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.

Obuchów (Polish), Обухів – Obukhiv (Ukrainian), Обухов – Obukhov (Russian)

Obukhov is a town in Kiev region. Its population is 33,322 people in 2016. Before the revolution, it was a shtetl in Kiev uyezd of Kiev Gubernia.

I couldn’t find any serious data concerning the history of Obukhov Jews. The materials from articles of local historian was used for this article.

It is not known when Jews first settled in Obukhov.

In the late XIX – early XX century there was a whole Jewish block in the old part of Obukhov. Today it is known as “Center”.

Here Jews owned 72  establishments.

The Jews traded in nearby shtetls such as Germanovka, Tripolie, and Cherniakhov. The Jewish merchants of the second and first guild lived in Obukhov. They owned stalls and shops.

Obukhov entrepreneurs list from Russian Empire Business Directories by 1913

In 1913, Obukhov was a center of Obukhov volost with the population of 8,272 people. More than one thousand Jews lived in the shtetl, so there were two synagogues, one Jewish merchant council, and a Jewish savings bank.

The Jews in Obukhov owned drugstores, distilleries, bakeries, hardware stalls, 23 groceries, and 14 manufacturiers.

One synagogue was situated on the spot of the modern cinema. The other one was near the lake to the right of the bus station.

The first wave of Jewish pogroms in Obukhov began on the 22 of October 1905. It is interesting that the initiators were some peasants of one part of Obukhov, and it was stopped by the peasants of the other part. They just beat the anti-Semites. Though, they had managed to destroy 12 stalls out of 54 and six Jewish houses.

The Jewish community of Obukhov disappeared during the civil war.

On 7 May 1918 the city was robbed by the Sixth Soviet regiment. I’ve found just a memory of ataman Zelenii’s pogrom of the 25th of June 1919. It is possible that the Jews were robbed by both Denikin’s people and local Ukrainian bandits.

Map of the shtetl Obukhov, 1900. 1, 2 – synagogues; 3 – market square

After the second pogrom in 1919, the majority of Obukhov’s Jews fled to Kiev.

I could’t find any information about the Jews of Obukhov after 1920.

When the Jews had left Obukhov, it became a common village and started to develop only in the second part of the 20th century after large industrial enterprises had been built there. People from all over the Soviet Union came here to work on the new enterprises. There were Jews among them. However, they knew very little about the history of pre-revolutionary Obukhov.

There was a synagogue

A Jewish community was formed in the 1990’s. Though, the majority of the Jews left for Israel, the rest of them assimilated and formed mixed marriages.

The community exists but the number of Halakhic Jews among then is unknown.

Center of “Old” Obukhov. Most of the population is living in the “New” part near plants.

Jewish cemetery

The cemetery was located on the north-western outskirts of the town, off ul. Lukavitsa. The cemetery site is has been built upon and there is no remaining visible trace of its existence.

The cemetery was destroyed during the period of collectivisation. The tombstones were removed by locals for construction purposes. The cemetery site was developed in 1992.

Ingormation was taken from Lo-Tishkah website.

Makarov is a city, district center of Kiev region. The city’s estimated population is 11.860 (as of 2006).

It is known since the early 17th century. In the XVII-XVIII centuries it was a part of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. In 1793 it was incorporated into the Russian Empire. In the XIX and early XX centuries, it was a shtetl of Kiev uyezd (district) in Kiev gubernia.

Head of local museum Vitaliy Hedz, US tourist Aaron Ginsburg and author of this article in Makarov museum, 2017

Beginning

According to some historical sources, Jews in Makarov appeared in the second part of the XVIII century. A synagogue was built there and it became the residence of one of the first rabbis of Kiev region.

In 1754, a fact of beating several Jews by the local police was recorded in documents.

In 1765, it numbered 217 people. From the beginning of the 19th century, the town belonged to landowner Mikhail Pavsha, and later to his son Ksaveriy and his grandson Nikolay Ksaveryevich; their estate administration was located in the town.
In the XIX century, the Jewish population of Makarov was severely suffering from frequent fires that took place in 1854, 1855, 1856, 1859.

