synagogue, 1910’s. Photo by An-sky expedition

The only drugstore in Korostyshev, all five shops of pharmacy goods, 22 out of 24 groceries, eight out of nine haberdasheries, 17 manufactories’, all 12 bakeries, all five stalls of tin and hardware goods, all three timber yards, the only stationery shop, both parquet workshops, three out of six cloth factories, and a tar plant belonged to the Jews.

Korostyshev on the PreRevolution post card

The central part of the shtetl and attached streets were populated mostly by the Jewish artisans and traders. A market place was located there as well. It used to be extremely vivid.

Civil War

At the end of 1918, a pogrom took place in Korostyshev. It was carried out by the Petlurite troops. In February 1919, Sokolovsky’s band organized the pogrom in the shtetl.

Bolshevists’ partisan detachment of Kalistrat Gelevey was acting in the area of Korostyshev. It prevented several Jewish pogroms.

Site of Big Synagogue. It was destroyed in the second half of XX century.

In the 1920s, ex-residents of Korostyshev organized a community in Detroit, the USA. It supported those who had suffered from the pogroms in Korostyshev.

Between the Wars

In 1925, the natives of Korostyshev organized the communes named after Volodarskiy and Vinchevskiy, and two collective farms in Kherson district. One collective farm was called “Vozrozhdeniye” (revival) and the other one was named after Leckert.  In February 1925, a commune named after Volodarskiy was founded in Korostyshev. In the 1920’s Yiddish Schools were open in Korostyshev. Last 10-year Yiddish School was liquidated in 1940.

JDC report about Korostyshev Jewish Community by 1923:

Korostyshev is situated on the Brest-Litovsk Road, 105 versts from Kiev, and 28 versts distance from Zhitomir.

General population (before/after pogroms):6,000/6,800 Jewish population (before/after pogroms):3,000/3,525

The greater part of the Jewish population is engaged in small trade and handicrafts.

Before the civil war, there existed in the town 13 small cloth factories in which 500 persons were employed, out of whom 450 were Jewish (girls), there also existed a lighting-match factory in which some scores of Jews were employed; this factory is closed up. At present, there exists in the town only a paper-mill in which 250 persons are working, out of whom 80 are Jews.

Last PreWar house in former Jewish neighborhood, 2016

The town underwent no pogroms, owing to the self-defence organization which existed there, the troops of Denikin which were in 30 verts distance from the town, tried to pillage it but were driven away by the Red Army. Nevertheless, there is a great number of orphans and half orphans in the town; these are orphans of refugees from neighboring places. Part of these children are being taken care of by the Children Home for 35 children, which has been oorganized and is subventioned by the J. D. C.

There also exists in Korostyshev a Jewish Public School which is attended by 200 children. The School is in need of repairs and school appliances.

The Jewish home for Aged which exists in the town (for 20 persons) leads a miserable existence in view of the fact that it receives no assistance from anywhere.

Birth certificate of Zuz Aronovich Boltanskiy (1934-2017), issue in Korostyshev with Yiddish stamp of Jewish city council

 

As was already mentioned, in our letter of August 14th, 1923, a fire occured on August 2nd which destroyed 22 houses, 19 belonging to Jews, and 3 to poor peasants. Twenty flve families with the total number of persons 126, were deprived of home and shelter.  This fact was reported to JDC by local representatives Yankel Gorobetzky and Berko Giberman.

In the 1920’s Yiddish Schools were open in Korostyshev. Last 10-year Yiddish School was liquidated in 1940.

Holocaust

Detailed information about Holocaust in Korostyshev was taken from Valentina Shapovalova’s (born in 1914) diary which was published in the local newspaper in 1997.

Korostyshev was captured by the Germans on July 9, 1941. The same day Jewish sufferings began. On July, 12 some Germans gathered a group of old Jews and made them dance, eat grass and drink water from the pit, they cut their beards. The Germans continued mockery the following day and after that they shot the elders.

Jew Varshaver was made to get into the pit with resin and after being mocked at was shot in front of his neighbors.

One day the Germans rushed into the Jewish houses and shot the whole families. People say the Jews were denounced by local Ukrainians. Those Jews who had survived were allowed to bury the bodies only in six days. Several pits for 60-80 people were dug out. Then the Germans shot Jewish men in front of their wives and children. The women were made to fill the pits with ground.

There was a Gestapo during the WWII with unmarked mass grave in the front of it.

After that, the Germans announced about the registration of the Jews and organized a ghetto in Petrovskiy street. The Jews from nearby villages were led to live there as well. Polia Maslovskaya was chosen to be the head of the ghetto. She taught music before the war. Ten Germans also settled in the ghetto to control the Jews. They called for Polia every day and raped her. There were 360 women and 40 men in the ghetto.

Former Jewish ghetto

On September, 12 1941, (according to the other information it was September, 22) the Jews were said they were going to a special district to live in. The whole night everybody was awake praying and fasting in the ghetto. In the morning all Jews were ordered to go to Zhitomir-Kiev highway to get into the trucks but the crowd was driven to the Southern outskirts of Korostyshev to Dolina tract. Locals remember that there were more than 2,000 people in the column including war prisoners, communists and Gestapo captives. In the outskirts of the shtetl the column was divided and led to two places of shooting. Three pits had already been dug out on each of them. A part of the children was pushed away from the column and saved by the local Ukrainians. The Germans first shot the children in front of their parents, then the adults. Polia Maslovskaya threatened the Germans before death but was shot at once. Children, women and men were buried in three separate pits. The graves were filled with ground by the local policemen. The ground above the graves shook for three more days.

This list of Holocaust victims was made by World War II veteran Idl Grigoryevich Raykh (1912 – 2007) after his returning from the front in 1945:

Holocaust victims list

Idl Grigoryevich Raykh (1912 – 2007)

Yosip Pavlenko’s family saved Rakhel Shilerman and her daughter Busia. Rakhel’s two sons were shot by the Germans. The Pavlenkos helped prepare false documents. Both mother and daughter survived.

Holocaust mass grave on Korostyshev New Jewish cemetery

Some Holocaust victims were buried (reburied?) on New Jewish cemetery. I don’t know details about this Holocaust mass grave. Names on the gravestone: Avrom Steinbarg, Ezra Steinbarg,
Idle Hertzstein, Yisroel Herznstein, Idle Kelman, Boruch Kats, Rohl Hertzstein, [?] Steinbarg ,Elke Katz, Malke Kelman, Rohl Belzer, [?] Weisman, [?] Hertzstein:

After the War

After 1945, some Jews came back to Korostyshev. In 1946, a synagogue was opened in Korostyshev (Red Square, 36). It was a 2-store wooden building. Second floor was a woomen section. On weekdays 20-25 people attended it, on Saturday – 30-35, on holidays – 100-125. Aron Moiseyevich Korol (1882 – ?) was a Rabbi, shochet and mohel, Shaya Borukhovich Gornstein (1876 – ?) was a cantor. Mordke Leybovich Goldstein (1876 – ?) was a rabbi according to the documents but not in reality. In 1953, A.M. Korol was arrested for “getting in touch with the American Jewish organization”. He was in prison in Korostyn and his wife had to go there in order to cook kosher food for her husband. He was released later. Aron Moiseyevich Korol emmigrated with family to Riga, Lithuania.

Next people visited Korostyshev synagogue after the War: Batler, Futerman, brothers Oislender, Iosel Samuilovich Rogal (1906-1989), Tzalik (surname unknown), Doliner, Waisman, Mordko Kholodenko with brother

There was a synagogue after the WWII

Most Jewish children visited local school №2. After the War, in Korostyshev returned former local policeman Shpakovskiy who was involved in mass killings during the War. He wasn’t sentenced by local authorities.

Rogal family in Korostyshev, 1953

Matzot was baked unofficially in Batler’s houses. Batler was a former teacher of Yiddish school. I didn’t find information about closure of Korostyshev synagogue but assume that it was done by local authorities in the beginning of 1960’s.

In 1970’s-1980’s, WWII veteran Meir Oislender (1907-1992) was unofficial local Rabbi. He was married 3 times. His first family was killed in Korostyshev during the Holocaust. He married after the War and after the death of the second wife, he married to Mila, teacher of local kindergarten. For prayer Jews gathered unofficially with big caution.

In the late 1980’s  – early 1990’s, the majority of Korostyshev Jews moved to Israel and other countries.

These family photos were provided by Betya Kholodenko during my visit to Korostyshev in 2016:

A Jewish community was registered in Korostyshev in 1997. Nikolay Ivanovich Lifshits was elected as a head.

Famous Jews from Korostyshev

David Naumovich Gogshtein (1889, Korostyshev, Radomysl district, Kiev province – 1952), a poet , member of Jewish anti-fascist committee. In 1948, he was repressed and shot in 1952.

Pinkhas Israilevich Dashevskiy (1879, Korostyshev – 1934), a political activist, son of a military doctor. He studied in Kiev Polytechnic institute. In 1902, he entered the society “Poaley Tsion”.  After Kishinev pogrom in 1903, he made an attempt on the life of essayist and member of the Black Hundreds P. Krushevan. Dashevskiy was sentenced to five years of the disciplinary battalion. In 1906, he was freed. After 1917, he worked as an engineer in Manchuria and on the oil fields of the Caucasus. In 1933, he was arrested for being a Zionist and died in the prison.

Yakov Tsalevich Forzun (1924, Korostyshev – 2015, Israel, Or-Akiva), a Hero of the Soviet Union (1944). Since 1942 he was in the Workers’ and Peasants’ Red Army (RKKA). Machine-gunner private Forzun was awarded the title of the Hero of the Soviet Union for his courage and heroism which were shown in the battle during the Western Dvina crossing. Since 1946 he was in reserve. He used to work as a brigadier at Zhitomir plant “Rembyttekhnika”. Since 1991 he lived in Israel.