The fire of 1865 destroyed 50 Jewish houses.

Makarov entrepreneurs list from Russian Empire Business Directories by 1913

A Hasidic dynasty (a branch of Chernobyl Hasidism) was founded in Makariv in 1837. Its founder was Rebbe Menachem Nachum Tversky (1805, Chernobyl – 1852, Makariv), the first son of the second Chernobyl rebbe. Rebbe Menachem Nachum stood out among his 7 brothers by his insistence on returning to his grandfather’s traditions. After his father’s death, Rebbe Menachem Nachum left for Makariv and founded a magnificent court there, in accordance with the tradition of the Chernobyl rebbes. He married the granddaughter of the Seer of Lublin (Rebbe Yaakov Itshak).

Rebbe Nachum died on the 7th of Tishrei 5612 (1852), though there is a legend that he was killed during prayers on Rosh Hashanah. He was succeeded by his son, Rebbe Yaakov Itshak of Makarov (1832-1892). He was named after his grandfather, the Seer of Lublin, whom, they say, he resembled.

PreRevolution Jewish neighborhood in Makarov, 2017

In 1852, he occupied his father’s place in Makariv; he was influential and enjoyed the recognition and love of his father’s Hasids. It is known that Rebbe Yaakov Itshak was denouced and imprisoned for some time in Kiev. Rebbe Yaakov Itshak had three sons. Two of them, Rebbe Moshe Mordechai of Makarov-Berdichev (1844-1920) and Rebbe Yeshaya of Makarov (?-1920), took over Makariv’s Hasidic court after their father’s death in 1892. At the beginning of the 20th century, Rebbe Moshe Mordechai left for Kodnya, then, in 1910, to Berdichev, where he became the Makarov tzaddik of the town.

Rebbe Moshe Mordechai was famous for his prayers: it is said that those who heard them could not forget it. He was buried in Berdichev. His son, Rebbe Tsvi Arye (Ersh-Leyb) of Makarov-Berdichev (? – 1938, Berdichev) took the court to Berdichev after his father’s death. He was known as a healer and miracel worker. He was buried in the family vault in Berdichev. Rebbe Moshe Mordechai’s brother, Rebbe Yeshaya of Makarov, moved to Kiev in 1916. He became famous for his phenomenal memory, exceptional generosity, and unique lyrical tenor. He was very knowledgeable and spoke perfect Russian. Rebbe Yeshaya’s son, Rebbe Yaakov Itshak of Kiev-Chicago (1896-1945), headed the court of the Makarov Hasids in Kiev when he was 14 years old, after his father’s death. In 1926, he left Kiev for Chicago, where he founded a beit midrash. Rebbe Yaakov Itshak’s third son, Rebbe David of Kiev, died in Kiev in 1902. His son, Rebbe Menachem Nachum of Makarov-Zovgel (1872-1925), moved to the USA and was the Makarov tzaddik in Massachusetts.

PreRevolution brewery in Makarov, 2017.

During the XIX century, the synagogue and the beit midrash were rebuilt several times (at the landowner’s expense according to L. Pokhilevich) because of fires devastating the town. In 1867 there was one synagogue in Makariv; by the end of the century there were six. According to Pokhilevich, Makariv’s rabbi received an annual income of 150 roubles. In 1910 there is evidence of a well-regarded Talmud Torah in Makariv, in 1912 a Jewish savings co-operative and in 1913 a Jewish hospital. In 1914, all three drugstores, 85 shops, a tavern, 2 honey factories and 2 timber yards belonged to Jews.

In the late XIX/early XX century, the official Makariv rabbi was Dr Simcha Veniaminovich Gluzman. From 1910, the rabbi of Makariv was the Lubavitch Hasid L. Grausman.

There was a Makarov synagogue on this site

Civil War pogrom

The Jewish population of Makariv suffered under the pogroms of the Civil War. Makariv’s Jews defended themselves against attacks on November 21, 1917, but on July 6 and August 15 1919 20 Jews were killed in attacks by gangs led by Sokolovsky and Matviyenko. By the time the Volunteer Army arrived, about 4,000 Jews had left Makariv, leaving around 200 elderly people. Around half of those remaining were killed during a pogrom carried out by the Volunteer Army on 18 August 1919, including 17 members of a Jewish delegation sent to greet them. A further pogrom took place on 6 September 1919.

Site of destroyed Jewish cemetery in Makarov. Unknown number of mass graves with pogrom victims were located there.

There exist memoirs about pogroms in Makarov which were written in Russian by residents Temskii G.L., Krupievskii O.Sh., and Frimgod Khaim. These documents can be easily accessed.
Khaim Frimgod witnessed a pogrom carried by Denikin’s pogrom in 1919. “On Monday August 18, volunteers entered Makarov. Jews with bread and salt went to meet them but this present was rejected. Immediately they began to beat the Jews, they took their boots and dresses off and gave them to local peasants. Jews were caught in the streets and shot. About 50 elderly men were shot during the pogrom. They killed five to six Jews a day. It was impossible to escape from the shtetl. It was impossible to escape from the shtetl as there was risk of being killed on the road out. Bodies of dead Jews lied in the streets, dogs and pigs were nibbling their heads.
Afterwards peasants threw the bodies into mass graves in groups of 20-25. About 80 Torah scrolls were destroyed. Last Monday of September, eight Jews were killed at the local hospital. The total number of Jews that were killed during this period was approximately 100 people. Their belongings were stolen, and the rest of the Jews fled Makarov.

Between the Wars

As a result of the pogroms the Jewish community of Makarov was greatly reduced. The majority of Jews never returned to Makarov. In 1926 only 582 Jews lived here.
On September 20 1922, the first agricultural collective farm “Revival” was formed. I.A. Glazman was elected as its head. The majority of collective farm workers were Jews. In 1930, there were 141 Jewish workers. During

I.A. Glazman, Head of Jewish farm in Makarov

In 1930, there were 141 Jewish workers. During famine of 1932-1933 the collective farm fed Ukrainian children, thus saving their lives. After the war, the collective farm started its work again. On June 19th 1950, the collective farm “Revival” was united with the Petrovskii collective farm, and turned into the Khrushchev collective farm.

Holocaust

Makarov had been occupied from July 11th 1941 till November 8th 1943. It was in Kiev district. In late July 1941, Sondercommander detachment 4a shot 14 Jews. In autumn 1941, about 90-100 Jews were shot in Makarov. The executioners were 20 Germans and local policemen who arrested their neighbors. In the first part of September 1941, groups of 7, 10, and 17 Jews were shot in Makarov by the German field gendarmerie in the garden of the former Jewish collective farm “Revival”. There were communists among the victims as well. The Jews who were arrested were kept in the barn in the yard of a former district executive committee. This office served as the temporary headquarters of the German field gendarmerie. In November 1941, anothe shooting took place. During this shooting 30 Jews were killed. Their belongings were taken into the house of Vinnitskii who was shot. All the Jewish belongings were sold to the local population. There were Jews who didn’t manage to evacuate in time in the territory of the district.

Holocaust mass grave in Makarov

There were Jews who didn’t manage to evacuate in time in the territory of the district. A Jewish family of four stayed at a local hospital in the village of Byshev. In July 1941, policemen arrested this family and shot them near the village of Kozichanka. After that they divided the families belongings amongst themselves. Still there were cases of opposition. In Lishnia village one of the policemen was escorting an arrested Jew who had escaped from German captivity to the police department in Bishev village. The latter attacked the policemen outside the village trying to steal his weapon. Another policeman ran up to help the colleague and killed the Jew.

More than 100 Jews died in Makarov and nearby villages.

In 1967, a monument was established in Makarov. The nationality of victims was not indicated.

Soviet memorial to perished civilians which was built in 50 meters from Holocaust mass grave.

The head of the local police Fedor (Bogdan) Skrobach was a member of nationalist organization ОUN (m) was an instigator who carried out the murder of Jews. Policemen I. Pavlovskii, G. Shulga,and I. Bozhok took an active part in the shootings. Skrobach and Pavlovskii were arrested and shot in 1950. Bozhok and Shulga were sentenced to 25 years in prison but they were freed 15 years later. They were prosecuted for having shot 39 Jews from Makarov.