Holocaust mass graves

Both graves locates in southern outskirst of the city (see map above).

After the war, those Jews who had returned home set the monuments on the graves but they were destroyed.

In 1945, a hill was made above the grave and a metal fence was installed. In 1986, a plate of gabbro (1.75 x 0.8 m.) was put in the center of the grave. There was a memorial inscription and a Star of David on it. A granite plate (0.65 x 0.6 m.) with the memorial inscription in Yiddish was put in front of the grave. There are the flowerbeds framed by black granite (5.3 x 5.3 m.) to the left and to the right of the plates.The inscription on the large plate says: “The ashes of the citizens of Korostyshev killed by the German fascists during the years of the World War 1941-1945 rest here.”
The inscription on the small plate says in Yiddish: “We remember you. Never again.”

First grave:

Second grave:

Old Jewish cemetery

It was located not far from the shtetl’s center and destroyed in XX century. Grave of Rabbi Tverskoy was reconstructed by Hasidim according to memories of elderly local Jews in 2000’s. Memorial The cemetery is located in Shevchenko Street on territory of house №15.

New Jewish cemetery

The cemetery is located in Geroiv Nebesnoi Sotni, №103. It still in use.

Sokolets is a small village in Dunayivtsi district, Khmelnitskiy region. In 2001, 676 people lived in the village.
In the era of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth Sokolets had been a shtetl of Podolia voivodship (district) by 1793. In the early XX century, it was a shtetl of Podolia district, Ushitsa uezd.
An abandoned part of the village is located in the bottom of the picturesque Ushitsa gorge.

Beginning

Jews started to settle in Sokolets in the XVIII century. After the murder of local Jews during the Haidamak uprising (1768), the Jewish population of Sokolets dropped significantly.

In 1765, there were 356 Jews in Sokolets and nearby villages.
In XVIII century Polish landowners Zakrevskiy, Pototskiy, Gumenetskiy owned the village in the valley. They were strengthening and developing Sokolets in every way. They built a stonewall around the village with the towers severing as guard. They also built a large Catholic church.
According to the 1847 audit, “Sokolets Jewish community” consisted of 457 people.

Sokolet’s Jewish population increased to 747 in 1897, when it comprised 27 percent of the total population.

Remains of the buildings in Sokolets:

I haven’t found any information about the pogroms in the shtetl during the civil wars.

Under the Soviets a Jewish rural council was active in the town, whose Jewish population numbered 616 in 1926 and 425 in 1931.

Holocaust

The Germans occupied the town in early July 1941. On August 31, 1941 the 320th Police Battalion shot to death 380, according to German sources, Jews from Sokolets and the majority of the Jews from nearby town Velikiy Zhvanets near the Sokolets forest.

After the shooting the Jewish houses were robbed and dismantled by the local inhabitants.
Later in the summer 1942, the last Jews from the ghetto of Velikiy Zhvanchik were shot in this place.
In 1944, Soviet commission had explored this place and found three mass graves with 1,224 bodies.

Mass grave of Jews from Sokolets and Velikiy Zhvanchik

A village resident Oleksandra Gordiyenko was hiding a Jewish Golda (born in 1928) in her place. Somebody gave them away and Golda was killed.

Sokolets was liberated by the Red Army at the end of March 1944.

After the War

I could only find the following information about post-war Jews of Sokolets from the local grannies near the church in April 2016: Several Jews came back to the village after the war. The Shutsmans, Lapinskiys, Tsilia, and Aaron (their surnames are unknown) moved to Dunayivtsi in the 1970’s.

Former shtetl’s center

After the war locals didn’t build anything on the place of the shtetl. All houses had underpasses which led to the Catholic church. Nowadays, sometimes cows fall into them. The ground has sunk and the passes are well seen.
In 1973, while Dniester hydroelectric power station was being built the village was about to be sunk. The inhabitants were immediately resettled to the high right bank of Ushitsa canyon. However, the engineers made a mistake. The height of water occurred to be lower than it was supposed to be and the village didn’t sink. Though, the locals refused to come back to the village. According to the legend the village is haunted by the ghost of the people who once lived there..
Two elderly locals who had decided to come back to their homes mysterious died. A woman was burned alive, and a man was killed by his nephew. The locals saw a ominous sign in all these events.

Fog under the remains of shtetl Sokolets

By the XX century that is to the moment when the local population was ordered to leave the village because of the building of Dniester HPS, medieval planning had been preserved here. The fairs took place in the market square up to the last week. There was a town hall, a Catholic church, and even the remains of the fortress not far from that place. Sokolets was surrounded by the stone wall (1m. thick). The height of the parts that had remained is two-three meters. Everything that was inside these walls is a shtetl. Everything outside was the village.

Our expedition in Sokolets, 2016

The old part of the village is abandoned now and overgrown with the trees and bushes. An old church is functioning here. A few houses are located near it. The former market square can still be seen through the brushwood. There are a lot of walls of ruined shtetl houses there. One path which had been paved before the revolution leads to the valley. One can go along it only in dry weather.

In 2016, there were no more Jews in the village…

Jewish cemeteries

Two Jewish cemeteries has preserved in Sokolets. The old one is situated near the former center of the shtetl. There are several matzevahs in it but it is impossible to read the inscriptions on them.

The new one is situated in a thick wood behind the Polish cemetery. In 2016, we didn’t manage to find it. However, the expedition of the late 2000’s saw many gravestones of the early XX century here.

Orynin is a town of Kamenets-Podolskiy district. The town’s estimated population is 2664.

Orynin was first written about in 1474. Since 1569 it was a part of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth In 1672-1699, it was under the power of the Ottoman Empire. Since 1793 it was incorporated into the Russian Empire. Since 1797 Orynin was a town of Kamenets-Podolskiy uyezd, Podolia gubernia.

Information for this article was taken from a book written by Beril Segal and Naum Bernstein. The head of Kamienets-Podolskiy community Aleksandr Shulyk originated from Orynin and Orynin historian Vladimir shared their memories.

Beginning

Orynin is first mentioned in archival documents dating back from 1474.

A Jewish community in Orynin dates back to 1582. During the times of Khmelnitskiy uprising the shtetl was ruined, many Jews and Frankists left it, a lot of them were killed. All the books from Orynin synagogue including Talmud were confiscated and burnt under the instruction of Catholic bishop Dembovskiy.

Former Jewish shop in the center of Orynin, 2016

In the XVIII century there were synagogues, charity organizations for the poor and ill, and chevra kaddisha in Orynin.  The Jews worked in 65 craft workshops, at the tannery, which was built by the Jewish merchant Gutgerts. In 1863, four synagogues were functioning in Orynin, and in 1889 – five.  In 1893-1916, an educational institution in Orynin was functioning at the expense of OPE.

Orynin entrepreneurs list from Russian Empire Business Directories by 1913

From the book of Beril Segal:

The stranger strolling at a modest pace down the Post Road between the Russian and the Polish churches could walk the distance in about fifteen or twenty minutes. He would have walked the entire length of the Shtetl. But there was also a width to the town. The bulk of the population lived in the streets and alleys that began suddenly and ended just as suddenly within the limits of Orynin. The Post Road was straight and was paved with cobblestones, but the others were not as favored.

The butcher’s alley, where all of the slaughter houses were located, characterized by the stench of slaughtered animals and dogs underfoot. T h e street began at the large animal slaughter house and came to an end by the fence of the policeman’s garden. There was the Variatsky Gass, where the merchants of dry goods lived. Bolts of cotton, alpaca, cretonne, and linen were stacked on the shelves of their establishments, which were simply the front rooms of their houses. Leather goods were also sold on the Variatsky Gass. The aroma of freshly tanned soft calf skins, karakul, and beaver always hung in the air as one approached the stores.

Rebuilded Jewish houses in the center of Orynin

A Jew could not own a farm, or cultivate his own field, or gather the fruit of his own orchard. Ownership of land was forbidden to Jews. In a country where agriculture was the main occupation of the people, the Jew was excluded from participation in it except for buying and selling the fruits of other people’s labor.

In 1911, a Zionist group was formed in Orynin. Pinkhas Kremer and Izrail Drakler were its leaders. In 1914, there were Jewish savings-and-loan societies. The Jews owned 22 stalls including eight manufacture stores, 11 grocery shops, both warehouses of pharmacy goods, three mills, and all three forestries. On August 9th, 1914 a pogrom occured in Orynin. As a result, the property of ten Jewish families was destroyed. Such pogroms repetead many times during the WWI because many Russian soldiers pass frought Orynin to the frontline for a 3 years.

About the Orynin synagogues from the book of Beril Segal:

There were five houses of worship in Orynin. Three of them stood side by side, so that the singing and the chanting in one could be heard in the others. The other two were a little farther removed down by the river bank. The five houses of worship were designated as the Old Beth Midrash, the New Beth Midrash, the Zinkover Klois, the Tchortkover Klois, and the Old Shul.

The Old and the New Beth Midrash attracted the solid balebatim of Orynin. They were the well-to-do, the merchants, and all dwelled on the Main Street and on the Variatsky Gass.

The Zinkover Klois was so-called because its worshippers followed an Hasidic rebbe of the town of Zinkov, who was a descendant of the Apter Rov.

The Tchortkover Klois, sometimes also called the Sadigurer Klois, were followers of the Hasidic rebbes who held court in those Galician towns.

But the largest and the most impressive house of worship was the Old Shul. It was so-called because no one among the living knew when and by whom the shul was built.

Old Shul in Orynin, 1930. Photo by P. Zholtovskiy and taken from myshtetl.org

While the other four houses of worship were nothing more than simple two-room houses, one room for men and the other for women, the Old Shul was architecturally distinct. The Shul was a conglomerate of several buildings added to the main structure. Its windows were small and were tucked away at the top of the high walls, near the roof. It had no heat, and in the fall and winter worshippers did not take off their overcoats. It was therefore also known as the Cold Shul.