The list of Holocaust victims was compiled by local historian Vitalii Hedz based on the SBU materials and the memories of old residents.

In 2005, a memorial to victims of the Holocaust was erected on the site of the mass grave. This memorial was paid for by local businessman, Vasilii Simonenko.

Lists of killed and honored Jewish soldiers of Soviet Army which were drafted from Makarov:

After the WWII

About ten Jewish families returned after the war. These families were: Spivak, Reznik, Shoikhet who worked in trade , Muchnik, Lerman who worked in military registration and enlistment office, Dudnik, Shufart, Kotliar who was the head of a cafe. Mariya Reznik lived according to Jewish traditions, visited Kiev synagogue regularly.

During Stalins anti-semitic campaigns “The struggle against rootless cosmopolitans” two Jews in Makarov were arrested, A.O. Ovrutslii and L.I Golubev. Both of them were sentenced to ten years in prison in 1948 and 1952.

Makarov Jewish WWII veterans, 1970’s-1980’s. Photo was found in local museum and provided by Vitaliy Hedz

The number of the Jews was reduced because of mixed marriages and immigration.

The community was organized in the early 1990’s. Its first head was Mariya Solomonovna Reznik, then Katerina Frayevich, and Nina Kochetova was afterwards.

The majority of Makarov Jews left for Israel in the 1990’s-2000’s. Most of the eldery residents of Makarov have passed away. As 2017 about 10 Jews lived in Makarov.

Members of Makarov Jewish community in 2000’s

Genealogy

The fire of 1865 destroyed 50 Jewish houses. Because the fire destroyed so much Jewish property an application for the postponement of state loans was written to district authorities in order for the Jews to fund the rebuilding of their community. This document was signed by the following Jewish residents: Epelboim Mordukh, Fasovetskii Itsko, Ovrutskii Ovshey Srulevich, Radovskii Peysakh, Sabashkevich Shulim, Kurogodskii Nukhim, Leshberg Shmul, Sabashkevich Borukh, Skliarevskii Aron, Belednitskii Ios, Futortsa … Aba, Borispolskii Ovshii, Galodnitskii, Vaksberg Avrum, Krivitskii Moshko, Khabinskii Naftula, Galatsovskii Chaim, Ovrutskii Peysakh, Liudmirskii Gersh, Liudmirskii Berko, Kalinovskii Yankel, Knizhnik Sh., Taver Ovsey, Ovrutskii Berko, Ovrutskii Mikhel, Tsufalskiy Elia, Tverskiy Moshe, Veitsman, Taver Moshko, Rabinovich, Karabitsnis Mendel, Skliarevskii, Manbibarg Zusman, Yadnovskii Leiba, Itsnovskii Leiba, Veitsman Ia, Kondranskii Moshe Tsvi, Chakan Nukhim, Ladmirskii Leib, Ostrovskii David. This document is kept in Kiev archive.

Famous Jews from Makarov

Isak Doorinsky (1891-1973, Paris), a French painter
Moyshe Tolchin (1895-1953, Chicago), a writer who wrote in Yiddish

Old Makarov Jewish cemetery

It was destroyed in 1960’s. Some graves were transferred to Jewish section of municipal cemetery. Grave of Rebbe Menachem Nachum Tversky (1805, Chernobyl – 1852, Makariv) was restored by Rabbi Meir Gabai in 2003-2004.

New Makarov Jewish cemetery

There is a Jewish section in the municipal cemetery. There are around 40 well-maintained gravestones. Jewish section surrounded by christian’s graves.

Pereyaslav-Khmelnitskii (Pereyaslav by 1943) is a city of Kiev region, Ukraine.
It was first mentioned in the chronicles in 906 and joined the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in 1569. It was incorporated into the Russian Empire in 1654.

In the XIX-early XX centuries, it was a centr of Pereyaslav Uezd of Poltava gubernia.

Most information for this article was taken from the book of Tsilya Gehtman “Jews of Pereyaslav”.

Beginning

Jews have been living in Pereyaslav-Khmelnitskii since the XVII century. In 1620, the Polish King received complaints from his citizens about a large number of Jews in the town and their active participation in trade. Jews were prohibited to trade and own breweries, malt houses, and distilleries.

In 1623, the town council and the local Jews entered into an agreement about giving the Jews equal rights with other citizens. During the pogroms of 1648, the Jewish community of Pereyaslav-Khmelnitskii was destroyed.

Pereyaslav entrepreneurs list from Russian Empire Business Directories by 1903

During the pogroms of 1648, the Jewish community of Pereyaslav-Khmelnitskii was destroyed.

In the summer of 1835, a stone matseiva was discovered on the territory of merchant Novyi’s garden. It bore the following inscription: “This was erected above rabbi Mordokhei’s head for his descendants to remember him in 4946. Let his soul rest in sweet paradise”. The data refers to the Jewish calendar which is 1237 AD.

In 1855, three 2nd guild merchants, 209 3rd guild merchants, and 972 other merchants were registered in Pereyaslav. In 1859, five synagogues including Khasidic ones and a Jewish college were operating in Pereyaslav-Khmelnitskii. On June 30 and July 2, 1881, two pogroms took place in Pereyaslav-Khmelnitskii. Yosef Katkovskii (1841-?) was appointed a rabbi in Pereyaslav-Khmelnitskii in 1887. In 1900, the town had a society for the support of the poor. In 1905, there was a pogrom in Pereyaslav-Khmelnitskii, with all Jewish stalls were destroyed as a result. A temporary committee which helped the Jews who had survived was working in the town until September.

On this site was located the house of Sholom Aleihem parent’s.

In 1864, a Grade 1 state Jewish training school was established in Pereyaslav. It had 26 students. In 1865, a synagogue, four religious schools, 114 stables, two bars, one hotel, three canteens, four restaurants, and 15 inns were functioning in the town.

Former building of commercial secondary school

On June 30 and July 2, 1881, two pogroms took place in Pereyaslav-Khmelnitskii. Yosef Katkovskii (1841-?) was appointed a rabbi in Pereyaslav-Khmelnitskii in 1887. In 1900, the town had a society for the support of the poor. In 1905, there was a pogrom in Pereyaslav-Khmelnitskii, with all Jewish stalls were destroyed as a result. A temporary committee which helped the Jews who had survived was working in the town between September 25,1905 an April 10,1906.

Group of students in Sheftel secondary school

Israel-Ber Rizberg (1858-?) opened a Kheder, offering Hebrew lesson in Pereyaslav in 1892. In 1914-1917, he was teaching at the Pereyaslav commercial college named after Ya.S.Sheftel. In 1917-1920 – at a Jewish school.

In 1899, there was the Lensky and Vurman’s printing house at the house of Naidis.

The state restrictions on the number of Jews admitted did not apply at the Pereyaslav private women’s gymnasium so a half of its students were Jewish.
There was a Jewish foundation school with a course in locksmithing in Pereyaslav. An honorary resident Yuda Rozen was in charge. There was also a private commercial college. Doctor of Medicine Yakiv Solomonovich Sheftel was one of the trustees. After college, its students could enter further education.

Site of the former poor Jewish neighborhood in Pereyaslav. Old wooden houses were demolished in 1970’s – 1980’s

Here is the information about some synagogues in Pereyaslav in 1900:
“ Khevre Mishnayus” – Chair – honorable citizen Moisey Khatskelev Berliavskiy, scholar – Yosip Volkov Kotkovskiy, treasurer – Itsko Yevnov Kaplan;
“Bes Hamedrash” – Chair – merchant Bentsion Berov Naidis, scholar – Yankel Veniaminov Krasnopolin, treasurer – ItskoKabachnikov.
“SevkheTsedek” – Chair – Gershko Izrailev Zlobinskii, scholar – Osip Davidov Fastovskiy, treasurer Peisakh Moiseiev Minskiy.
“Bes-Hamedrash” – Chair – Sadia Vulfov Gurovich, scholar – Gershko Itskov Kaganov, treasurer Samson Meyerov Berstein.
“Visikon” – Chair Elia Ruvinov Berstein, scholar – Meyer Yankelev Yasnogorodskii, treasurer – Meyer Moiseiev Gorodetskii.