The Old Shul was built as already described in the lowest part of Orynin. Besides, the worshippers had to go down a few steps before entering the Shul proper.

About PreRevolution Jewish education from the book of Beril Segal:

Civil War

During World War I the Jews from Orynin were blamed in espionage and sent away from the town. In 1919, the Jews who came back to Orynin suffered from the pogroms which were organized by Directory parts. Two people died in March, 15 – in May, 20 – in June during the pogroms. Favish Vainstein was one of the victims of the pogroms.

A Jewish self-defense force was organized in Orynin by Iosif Donovich Grinberg (1895 – 1935). He was a solider in the Russian Imperial Army during World War I. After the war came back to the shtetl after being captured by the Germans in 1918. There were 20-30 soldiers in his detachment. They cooperated with the parts of Red Army and fought against Petliura’s bands and other local bandits. Yasha Vainstein was in that detachment.

Group of Orynin intellectuals, 1918. Most of them emmigrated to USA. Photo from book of Naum Bernstein

Between the Wars

The largest part of information about life of the shtetl between the wars was taken from the books of Naum Bernstein. The following residents of the shtetl are mentioned in his book. Orthodox Jew Idel Rosis and his family; wealthy Jew Mendel Shmiel-Yekev; Srul Sherman and Favish Vaksman; sisters Bichucher; watchmaker Moyshe called “Koptsen”(pauper); young religious Jew Moyshe Serkis named after his mother Serka.

Former Jewish houses in the center of Orynin

Following families are also mentioned in the book.

–          Favish Vainstein had eight sons. Four ones from his first wife Sarah and four ones from his second wife Brana. Shloyma’s first son died in World War I.

–          Lekhtman family. The Mother used to sell sparkling water

–          Vaksman family. There were three brothers and each had a lot of children. Some of them emigrated to the USA and Latin America. During the German occupation only women survived in Orynin. Elders and children of this family had died.

–          The rabbi of the shtetl moved to the USA together with his daughter Sosia. His son Srul moved to Latin America. Son Peysia stayed in the USSR and lived in Kharkov before and after the war.

Around 1920-1921, a Jewish school and a pioneer organization appeared in Orynin. At the same time melemeds’ prosecution began.

Bernshtein family in Orynin, 1922

In the 1920’s, a new mikvah was built at the expense of David Bernstein’s who lived in the USA.

Burekh Chertkover used to be the head of the village council. People called him Oshmekh.

There was a Zionist organization in the shtetl. It was destroyed. One of its members Tsolik Shteingardt was sentenced to the exile. One Zionist Riva Melman lived in the town. She would tell children about Zionism. She left for Moscow.

In 1926, the shtetl received letters from Iiol Grinberg, village Hebrew teacher Avraam Grinberg’s brother. He lived in Israel and described life there in all details. People used to read his letters by the whole village.

A man called “Der Litvik” was a rabbi in the shtetl in the 1920’s.However, some local Jews brought the other rabbi. It was a reason for constant argues.

In 1926-1927, children’s Zionist organization “Hashomer” was functioning in Orynin illegally.

Ukrainian school in Orynin, 1927

On the photo above: 5. Kotsulevsky Oleksa, 6. Kuzik, 7. Kotsulevsky Gritsko, 8. Joseph Weinstein, 9. Srul Kalimacher, 10. Schmiel Brasiler, 11. Shayner (it seems), 12. Zbrizher, 13. Vera Kanitskaya, 14. Kopilevich, 15. Herschel Greenberg, 16. Brantzya Weisbleigh, 17. Bassia Weingurt, 18. Naum Bernstein

During NEP businessman Kolmen Bronstein was one of the richest residents of the shtetl. At the end of NEP, the authorities wanted to arrest him but he managed to immigrate to Israel together with his family just in time. There was one more rich person in the shtetl. Yankel Vaysblay had two sons and a daughter. One of his sons’ name was Shaya, his daughter’s name was Brantsia.

In the 1920’s the head of the producing union was Kolmen Gitler. He was in the occupation together with his family. The Germans were afraid to shoot them in Orynin so they sent the family to Kamenets-Podolskiy where they must have been killed.

In 1924-1925, a Jewish resettlement agricultural organization “New Life” was formed in Orynin. Jew named Nakhmen was its main agronomist. Leva Bernstein was its accountant. The organization was located in the building of the former manor house.

A Yiddish language school  was opened in Orynin. Iosif Grinberg was its director.

The following names of the Jewish children are mentioned in the book of Naum Bernstein. Iosif Vaynstein, Srul Kalimakher, Shmiel Braziler, Sheyner, Zbrizher, Kopilevich, Gershele Grinberg, Brantsia Vaysblay, Basia Vayngurt, Don Natanzon, Favish Bekerman, Velvel Lerner, Pinia Graytsershtein. These Jewish children studied in the Ukrainian school.

By the end of the 1920’s, the synagogues had been closed, Zionist organizations had stopped their functioning.

Jewish youth in Orynin, 1937. Photo from the book of Naum Bernshtein

On the photo above: 1. Abum Rosenblit. He died after the war 2. Sheyva Bit, killed in Orynin during the Holocaust 3. Surele Rosenfeld 4. Berl Kleiman, killed in Orynin during the Holocaust 5. Yasha Goldstein 6. Tsilya Bain She died in Orynin before the war 7. Boris (Beiresh) Feldman. He went through the whole war. Then he emigrated to the USA, in Boston, where he died. 8. The Shifra Greenberg 10. Naum Bernstein 11. Dora Drucker 12. Shamshtein Matvey Grigorievich

In 1935, the majority of the members of agricultural collective farm “Flag of communism” were the Jews.

There was no doctor in the shtetl in the 1930’s. There was only paramedic named Burekh Royfe.

Yakov Rudman was the head of the village council before the war.

Holocaust

After the occupation by Wehrmacht, in 1941 a ghetto was formed in Orynin.  At the end of the summer 1941, 2,690 Jews from Hungarian area of occupation were deported to Orynin by Hungarian authorities.  They were shot in ten days.

On June 21, 1942, the local Jews, refugees, and the Jews from nearby villages who lived in the ghetto were ordered to gather in the town square.  About 250 qualified workers were selected and sent to Kamenets-Podolskiy ghetto. 1,700 people were taken out of the shtetl under escort of the Ukrainian auxiliary police. 40 newborn babies, 530 children aged to 14, 650 women and 480 men were shot.

According to the memories of eyewitnesses, tinsmith Benyamin was cursing and threatening the Fascists: “Animals, monsters! Wait for our children to come back from the Red Army when they kill your Fuehrer! They will get revenge for your crimes!”

The Ukrainians settled in empty houses…

Only the head of the ghetto had survived. One Ukrainian woman hid him in her place. All his family died. People didn’t like him they said he had behaved unhonerably in the ghetto.

Having realized that they wouldn’t survive Vainstein family gave all their values to Romanovskiy’s family. He was a very honest and respectable man. He used to work in the Ukrainian school.  After the war they gave the values to the head of the ghetto.

After the war former German head of the village Kendzerskiy was judged for his cooperation with the occupants. He helped the occupants to destroy the Jews of the village and took all the gravestones from the Jewish cemetery to his yard to pave it. He was sentenced to death. Favish Pasternak saw it when he came back to the village from the front and found out that all his relatives were killed.

Relatives of the victims used to gather in the place of shooting on the first Sunday of September.

Orynin was freed by the Soviet troops on the 24th of March 1944.

After the WWII

After the war several Jewish families returned to Orynin. They had managed to evacuate before the Germans came. Among them there were the families of Yakov Blat, Shaya Blat, Boris Feldman, Grigoriy Fayzenberg, Grigoriy Sherel, Basia Sherel, Yakov Beyn, Sonia Rozenfeld, Solomon Barenboyn, Klava Giter, Polina Poliak, and Liza Lazebnik.

Building of the former cheder in Orynin, 2016. Currently it belongs to a Roma family. In the 1950’s, the locals discovered a long underground pass under it.

The appearance of restaurant “Podolianka” was connected with the name of Yakov Isayevich Beyn. This restaurant was popular in the whole region. Jewish cuisine was the basic of the menu. Yakov Isayevich had been running the restaurant by 1974, up to his death. His wife Ada Davydovna and daughters left Orynin a few years later.

Solomon Markovich Barenboyn took part in military actions, war veteran, worked as a head teacher in eight-year school.

Grigoriy Fayzenberg was a famous skinner and sewed hats.

Yakov Fridlevich Blat worked as a supplier in a village shop.

Grigoriy Sherel worked as an accountant in the same shop.

Shaya Blat organized a branch of Kamenets-Podolskiy association of the blind. Blind and visually impaired people not only from Orynin but also from nearby  villages and district used to work there.

After the war there was no synagogue in Orynin. In spite of the fact that many Jews were the members of the party they celebrated all Jewish holidays, prepared traditional Jewish dishes, and baked matzo.

Every year the Jewish population decreased. Orynin had been a district center by 1959. The families of Rozenfeld, Feldman, and Giter left Orynin in 1959. Their children, grandchildren, and great grandchildren moved to different towns and countries. They live in Ukraine, Israel, America, Belorussia, and Germany.

In December 1996, Rudman family left the village for Israel.

Feliks Iosifovich Rudman worked as a driver in hospital, his wife Anna Yakovlevna worked as an accountant in the shop, and his son Aleksey worked as a History teacher. They moved to Israel. Their daughter Tatyana had left for Israel too.

At present, one family lives in Orynin, Shaya Blat’s grandchildren.

Jewish cemetery

There were the graves of the XVIII century in the cemetery. But in 2016, there were only PostWWII graves.

Older gravestones were destroyed by local Ukrainians.