Building of the Big Synagogue in Pereyaslav

The Chair of the local Jewish prayer house “Khevre Mishnayus” merchant Moisey Khatskelevich Berliavskii and the secretary of the society that helped poor Jews Naum Mironovich Gruvman were awarded the title of “Honorable Resident” of the town in 1900. The head of the Jewish trades college Yuda Veniaminovich Rozen was awarded the same title in 1906.

A two-storied central synagogue was built around 1908-1910. Outside the building has survived until now, the interior completely transformed after a direct bomb hit in 1943.

In 1910, there were eight synagogues, a small technical school for boys, a Talmud-Torah, and a Jewish cemetery in Pereyaslav-Khmelnitskii. In 1912, Jewish savings-and-loan societies for petty traders were functioning in the town. In 1913, Pereyaslav-Khmelnitskii had a society for the support of the Jewish poor, an almshouse, and a night shelter at the synagogue. In 1914, the local Jews owned a delivery company, two pharmacies, four pharmacy warehouses, two sweet shops, a bakery, the only teahouse in town, two photo workshops, two watchmakers, 126 small stalls, and a large number of shops including 39 grocery shops, 29 jewellery stalls and a jewellery maker.

There were 17 synagogues before Civil War.

Civil war pogroms

On 15-19 July, 1919, ataman Zeleny’s band carried out a pogrom in Pereyaslav-Khmelnitskii. On 7 August, 1919, the next pogrom was carried out by ataman Lopatkin’s band. The third pogrom was perpetrated by the detachments of the Volunteer Army.

During the Civil War a Jewish self defense unit was formed in the town.

Between the Wars

When the Soviet rule was established, a mill worker Khaim Notkovich Avrutis was elected in 1928-1930 to become the head of the Executive committee of the local council.

In 1922, a committee that helped the victims of famine was founded by the Jewish community in Pereyaslav-Khmelnitskii. In 1924, the last kheder was closed. In 1925, five families from Pereyaslav-Khmelnitskii moved to the “Lenin Ccollective Farm” (kolkhoz) in the Kherson region. Yegoshua-Zelig Diskin was the rabbi.
In 1926, a Sholom-Aleichem Jewish school was opened in the town. More than 200 students were enrolled there. B.I.Brun was its principal. Yu.Shlikhmovich, G.Reiter, S.I. Likhotinskii, N.O. Dontsova, Rozenblum, Kh.Ya.Lokshin, B.M. Kanevsk, Dovgopilska were the teachers. The school was closed in 1938.
The main synagogue was closed in 1926. A stone single-story synagogue was located not far from the main one. It was closed in 1937-1938.

List of Jews from Pereyaslav who died in 1932-1933 and can be considered as Holodomor victims:

By 1937, a local seven-year Jewish school named after Sholom Aleichem was opened. It was situated in Himnaziyna street in Pereyaslav-Khmelnitskii.Then, the No 3 secondary school moved there, and now it houses the editorial office of the local newspaper “Pereyaslav Council”, an internet cafe, and a local branch of the Socialist Party. In 1944-1945, school No 1 was located there.
Now there is a memorial stone dedicated to the school’s principal Esther Aronivna Dikinstein who was perished during the Holocaust. It was erected on July 3, 2009.

Former Jewish school named after Sholom-Aleichem

Memorial stone to principal of Jewish school Ester Dikinshtein

List of Jews from Pereyaslav who were arrested in 1930’s:

In 1938-1939, the Jews were banned from celebrating religious holidays in synagogues and private houses were used instead.

Holocaust

It was very difficult to evacuate from Pereyaslav because of its location: two kilometers away from the harbour and 28 km away from the railway station. About 200 Jewish people were called up to the Red Army, most of them killed in action.
The Nazis occupied Pereyaslav on September 16, 1941. All Jews were ordered to gather in the yard of the former factory with their belongings on October 4. About 600 people came. They were made to dance, sing, jump, hit each other, lie down and stand up. After that, they were driven outside the town and shot near the cemetery on the road to the village of Karan. Women and men were shot first, then the children were thrown alive into the pit and covered with soil. Those who were captured later were murdered in the same location. There were about 200 people.

Holocaust mass grave in Pereyaslav

Memorial plate on Holocaust mass grave

On May 19, 1943, the following eight Jewish women who married Ukrainians Pesia Bukhanovska, Anna Vatsenko, Katerina Butnik, Bronislava Kerlikh (Polishchuk), Polina Serdiuk, Math teacher Semen Isayovich Khabad, and an older woman Doba Volkina Kutsovska were murdered. Volko Izrailevich Astrakhan was killed by the Nazis in the village of Demyantsi.

Mass grave of 8 Jewish woman in New Jewish cemetery

Memorial on the mass grave

The following Jews escaped capture and survived the occupation: Anna Grigoryevna Finkestein, Liza Volkovna Polinker, Polina Yankelevna Karlinskaya, Khana Aronovna Kutsovskaya. Roza Isakovna Prosianikova (?-2004, Israel) was rescued from the throng of Jews driven to their death.
Nearly 1,000 – 1,500 Jews were killed in Pereyaslav during Holocaust. The first list of the Jews who were murdered was compiled by Berta Klimovitskaya and included 50 names. It was completed in 1991 due to the work of the following people: L.Goliand, M. Levakova, Ye. Koroliova, Ts. Gekhtman, T. Barabash, V. Likhovid, A. Poltavets, N. Nesterovskaya, V. Rudenko.

Photos of Holocaust victims in Pereyaslav:

List of Jews who were killed in action:

Only 10% of the pre-war Jewish population survived the war.

List of Righteous among the nations in Pereyaslav and in district:

After the WWII

After the war the following Jewish families came back to Pereyaslav: Gekhtman, Kolodna, Kerper, Naidis, Zhitnitskii, Tartakovskii, Goliand, Khabad, Podolskii, Zaeveliov, Makhanovskii, Gershonok, Litmanovich, Finkelstein, Berliand, Arnopolin, Olshanskii, Abraham Kontorets, Epstein, Kutikoa, Ostrovskii, Dashevskii, Levakov, Berzon, Rudovskii, Iskin, Mezheritskii, Breitbur, Gurevich.

Jewish WWII veterans who lived in Pereyaslav after the war:

More detailed information about post-war Jews of Pereyaslav was collected and published in Tsilia Gekhtman’s book.
The Jewish community was registered on December 17, 1991. Its founders were Tsilia Gekhtman, Nina Zakharchuk and Sophiya Shnaider.

In the 2000s, 109 people were registered in the community. In 1994, a room in the former synagogue was allocated for the use of the community. In the 1990s-2000s, the Jewish community was highly active in Pereyaslav. Loca Jews celebrated all religious holidays; they held memorial services to commemorate the anniversaries of mass shootings.
However, younger people started to leave for Israel. The older generation slowly passed away and the number of local Jews fell drastically. In 2017, only 10-20 people gathered to celebrate Jewish holidays.

In 1978, a museum of Sholom Aleichem was opened. In 1895, Nokhum Rabinovich moved to Kiev, sold his house to his namesake, and his belongings to the local Jews. A lot of his personal possessions were displayed at the museum.

Some Jewish houses were repossessed after their owners were taken away in the Stalinist purges. There was a house in Mazepa street where a children’s dental clinic used to be before the war. Nearby there is a house of a rich Jew, now there are several flats in it. A house of a large Jewish family is still standing in Kievskaya street (former Sholom-Aleichem street). It was partly restored.
The main synagogue was built in the early 20th century. It is in Skovoroda street (former Pioneer street). Since 1943, a factory named after B.Khmelnitskii has been operating in it. Since 1994, the office of the Jewish culture society has been located in one of the rooms on the ground floor.

Memorial plate on the building of former Big Synagogue

Old Jewish cemetery

An old Jewish cemetery was destroyed during the war. Only one landmark from 1886 was preserved. It was the grave of Sima Meyefert (born in 1818). It was defaced by German bullets during the war. In 2005, it was turned into a symbolic memorial. Its erection was financed by Aleksandr Borisovich Feldman.