Famous Jews from Orynin

Beryl Segal (1897, Orynin – 1980, USA), Yiddish writer.

Beryl and Chaya Segal, posing with a group of emigrants at Orynin, Russia early in 1918

Katerinopol (Kalniboloto by 1795) is an urban-type settlement (since 1965), a district center in Cherkassy region, Ukraine. It was first written about in the mid XVI century when it acquired Magdeburg right.
In the XVI-XVIII centuries, it was a part of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. In 1793 it was incorporated into the Russian Empire as a district town of Kiev province. Since 1798 it was a shtetl Yekaterinopol, Zvenigorodka uyezd, Kiev province. In the 1930’s, it was a center of the village council.

Beginning

The Jews of Katerinopol are first mentioned in documents from 1720. During the XVII and XVIII centuries, Jews were repeatedly victims of pogroms.

Row of Jewish shops in the market square of Katerinopol, 1912. Photo from local museum

The Polish census of 1764 included 19 Jews from Katerinopol kahal. It means that the Jewish community was destroyed during Haydamaks’ uprisings in right-bank Ukraine in the 1760’s.

In 1797, 1,360 Jews lived in Katerynopil. The key occupations of the Jewish population in the late XVIII century were agriculture, handicraft and trade. In 1847, there were 1,077 Jews in the town, in 1897, the Jewish population grew to 1,980 inhabitants (27.5%).

In 1865, the village had two synagogues and the rabbi was Avrum-Itsko Nuhimovich Polonsky.

On September 6-13, 1919 there was a pogrom in Katerynopil organized by detachments of the Volunteer Army and Jewish homes were looted and destroyed. The official rabbi of Katerynopil who witnessed the pogroms said that there was a campaign aimed at evicting the Jews from the town. The number of victims could not be determined.

Katerinopol entrepreneurs list from Russian Empire Business Directories by 1913

According to the Russian Jewish Encyclopedia, in 1920 the Jewish population of Katerynopil numbered 1,260 people, and in 1927 – 1587 people.

In the 1930’s, Katerynopil was the center of the local Jewish village council and there was a school with instruction in Yiddish. In 1926, expatriates from Katerynopil founded a Jewish collective farm “Trotsky” (51 people).

Rebuilded former Jewish shop in the center of Katerinopol, 2017

The synagogue was closed in 1927.

In the early 1930’s, when collectivization began, Jews started to leave Katerinopol massively.
Approximately 200 local Jews remained during the German occupation.

Holocaust

On July 29, 1941, Katerynopil was occupied by Nazi soldiers. Lootings and pogroms began and a selection took place. The elderly, sick and women with children were sent to a camp for the disabled in Zvenyhorodka. A labour camp was established near the station. On October 6, the first mass execution took place, communists and Jews were killed. Prisoners in Zvenygorodska camp were shot in April 1942. According to the memoirs of the Holocaust survivor Sonia Diamond: “In the autumn of 1942, they shot everybody – the Jews from Katerinopol, Zvenyhorodka and Shpola – 2,000 people.” According to the Russian Jewish Encyclopedia, a part of the Jewish population was destroyed in October 1941. In May 1942, those Jews who could work were deported to Brodetske, the rest – to Zvenyhorodka, and on June 18, 1942, they were executed together with local Jews.
A part of Jews was directed to village Yerki to work in a stone quarry. Later they were demolished. The monument was established on the grave in 2003.

Part of the Katerinopol Jews were transferred to village Brodetske. The Jews were made to repair the highway. Men and women of middle age and older were among them. However, there were boys and girls as well. They were settled in a village club which was located in the building of a former church. There were about 300 Jews there. The camp was guarded by the auxiliary policemen with guns who escorted the captives to the work and back.
In late 1942-early 1943, typhus occurred in the camp. At first, there were several people with the decease however because of the lack of preventative and medical remedies people began to die.
They were buried right in Petro Hnatiuk’s garden. Then they dug a pit in the camp yard. Every day doctors examined the Jews and those who had the signs of typhus were taken to the pit and shot.
In the late autumn 1943, at dawn, the village was filled with the Germans and policemen from Katerinopol and Zvenigorodka. All the Jews were shot. Only one boy had survived. He lived in Israel after the war, and his relatives lived in Zvenigorodka.
The last victim was a girl of 12. One of the locals found her in the church under the floor where he was looking for some values. He gave her away to the Germans and she was shot. 243 people were shot and buried on this day.

Memorial on the Holocaust mass grave in village Brodetske. Photo was taken from novadoba.com.ua

Markiyan Odnokin tried to hide Jew Natasha with her child in Katerinopol. However, the child was found and shot by the policemen. Natasha’s fate is unknown.

Jewish woman from Vinnitsa region Vera Spivak was saved by Evdokiya Tkachenko in Katerinopol.

Vera Spivak

After the War

I’ve managed to gather the following fragmentary information about the post-war Jews of Katerinopol in 2016. About 50 Jews lived here after the war. Perets was a candiemaker. The heads of a sausage shop and a shop of sparkling water were Jewish. Khodzitskiy family came back from the evacuation.
Edelman was a head of a collective farm after the war. The locals remember Jew Shaya who died in the early 1980’s. Ida Golikova also lived in the village. Sonia Portnova left for Israel in the 1990’s. Liuba Meyster lived and died in the village in the 1990’s.
Yuliy Natanovich Goltsveld was born in the village. He worked in the institute in Dnepropetrovsk and helped many co-villagers to enter it.

Former Jewish houses in Katerinopol (most of them were rebuilded), 2017:

In 2016, several completely assimilated descendants of Katerinopol Jews lived in the village.

Famous Jews from Katerinopol

Maria Yefimovna Kotliarova (1918, Katerinopol – 2008, Moscow) – an actress, poet, educator. 

Maria Yefimovna Kotliarova

Jewish cemetery

Apparently, the cemetery existed since the foundation of the Jewish community in the XVII century. During the war, the monuments from the cemetery were used for the construction of the Zvenyhorodka-Katerynopil road. After the war, a forest was planted at the site of the Jewish cemetery. Today, only around ten tombstones can be found among the trees, but the inscriptions on them have not survived.

The inscription on the oldest found gravestone:
פנ
האשה מרת
מינרל בת ר’
יצחק יהודה
הכהן נ’ כד’
כסלו שנת
תרפט לפק

Маня Хазан
ум. 7 дика 1928

Here buried is a woman
Minerl, the daughter of
Yitzhak Yehudah
HaKohen (the Kohen). Died on 24
Kislev 5689

Information was taken from Lo-Tishkah website.

Genealogy

Surnames of the Jews who lived in shtetl Katerinopol in XIX – early XX centuries:

Alperin, Anchevskiy, Babinskiy, Babich, Bavskiy, Baskin, Beynerman, Berdichevskiy, Beribitskiy, Bilenko, Blindar, Bratslavskiy, Broverman, Brodskiy, Brodian, Burd, Burlaka, Byk, Vaysburd, Varenbud, Vdov, Vetrogon, Vilkhovskiy, Vinarov, Vishnivetskiy, Volinskiy, Volodarskiy, Vosheverd, Gayevskiy, Gladshteyn, Glistvand, Glukhovskiy, Golovanevskiy, Goncharov, Gorokhovskiy, Granovskiy, Gudz, Gurman, Dashevskiy, Dobrovskiy, Dran, Yerevskiy, Yeretskiy, Zhukovskiy, Zaika, Zalis, Zamanskiy, Zaslavskiy, Zubernik, Zubrinskiy, Inger, Kavunovskiy, Kagan, Kamenetskiy, Kaminskiy, Kapitsa, Kargatskiy, Karpatyy, Katalinskiy, Kitaygorodskiy, Klichman, Kobrinskiy, Kozachek, Kozachinskiy, Kopilenko, Kosakovskiy, Kotliarov, Kocherzhinsky, Koshevatskiy, Krivopan, Krivoshey, Krutogonov, Kundel, Ladyzhynskiy, Lazebnik, Linivets, Lipetskiy, Lisnovskiy, Litvin, Lodzinskiy, Lubanskiy, Lukachevskiy, Lumazkin, Mazanov, Malashut, Mestanovskiy, Mikitinskiy, Miropolskiy, Mogilev, Monastorenko, Mordkovich, Moshlevskiy, Nemirovskiy, Nepomniashchiy, Nikolayevskiy, Ostrovskiy, Palchinovskiy, Partnoy, Plotnik, Povolinskiy, Povolotskiy, Podgayetskiy, Polonskiy, Poliak, Pustelnik, Piatigorskiy, Reyliar, Rosiyanskiy, Sandler, Sapozhnik, Sapozhnyy, Saranduk, Seyder, Skvirskiy, Skoblinskiy, Slavskiy, Snezhko, Sokolovskiy, Sorokopud, Sosnov, Spitkovskiy, Stashchevskiy, Stoyenko, Sukalskiy, Talan, Talyanskiy, Tashman, Teplitskiy, Uziran, Ulanovskiy, Faynshtein , Filvarov, Filiar, Fininberg, Froyenchenko, Furkis, Furman, Khodorovskiy, Khusid, Tsikinovskiy, Chepurnyy, Chizhik, Chudnovskiy, Shabadash, Shargorodskiy, Shik, Shostakovskiy, Shtanbarg, Shtenberg, Shtuman, Shtutlan, Ekmenger, Yurkovskiy, Yukhnevetskiy, Yanovskiy, Yarovskiy.

Medvin is a town in Boguslav district of Kiev region. The town’s estimated population is 3,450 (as of 2007).

It was founded in 1362. In 1569 it was incoporated into the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and in 1620-1648, Medvin recieved Magdeburg Rights. In 1793 Medvin was incorporated into the Russian Empire.
In XIX – early XX centuries it was a shtetl of Kaniv district, Kiev gubernia.

Beginning

Jews have been living in Medvin since the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. In XIX – early XX centuries the main occupations of the Jewish population were crafts, petty trade, and rent.

In the early XIX century Jews owned five stalls and three mills. In 1896 – 1901, Shimshon-Aron Polonskiy (1876-1948) was a rabbi in Medvin. In 1910, there were two synagogues and a Jewish cemetery in Medvin.

Medvin entrepreneurs list from Russian Empire Business Directories by 1913

In 1914, Jews owned a drugstore, three wood warehouses, and 26 stalls, including 15 groceries and eight manufactures.
There were two synagogues in Medvin; they were situated one opposite to the other.

On the 24th of March 1918, a pogrom took place in Medvin. It was organized by the local peasants.
Jewish stalls and goods were burnt.

Former center of the shtetl

During the famine 1933 (The Holodomor), one local Jewish woman was killed and eaten by the neighbors when she came to visit them. In 1939, 125 Jews (1.76% of the total population) lived in Medvin.

Holocaust

Medvin was fell under Nazi control at end of June 1941. It was not liberated until early 1944.

During the occupation the Germans organized a ghetto in the center of the village. All the Jews from Medvin and nearby villages were gathered there.

Site of the Medvin synagogue and ghetto during the WWII

The police abused their victims savagely. They cut the beards off eldery Jewish men together with the skin using stones. They beat them until they were unconscious. Jews’ feet were tied and they were dipped into the pond. After they had been brought to life again, the beating continued. The Jews were robbed and made to work hard. Many Jews tried to escape but they were found and arrested by the local police.

There were approximately 700 people. A camp in the open air surrounded by barbed wire was organized near the synagogue. In the afternoon all captives were driven to work. Men were beating stone with hammers, women and children were carrying it to the road where they were paving the cube. During the lunch hour they all were led to the pond to drink and graze in the field.

The head of the local police Ivan Sarapuka had been hiding a Jew in his home for some time and tried to do his best not to let the violence spread among the locals. Later he had to flee, organized partisan detachment. He later died in battle.

In the autumn 1941, the Jews of Medvin were shot in two seperate “actions” (german killing operation). In the first “action 49 people were shot and in the second 100 people. They were shot by local Ukrainian Auxillary Police men on the order of the German authorities. When the column of the Jews was driven to the shooting one young Jewish woman made an attempt to save her child and threw him over the fence.The police saw it and ordered to take him back.

Children were thrown there first, and then they threw the shells in there. Stunned and oppressed parents were shot and also thrown into the pitch. In such a way two pits were filled with the bodies. Next columns were taken to the beam that stretched to Shcherbashyntsi village in the suburbs of Medvin. One more pit was prepared there.

Last captives, Jewish men and Soviet war prisoners, were closed in the basement of the synagogue and blown up. It was in November 1941. The synagogue was burnt and became a mass grave for them.

In the 1970’s, there was a market on its place. Excavator which was aligning the ground dug out the skulls and human bones.

Jeremy Borowits and local historian near unmarked Holocaust mass grave in Medvin

Komsomol girl and activist Roza Pudving lived in Medvin before the war. She was incredibly beautiful and also got into Medvin ghetto. A policeman called Beyla decided to destroy her personally. Holding a gun to her head he brought the girl to the pit on Saint Mountain. There he raped and killed Roza. She was buried by the locals on that place. After the war relatives established a grave stone. In the 1970’s, the grave was destroyed by agricultural technics. Policeman Beyla was judged in 1945. He was sentenced to ten years of concentration camps. Then he came back to Medvin village and worked in a collective farm.

One Jewish man was captured in May 1942 in the house of the resident of Dolgaya Greblia village. He was killed in Medvin. Salata Palazhka and her daughter were hiding Musiy Hranovskyy.

Medvin was freed in the beginning of 1944.

List of Medvin Holocaist victims:

Yekaterina and Priska Tishkov saved Mania Bezin with two children Erik and Garik.
After the war the director of the brick factory initiated to set up a fence around the first grave of shot people. The second grave was situated much lower and the rain often revealed the bones of those who had been killed. Thus local authorities surrounded the place by the revetment.

Post War period

After the war several Jewish families came back from the evacuation. Among them there was a school teacher Ida Yosifovna Zilberberg. In the 1950s, teacher Raisa Skvirskaya was sent to the village to work. The total Jewish population constiuted only several dozen people.. The locals remember Musiy, he did sweet sparkling water.

In 1989, the local historians made an attempt to collect the names of the victims of Holocaust. They managed to gather the names of 100 Jews of Medvin. The most of the names (about 60) were given by Sidor Andreyevich Podolinskiy. He used to work as a teacher before the war and remembered his perished pupils and their families.

Original Holocaust victims lists:

In the late 1980’s, doctor Berman from Belaya Tserkov wanted to establish a monument on the grave of the shot people but for some unknown reasons he couldn’t do it.

During my visit in 2016 there were no Jews living in the village.

Medvin Jewish cemetery

Cemetery locates in the eatern outskirst of the village (see map above). There are 20-30 old gravestons from the beginning of XX centurie. Obviously, most of the gravestones were stolen by local Ukrainians.

Yagotin is a town in Kiev region, the center of Kiev district. It is situated on the river Supoy. According to the census of 2015, its population is 20,232 people.

Before the revolution Yagotin was a shtetl of Piriatin uyezd, Poltava province. In 1957, the village Lisniaki was incorperated into Yagotin. In the pre-revolutionary period a considerable number of Jews were living in this village. In 1910, there were 34 Jewish families; which was 85% of the whole population. That is why the statistics on the actual size of the Jewish population throughout the history of Yagotin has been quite inaccurate.

Some information for this article was taken from the interview of native of Yagotin Miron Manilov (1921-?) from centropa.org.

Beginning

Yahotyn was founded in 1552. At the end of XVII – beginning of the XIX century, Yahotyn, which belonged to Kirill Razumovsky and his son, Aleksey Kirillovich, became a remarkable commercial and industrial centre (4 fairs annually, a trade in Crimean salt, sericulture and a hosiery factory). The Jewish community is thought to have been established during this period.

In 1882, the village fell under the ‘Vremennyye Pravila’ (‘Transitional Provisions’, a regulation of the Committee of Ministers of 3 May 1882 restricting the right of Jews to live in rural areas). However, from 1903 onwards, the village was again open to Jews wishing to settle there. According to the census of 1897, Yahotyn’s Jewish community numbered 943.

In 1910, there was a private Jewish school in Yahotyn.

According to the business directory of the Russian Empire of 1903, the following people owned such shops in Yagotin:
– grocer’s shops – Gersh Mordukhovich Gurevich, David-Gersh Yoselevich Manilov, Itsko Cherkasskiy.
– shop of agricultural equipment – Chaim-Berko Veniaminovich Gronfayn
– manufactory shops – Moisey Kaganskiy, Peysakh Yasnogorodskiy.

Gerdov family owned a teahouse at the bus station. Now it is a canteen.

Gerdov’s canteen, 2010’s

Aron Fayv Bratslavskiy and Chaim Zelik Khanin were the photographers in 1914.

Newspaper “Poltavshchina” from November 13, 1905 wrote: “Town Yagotin, Piriatinskiy uyezd. Bailiff Lavgovskiy imputed to the duties of the guardians to secure the Jews. He returned the things which were stolen in the pogrom. All honor to him.”

Before the Revolution there was only one synagogue in the shtetl.  In 1911, Kh. A. Sokolovskiy was a rabbi in Yagotin. Moyshe-Ber Manilov was his assistant (?-1936).

During the Civil War, according to documents of the Ukrainian People’s Republic, 5 Jews were killed in Yahotyn on April 4, 1919; on April 7, at night, Baryshevka’s Jewish community secretly buried their bodies in Baryshivka Jewish cemetery (on the insistence of authorities).

In the 1920’s, the synagogue was closed and turned into a club.

In the 1920’s, a Jewish school was opened in Yagotin. However, I could find neither its exact location nor the year of its closing.

JDC report about the state of Yagotyn Jewish community in 1923:

Yagotin, like the rest of the cities, has gone through all the evil days that hat fell to the lot of the Ukrainian Jewry. Admist the horrors of the pogrom wave the bloody invasion of Denikin detachments has registered on the pages of the history of Yagotyn the darkest reminiscenes.  Everywhere there are signs of destruction, at each step – widows and orphans, poverty, diseases and unemployment. Aside from several pogroms by Denikin, the Jews of Yagotin endured also a number of raids from petty bands who plundered away the pitiful remnants of property left after Denikin’s  exploits. At the present time Yagotin is in a specially sad state.

Before the war the population of Yagotin was composed of small traders and artisans who thrived more or less satisfactorily. The WWI at once undermined the material well-being of the citizens. Mobilizations rooted out the most productive elements or the population who left their homes and families without any material support. But all this pales into insignificance compared with what happened later during the Civil War period.

The first detachments of soviet armies confiscated all merchandise from the Jewish traders; mass arrests for speculation also brought ruin to the population; while enraged by its failures the Denikin army vent its wild wrath upon the helpless Jews. A number of persons had lost their lives before the arrival of the enraged Denikin troops. The latter let loose help upon the city, invaded the Jewish Homes destroying and pillaging everything they could not take away with them. Frequently they would murder the Jews whom they dragged from their hiding places; rape women and girls; in many cases under 14 years of age; leaving in the wake the horrible consequences of venereal diseases. Still greater miseries befell the towns around Yagotin. Towns, settlements and villages had gone through heart-stirring experiences. A number of localities, formerly populated by Jews’, are at present desolated stretches of land and the Jews have been driven from their old habitations. Families fortunate to remain alive but in rags and barefooted escaped to Yagotyn.

Supposedly, it was Yagotyn synagogue

Towns, settlements and villages had gone through heart-stirring experiences. A number of localities, formerly populated by Jews, are at present desolated stretches of land; and the Jews have been driven from their old habitations. Families fortunate to remain alive but in rags and barefooted escaped to Yagotin as the nearest refuge place hoping to find there some protection or their brother-Jews. The wave of refugees swelled from day to day. Yagotin has become a camp of beggars, widows ana orphans. All this crowded mass of Jews not only could not offer any help to the poor but itself felt the pinch of hard times. Then typhus broke out and as the medico-sanitary conditions were far from being able to meet the new situation many young people died prematurely. Very often the typhus carried away the head of the family leaving it to shift for itself. Thus the Jewish population of Yagotin found itself in awful conditions which lasted till the inauguration of the new economic policy. With the latter the condition of the Jews became somewhat improved; but not in any conspicuous degree. While petty commerce and trades showed a certain development, heavy taxes and the continued high cost of living in conjunction with low wages. During the famine year 1922 more than half of the population of Yagotin went hungary and some cases are on record of people died of starvation. About that time a group of social workers organized a relief committee which has been getting its funds through collections and self-taxation.

Finally we have addressed the Yagotyn Landsmanshaft in America with a request for aid. In response we have received 100 parcels thanks to which many a family has been saved from death by starvation. But all this proved to be a drop in the ocean…

Holocaust

During the Second World War, Yahotin was occupied from 15 September 1941 to 20 September 1943.

On October 5, 1941 a German murder squad arrived at Yagotin. In cooperation with the local authorities the squad’s members ordered the local Jews to assemble at 8 a.m. in the building of a local clubhouse that had been a synagogue. 280 Jews, mostly women, children, and old people, were taken to the area of the country estate that had belonged to the Repnin family. There they were forced to undress and then were shot in groups of 5-10 in a deep pit that had been dug in advance. Some of the girls and young women were raped before the shooting by the squad’s solders and the head of the local authority.
German reports indicate that on October 8, 1941 the town was searched for Jews by Sonderkommando 4a: 125 Jews were found and shot.

Reburial place of Holocaust victims in common Yagotyn cemetery

After the Soviet troops had been defeated near Kiev in 1941 a transit camp for Soviet war prisoners was organized in the territory of the collective farm. Jews appeared in this camp from time to time. They were shot in the forest at the river Supoy. Nowadays several gravestones were set on that place. The nationalities of the victims weren’t specified.  The exact number of people who were shot is unknown.  It could be from some hundreds to some thousands.

According to historian A. Kruglov, 2,000 Jewish prisoners of war were shot on the way from Yahotyn to Darnitsa in October 1941.

The incomplete list of Yagotin Jews who were shot in 1941 was published by historian Yuriy Dovgoruk, a candidate of historical sciences.
Grigoriy Amlinskiy , born in 1938, a child
Yudko Beliavskiy, born in 1880
Sonia Vaysbland, born in 1865
Mani Galperin, born in 1898
Rachel Galperin, born in 1876, maiden name – Papilov
Yakov Galperin, born in 1909
Mikhail Gorelik, born in 1924, a pupil
Seya Gorelik, born in 1930
Yania Gorelik, born in 1902
Izrail Zayenchik, born in 1926, a schoolboy
Yudit Yoffe, born in 1900
Ionia Kaminski, born in 1927, a pupil
Esther Kaminski, maiden name – Galperin
Moisey Leon, born in 1893
Moshe Leonov, born in 1900
Liza Livshits, born in 1922
Leyba Makhtin, born in 1894
Tsila Makhtin, born in 1925, maiden name – Smolianskaya
Khertsi Moskovich, born in 1893
Maryasia Naydis, born in 1885, maiden name – Zhukovskaya
Moti Poliakov, born in 1908
Tsilia Khanin, born in 1926
Vera Khersonskaya, born in 1922, a pupil
Runia Khersonskaya, born in 1911
Chaya Khersonskaya, born in 1925, a schoolgirl
Avraam Khersonskiy, born in 1925, a schoolboy

In 1942, Klara Gorelik and Roza Rodakova (Rodak) who had been hiding but then was revealed were shot.

We know several cases of Jews saved by the local Ukrainians. Ryta Yosypivna Vaysblat was saved by Liubov Bezsmertna.

Approximately 330 Jews were killed in Yagotin during the Holocaust.

Part of the interview of Holocaust survival Petr Moskovitch who lost his entire family in Yagotyn:

The victims’ nationalities are not specified on the memorials which had been installed in the places of mass shootings.

After the WWII

After the war a few families came back to the town. Those were Lev Alekseyevich and Mina Abramovna Gold, the Malogolovkins (left for Israel), the Libermans;  Sofya,Naum, and Dvoyra Shapiro, Yuriy Tsarik, the Atlases, and the Rabinoviches.

Dmitriy Samoylovich Mekler was the head of Yagotin House of Culture. Mikhail Yoffe was in charge of public catering. His father was a miller.

In the 1990’s, a Jewish community was formed in Yagotin. The majority of its members are the pensioners so their number is constantly decreasing.

In 2016, there were 22 people in the Jewish community. The amount of Halakha Jews among them is unknown.

Famous Jews from Yagotyn

Grigoriy Yakovlevich Tsarik (1909-1974) – a Soviet industry worker, , toolmaker of Kiev factory “Arsenal”, one of the first Stakhanovates in Kiev. There was a time when one of Kiev streets was named after him.

Grigoriy Yakovlevich Tsarik

Eliezer-Shloyme Rabinovich (1864, Yagotin – ?) – a linguist, folklorist

Aron Meyerovich Belikov (1919, Yagotin – 1973) – a Soviet military activist, Major General.

Oleksandr Avramovych Deko ( 1926, Yagotin – 2016, Israel) – a Ukrainian prose writer, translator, expert in literature, essayist, journalist, publisher, and a public figure.  A chief editor of Israeli magazine “Sobornist” (Unity)which was published in the Ukrainian language. He lived in Chernihiv and Kyiv. He has been living and working in Israel since 2004.

Vynohrad – Vinohrad – Виноград (Ukrainian), Vinograd (Polish), ווינאָגראַד – Winorod (Yiddish)

Vinohrad is a village in Lisyanka district of Cherkassy region. The village’s estimated population is 1294 (as of 2001).

Information concerning Holocaust in Vinograd was given by local History teacher O.Koshman. Most of this article was taken from book Childhood in a Shtetl by Abraham P. Gannes.

Beginning

The Jewish community existed in Vynohrad since the XVIII century.

The village received Magdeburg rights 1850.

Vinograd means “a town of vineyards” but grapes were not grown in the area. Abraham Mindich, estimated that “the town was about one-half mile wide and a mile long with all the stores and shops located in the middle of the town. There was also space next to the stores where farmers brought their fruits and vegetables every Monday to sell to the Jewish population and to buy manufactured goods in the stores. All around the town empty land separated us from the gentile farmers (muzhiks), spread out for miles around us. One part of the empty space was reserved for Monday’s fair where the farmers brought their horses and cattle to sell and buy”.

In 1847 the combined Boyarka-Vinograd Jewish population consisted of 497: 253 men and 244 women. In 1847 Boyarka and Vinograd were listed as one township. In 1897, the towns were listed separately. Vinograd’s total population was “4064 of which 1523 were Jews, based on statistics of 1882.” In 1903 Vinograd was opened for free Jewish settlement.  Noteworthy is that in 1882, more than 35% of Vinograd’s total population were Jews.

Shtetl’s map in the beginning of XX century by Liuba Tenofskiy

In 1903, the restrictions on the settlement of Jews were canceled after the abolition of the “Provisional Regulations”. In the late 19th century, two synagogues operated.
The Jewish population suffered from the riots and lootings despite the existence of a Jewish self-defense of 25 people.

In 1909 a Talmud-Torah was opened.

Jews in the main were tradesman and merchants – as tailors, cobblers, carpenters, storekeepers, water carriers, wagoners, seamstresses, horse and cattle traders, wheat, egg, sugar and textiles merchants, shochtim (ritual slaughterers) and butchers, tanners, midwives, blacksmiths, teachers, lumber dealers, and flour mill owners.

Story of the great fire in Vinograd as remembered by Sholem Lukach: “It happened on a Friday in May 1900, fire struck our town. Ours was a small town, called Vinograd, in the province of Kiev, Kiev, Zwinigrodka county. Most of the houses were small made of wood with straw thatched roofs …As was the custom on Fridays, the housewives began to prepare for the Sabbath. Moshe Eidel’s wife lit the stove to prepare the Sabbath food which was cooked in a primitive oven fired by wood and straw. Accidentally, a spark ignited the straw roof and since the houses were close to one another, to the town’s misfortune, they caught fire which spread throughout the town. “The wind was strong that day and the fire spread from one end of town to the other. The commotion was great, people running about, screaming: Fire! Everyone grabbed a pail and ran to fetch water from the town well since there was no fire brigade in those days. But to no avail. Most of the town was on fire … Men and women rushed around in great confusion. They succeeded in salvaging some of their possessions and carried them to an empty lot on the outskirts of the town. Only a few houses with sheet metal roofs escaped the fire among them our house…

PreRevolution mill in Vinograd, 2016

Relatives estimated the Jewish population in 1917 “was 300 to 500 families for a total 3000 souls out of a total general population of 9000 to 10,000. I tend to favor the 500 figure based on the percentage of the Jewish population to the total population. The shtetl proper was almost 100% Jewish with the possible exception of the aptek (pharmacy) and the liquor store owned by non-Jews, and the Volost (City Hall) and the government officials.

Members of the large Mindich family engaged in several trades and businesses, as wholesale egg dealers, hardware and grocery store owners, owners of a flour mill, cooking oil and cereal producers.

There was no doctor, hospital or clinic in the shtetl. The pharmacist (feldsher in Yiddish) was consulted or called in occasionally to attend the sick and to prescribe medication Application of leeches and cupping was a general practice. Zvingrodka was the nearest town which had a hospital and doctors, Jews and non-Jews. For a short time, there was a doctor in town. Haya Nir’s father, Abraham Friedman, rented the family’s new building to an out-of-town doctor, allegedly a communist. He served the town well and befriended the family. One day, Cossacks surrounded the budding, seized the doctor and shot him.
Monday and Thursday were market days and busy ones for Jews and peasants of the surrounding villages. The yarid played an important role in the shtetls’ economy and welfare.
The town Bet Din (religious court) was headed by Rabbi Yerachmiel, assisted by pious and respected scholarly laymen.

The town Mikveh, the women’s ritual bath, as prescribed in the tradition, was a basic institution for the maintenance of Jewish family purity. Another institution was the Hekdesh (poor house) for the care of the indigent, the mentally disturbed and the retarded.
Vinograd had its share of apikorsim (non-believers), Zionists, Hebraists, Socialists, Bundists, Maskilim (adherents of the Haskalah – the Enlightenment Movement). Followers of these ideologies were few in number in the shtetl but they were among us and found expression in one way or another.

The early disintegration and destruction of the shtetl’s way of life began with the increased emigration between 1910-1914 by husbands, single men and women, seeking a new life mainly in the United States, Canada, Cuba, Western Europe, South America and Palestine. Those who left before World War I and the 1917 Revolution were motivated by several interrelated factors: the social, economic and political future was bleak. The rising government-sponsored anti-Semitism, the memory of the 1903 Kishinev pogrom, the 1911 Mendel Beilis blood libel case, the turmoil and the instability of the Czarist regime, following the Russo-Japanese war, and the 1905 Revolution, which threatened the existence of the Jewish population.

Synagogues in shtetl

The Bes Medrash synagogue was on the west side, left of the marketplace and the Kloiz synagogue on the right side. A small synagogue (die kleine shulchl) is shown north of the market place.
The Kloiz, according to Tenofsky, was a huge imposing two-story structure attended by the well educated, scholarly individuals and by men of substance and wealth. The synagogues were Orthodox in tradition and practice. The Kloiz was a Hasidic congregation which followed the Sephardic liturgy. Abraham Ganapolsky remembers that his father, Mendel, was a teacher in the Kloiz. Rabbi Yerachmiel conducted regular study groups at the Bes Medrash.
Liuba Tenofsky notes that accommodations were made available for the Yomtovniks (holiday guests), that is, for Jews who lived in nearby villages which were too small to have their own synagogues. On major holidays and festivals, the Yomtovniks came to town for the observance and worship in the Bes Medrash.

New shops on the sites of former Jewish shops. Distance between buildings still small as before Revolution

The Bes Medrash was a place of Orthodox worship and study, for those who were, presumably, “opponents” of the Hasidim called Mitnagdim. Liuba Tenofsky, whose father Henzl was the shames of the Bes Medrash, remembered it as a large and beautiful building and had a sketch made of it, featuring the different parts of the synagogue: the Aron Kash which contained the Torah scrolls and which faced Mizrach, the Balemer (the central podium where the Torah scroll was read), her father’s seat on the Balemer, the pews on the three sides, fronting the Holy Ark and the Balemer, the separate entrances to the synagogue for men and women, the mechitzah (the partition separating men and women), the women’s section, the social and study halls, the cantor’s and choir’s places. A feature shown on the sketch, which I do not personally remember, are the stained glass windows above the Holy Ark. According to Liuba “The Bes Medrash was big enough for 500 taleisim (prayer shawls) or congregants.”

Shaya Antnovsky had a largest inn in shtetl. Also he was a leader in Bes Medrash and has good relation with gentile officials and the town priest.
Dov Ber Ganapolskiy was on of the leaders and pillars in the Kloiz, the synagogue of the Hasidim in the shtetl.

Zionists in Vinograd

Louis Antonoff records that his father, Shlomo,  left for Palestine before the outbreak of WWI with the intention of bringing his wife and eight children to Eretz Yisrael. He bought land and deposited money in a Palestine-English bank. He was making plans and preparations for moving the family to Palestine but the outbreak of the War in 1914 postponed his plans. Sadly, Mishke age 19, one of his sons, was killed in a pogrom in our shtetl. Another son, Motel, age 24, during a pogrom, hid in a cold, damp cellar, contracted pneumonia and died as a result of it. In 1919, the family left the shtetl, endured the hardships, crossed the Dniester River to Bessarabia illegally, spent months in Romania and after an arduous journey, arrived in Palestine. After the War, inspired and motivated by Zionist beliefs and convictions, as many as fifty Vinograd families found their way to Palestine, among them the Antonovsky, Krasnovsky, Resnick, Lukach, Cohen, Friedman, Zunder, Brodsky, Olin families.

Vinograders in Israel: top to bottom Nachman Gussak Left to Right Hayim Labovsky, Shlomo Antonovsky, David Resnik, Tuvia Lukach, Bezalel Antonovsky, Sholem Lukach, Abraham Friedman, Leib Schwartzburg, Yaakov Zunder, Tuvia Zunder Credit: Hanna Antonovsky-Steier

A Zionist group attracted those who were contemplating or planning immigration to Palestine. A Hebrew literary circle, in which Uncle Lipa was an active member, read the writings of the Hebraists of the day and Hebrew periodicals, such as Hamelitz (Interpreter or Advocate) and Harzefirah (the Dawn), the first Hebrew magazines, published in the nineteenth century.
Lipa Antonovsky opened a modern Hebrew school. Not satisfied with the enrollment and negative attitude of the traditionalists, he moved to Yekatrinoslay.

Labor-Zionist group existed in Vinograd also.

Civil War pogroms

Sporadic pogroms were committed in Vinograd, the first one on November 13, 1917, and others at 1918-1920.
In a letter to the Ministry of Jewish Affairs of the Rada, dated October 27, 1918, a Vinograd reporter whose name is not recorded wrote: “For three months we have lived in fear and without any government protection. From time to time, bands numbering thirty to forty riders, fully armed, enter our shtetl, drive the Jews into the synagogue, surround it, threaten to shoot them, and demand tribute to be paid immediately. While waiting for payment of ransom they move from house to house and plunder them. On the road close to our town seven Jews were ambushed and murdered and when several wives and mothers arrived in the village and begged for the return of the bodies so as to give them the proper burial, they too were murdered. Many Jews were murdered in nearby towns such as Ryznivka, where the peasants killed seven Jews.”

Liuba Tenofsky remembered the tragic event which struck the town, although her version is slightly different The results, however, were the same. Her Aunt Ruchel and Uncle Yossie and their two sons were among the victims.
Murray Brodsky, who left the shtetl in 1919, remembered a pogrom which his family experienced: “A pogrom occurred on a Sunday. The Reds arrived in the shtetl and demanded of the peasants tons of wheat, corn, and other products. The peasants refused, organized themselves and killed all the Reds. Suspicious of the Jews, the peasants rounded up all the young men, brought them to the synagogue and beat them severely. My two brothers, Solomon and Joe were among them. A gentile, Gorst by name, a friend of the family, brought to our home a Professor Tutumac, the leader of the pogromchiks. My mother served him refreshments – tea, cake, and jelly. My father wrote a note requesting the release of his two sons, asking Tutumac to sign it. He refused. Gorst too begged him to sign and finally, he did. Whereupon my mother prepared a platter of good; es which I brought to the synagogue to the leader. He immediately orders to release my two brothers.

There was a synagogue in this area. I don’t find information when it was demolished

The rabbi in town had a nephew in Zvinigrodka who came for a visit to Vinograd. It appears that nephew was one of the leaders of the Bolsheviks in Zveigorodka.  The pogromchiks seized and killed him and took the rabbi with them when they left the shred. They brought him to a nearby village and sent word demanding ransom money for his release. The money was sent and the rabbi was set free. The entire shtetl welcomed him back. The rabbi was still wearing his tallis and his tefilin… From then on, pogromchiks would come to town at night and kill Jews. The Jewish WWI veterans who had returned from the war organized a self-defense group and patrolled the streets. For a time it was peaceful until the pogromchiks organized on a big scale. The Jews were defenseless…. The Reds came again and again, made their demands for supplies, were surrounded but fought back with machine guns….. We returned to Vinograd before Yom Kippur. In the synagogue, the Shamas urged all the townspeople to be on the alert. The problems became worse and once again we fled to Zvenigorodka”.
Liuba Tenofsky described the tragic death of her father, Hemel, the Shamas of the Bes Medrash: “My father died a martyr’s death during a vicious pogrom in 1920. Bandits on horseback rounded up all the Jews and set fire to the Bes Medrash. Henzl ran to the Aron Kodesh, seized a Sefer Torah, held it tightly and ran out of the synagogue, also holding on to his grandson, Ellie. The bandits, with whips in hand, chased him until he fell down in the dirt road and gasped his last breath, still holding the Sefer Torah in his arms.”‘

Saul Mindich’s stories, sad and tragic, like those of his relatives and other townspeople, are illustrative of the turbulence and trauma Vinograd endured:
“When the bandits came into town, they rounded up as many Jews as they could find…. Jews would run and hide. Those who couldn’t were locked up in the synagogue and held for ransom. If the ransom was not paid, the soldiers threatened to burn the synagogue and the Jews in it …. A committee was formed, the ransom was raised by taxing each family according to the committee’s judgement …”

Small Jewish self defence group was organised in shtetl. They obtained some guns and stayed in one house, sending out people to patrol the streets. If they noticed someone who looked suspicious coming into town, they informed the patrol guards who alerted the townspeople, thus avoiding many tragedies.

I estimate that Vinograd experienced as many as twenty attacks.

Leaders of the Whites occupied Zaide Shaya’s inn. Family members took shelter somewhere else. Zaide Shaya was ordered to provide the Whites with 200 pairs of boots. His pleas that he could not possibly fill the demand were dismissed. He was threatened with severe punishment personally and warned that the shtetl would suffer terribly if he did not comply with the demands within 24 hours. He ran from household to household and somehow managed to assemble 100 pairs of used and new boots. Fearing for his life, he gave the boots to the Whites and mercifully he was not harmed. He may have been spared because they stayed at his inn. This story, Zaide Shaya told the family a few days after the event too, had compassion for their Jewish neighbors, hid saved them.

Aunt Rachel later reported that in the place where she was in hiding, an infant began to cry. The mother, in the effort to keep the child quiet, held it tight, covered its mouth and unknowingly smothered it.

Local priest risked his life during the pogroms by hiding the Jewish families in the cold storage cellars on his beautiful estate.

Between the Wars

Most Vinograder found their way to the United States. Inspired by their Zionist beliefs and convictions, some families settled in Palestine; others migrated to Canada, Argentina and other countries. With the removal of residence restrictions after the Revolution, Vinograder abandoned the shtetl and settled in Kiev, Kharkov, Minsk, Odessa, Moscow, Leningrad, Lvov and other large cities of USSR. How many families remained in Vinograd? In 1926, the Jewish population of Vinograd was 1108.

JDC report about Vinograd, 1923:

I recall that members of the family, whenever possible, and the Vinograder Benevolent Society periodically sent funds and packages to their impoverished townspeople.

In the middle 1930’s, the United States and the Soviet Union resumed diplomatic relations. Vinograder living in America and in Palestine, came to visit the shtetl, or were in telephone contact with their relatives.

In 1922, Jewish self-defense detachment in the shtetl consists of 25 people.

From the memories of Angelina Feodosiyivna Snigur (Baglay), born in 1926:

In the 1930’s the following Jews were repressed:
– Favel Zeylikinovich Linchuk was shot in 1938.
– Y.G. Zaberstein was shot in 1937
– K.L. Zaberstein was sentenced to five years in prison in 1938

Holocaust

Vinograd was occupied in July 1941. A small percentage of Vinograd’s Jewish population evacuated but the majority stayed behind. When the Germans entered the village, the Jewish population began to suffer. They were humiliated and beaten. Ukrainian auxillary policemen robbed the Jewish houses and drew yellow stars on them.

The first victim was Komsomol girl Olshanska. She was shot near the Jewish cemetery.

The largest part of the Jews of Vinograd was shot or buried alive together with all the Jews of Lysianka district in Pochapyntsi forest. The former director of the local mill Ganopolskiy and his family, Levko Tsmokov’s wife, and three children (one of the daughters’ name was Raya), pharmacist Bilotserkivsky’s family, Avram Zhabiansky’s family (daughter Ita, daughter-in-law Sarah with two children), Bilopolsky with his wife, brothers Isak and Shimon Basovsky, Shimon’s wife Dina, grandson Izia; Israyil Shubynsky with his wife, 79 year old Mordko Zhabyansky, Avram Zhabyansky, Levko Bilopolsky, barber Vyshnevetsky with his family, tailor Mykhaylo Mykytiansky with the family were killed in that forest.

Leonid Olshanytsky was called up to the front and his family stayed in occupation. The policemen burnt his 17 year-old daughter’s hair and then killed her. His 13 year-old son Volodia was shot at the Jewish cemetery. His mother Dvoyra, wife Malka, and two year-old daughter Vera were shot in Pochapyntsi forest. After the war Leonid dug out the body of his son and reburied him in Pochapyntsi near the mass grave.

Oleksandra Savivna Pavlychuk from Bosivka had been hiding cinema mechanic from Vinograd Petr Ruvinovych Basovsky in the attic for a month and a half. He survived and used to come there after the war.

Leonid Yosypovych Tsmokov (1918-1986) ran away from the column of the Jews who were being led to be shot. He was hiid at the home of the Dolubakha family however he was found. Mykola Chornohuz (a member of the Ukrainian auxillary police) was ordered to escort him to the Jewish cemetery were he was to be shot him however, Chornohuz sparred his life. Tsmokov survived the occupation and was mobilized into the Soviet Army following Vinograd’s liberation. He ended up fighting in Poland and Germany.

O.M. Dubova, a resident of Vinograd village reminds: “I had best friend Fayina Abramivna Bilotserkivska. Her father was a pharmacist and an honorable person in the village. In June 1941, Fayina went to her relatives to Leningrad to enter the institute and died during the blockade in Leningrad. Her father Abram Volodymyrovych Bilotserkivsky, mother Reveka Markivna, and aunt Roza Markivna stayed in the village. When the Germans entered Vinograd they were expelled from the village and then they all were buried alive. There were two Jews in my class, Elik Basovsky and Fania Bilotserkivska. They both died.

There was a Jewish family Postrilko in the village. When the fascists were shooting seven Jews in the pit near Vinograd Yakiv Postrilko was among them. He was heavily wounded but managed to reach the co-villagers. They took care of him, cured him. However, someone gave him away and he was shot.

Ukrainian, Mykola Vasyliovych Yakymchuk, was married to a Jewish woman Betia, they had four children. When the war began Mykola went to the Red Army as a volunteer. The children together with their mother were hidden in the village but someone gave them away. They all were shot at the Jewish cemetery. Brothers Izia and Milia Zozulia died at that place as well. Mykola survived and lived in the village after the war. Every day he went to the grave of his wife and children.

351 people from Vinograd were called up when the war began.  There were 24 Jews among them. Nine of them died. Those were Elik Basovskiy, Shika, Mikhail and Vladimir Gutnik, Isak Yosypovych Tsmokov, Mykola Avramovych Spektor, Petro Yefymovych Olianytsky, Hordiy Hryhorovych Tsyberman, Avram Mamonovych Pyliavsky. Yakov Oleksovych Papuzny and Stepan Davydovych Popenko disappeared.

The amount of killed Jews from Vinograd is difficult to count. We can assume that there were more than 100 people.

After the WWII

When Lysianka district had been freed a part of the Jewish population came back from the evacuation.

In 2017, information concerning last Jews from the village was provided by Nina Lvovna Tsmokova (born in 1946).She was a daughter of one of the last Jews of the village, invalid of WWII Leonid Olshanitskiy (1902-1980):

– Worker at the local shop,, Mikhail Vishnevetskiy, and teacher of the German language Faina Isakovna Gutnik’s family. They had two daughters Alla and Ira.
– Golda Gunik and her son Aaron who left for Kiev and then for Canada.
– Supplier Don Shvartsburg with his wife Rachel and son Alik. He moved to Kramatorsk.
– Glazier Ayzik Kelmanskiy with his wife Sonia and son Yasha. The latter went to Dnepropetrovsk.
– Mikhail and Anna Skliarskiy with their three sons . Two of them moved to Krivoy Rog and then to Israel.
– Veksler family. The head of the family was producing sparkling water. There was son Petr and daughter Roza.
– Post-war school principal Betia Tsmokova with her sister Olia.
– Sokalskiy family with daughter Roza.
– Saddler Meylekh Skliarskiy with his wife Sheyva and daughter Tatyana.
– Glazier Grigoriy Budnik

Last Jews of Vinograd lived here after the WWII in few buildings close to each over.

Dead Jews were buried in Zvenigorodka because the Jewish cemetery in Vinograd was destroyed.

Gradually, Jewish families went to live to large cities, old men died. The last Jew in the village was Leonid Yosipovich Tsmokov (1918-1986).

Jewish cemetery

The demolished Jewish cemetery is located behind the entrance sign of Vynohrad village in the direction of Lysianka. The sign is made of granite and is over three meters in height. In the adjacent field, there are up to ten tombstones.

There are unmarked mass graves from Civil War and WWII. We don’t know their exact location…

Jewish cemetery operated from the early XIX century until 1953. Most of the gravestones were stolen by local Ukrainians.
In the second half of XX century, local Jews buried their relatives in Zvenigorodka Jewish cemetery or used local Christian cemetery.

Gravestones around the whole territory of former Jewish cemetery:

Last gravestones were stolen by local bastard Petro Basok, but he returned them in the cemetery and they are standing in one line.

The oldest surviving monument:
1886
פ”נ
אשה ח’ מ’
אסתר רייזיל
בת ר’ יצחק נפ
כד שבט תרמו
תנצבה
Here buried
is a respected woman
Esther Reizel
Daughter of rabbi Yitshak, who died
On Shvat 24, 5646.
May her soul be bound in the bond of life

Part of this information was taken from Lo-Tishkah website.

Genealogy

In the census of the Jews of Vinograd for 1894 there were such surnames as Antonovskiy, Balagura, Baltaksa, Berinskiy, Berkun, Bershadskiy Blinder, Bosovskiy, Brichkov, Brodskiy, Vinnitskiy, Vishnevetskiy, Vodianitskiy, Ganopolskiy, Gitman, Glistvayb, Golub, Gronshbel, Dubovik, Zhabianskiy, Zaychik, Zaslavskiy, Zilberand, Zlotchenko, Zozulia, Zunder, Kagan, Kanevskiy, Keykhman, Kirp, Kleyman, Kosogliad, Kotelnik, Kuperman, Lebedianskiy, Lelchuk, Lukach, Lvovskiy, Mezherichskiy, Mikitianskiy, Niregberg, Pokras, Postrelko, Promyshlovskiy, Reznik, Reznikov, Reynish, Rubchanskiy, Sandler, Skliarskiy, Slabovik, Sogutovskiy, Sokalskiy, Teplitskiy, Tynovskiy, Faynerman, Fridman, Cherkes, Shvartsburd, Shestak, Shekhtman, Shmandur, Shneyder, Shoykhet, Shostak, Shubinskiy, Eydish, Eydlin, Efros, Yampolskiy.

List was provided by Mitya farber. Thanks to Mitya