Memorial on the site of Old Jewish cemetery in Pereyaslav

New Jewish cemetery

In 1956, a plot of land at a local cemetery was allocated for burying Jews.

New Jewish cemetery in Pereyaslav

Famous Jews from Pereyaslav

Solomon Naumovich Rabinovich, better known under his pen name Sholem Aleichem (1859, Pereyaslav – 1916, New York), was a leading Yiddish author and playwright.

Itskhak Kaganov (1881-?) – a public figure; in 1918 –a representative of Zionist Histadrut in Ukraine, since 1921 – in Poland; a representative of association of refugees from Russia and Ukraine; since 1932 – in Erez-Israel.

David Lazarevich Sigalov (1894, Pereyaslav – 1985, Kiev) – a pediatrician.

Khanok-Genekh Rapoport (1921, Pereyaslavl – 1983, Jerusalem), a rabbi. He studied at the underground Liubavich Yeshivas in Berdichev, Klintsi, Zhitomir. In 1938 -1940 he was heading a
Yeshiva in Kursk. In 1940, he was arrested. In 1940-1947, imprisoned. Moved to Israel in 1972. Rapoport formed the organization which assisted the Jews who arrived from the USSR.

David Abramovich Cherniakhovskii (1939, Pereyaslavl  – 2000) – a psychiatrist, psychotherapist.

Khotin is a district town in the Chernivtsi region, Ukraine.

It was founded in the X century in Kievan Rus. Since the second part of the XIV century, it was part of the Moldavian principality. It was also under the power of Poland. Since 1711 it has been under the influence of Turkey. According to the Bucharest Peace Treaty of 1812 Khotin together with Bessarabia was incorporated into Russia. In 1918 it was annexed Romania. By 1940 the Soviet Union annexed the territories of Moldova including Khotin. By 1963 Khotin had been a district center of Chernivtsi region, USSR.

Much more information about Jewish life in Khotin can be found in Khotin Yizkor book.

Beginning

A Jewish population first appeared in Khotin in the late XIV – early XV centuries. In the XV and XVI centuries, Jewish merchants passed through Khotin which was an important trading post on the road from Turkey to Poland. They paid some customs fees and took part in fairs in Khotin.

PreRevolution view of Khotin

In the XVII century, a community of Karaites was in Khotin. The first written evidence of the community of Jewish rabbanites dates back to 1741. In 1756, apostate Ia. Frank and his followers escaped from Polish to Khotin. Jews from Russia settled in Khotin in the mid XVIII century. A Jewish community from Germany collected money for them. During Turkish rule, the Jewish community increased. In 1807, 216 Jewish households were registered in the town. It was 23% of the total amount. 340 families lived there.

A synagogue can be seen in a plan of the Northern part of the town of 1817. Trade was the main occupation of the Jews. They traded with other parts of Bessarabia, with Ukraine (mostly smuggling). They also rented estates, mills, churns, and distilleries.

Jewish communal buildings, including Dovid Shmuel’s kloyz in Khotin. PreWWII photo

When Bessarabia became a part of the Russian Empire its population including Jews was freed from conscription. This caused active Jewish immigration to the town. In 1831, special trade privileges were given to Khotin.

In 1847, 1,067 Jewish families lived in Khotin. In the 1860’s, there were six-seven thousand Jews. In 1847, a state Jewish training school was opened. In 1857 – a private Jewish women school; in 1860 – a Jewish hospital.

Oldest building in Khotin. It was customs in XVIII century

In 1861, they began to build a large stone synagogue and finished it in 1900. Talmud-Torah was built in the early 20th century. Khasidism was very popular among religious Jews. In the early 19th century, Isaiia Shor was a rabbi in Khotin. In the late XIX century, the members of Starkovskii family were the rabbis.

Former synagogue in Khotin. Building was reconstructed and used as an apartment block

In the second part of the XIX century, an economy of Khotin declined because of distant location from the railway. The Jewish population didn’t increase. In 1897, 9,291 Jews (50.2% of the total population) lived in Khotin. In 1910 – 9,132 Jews (43.2%). The Jews engaged in crafts and trade, including smuggling. The Jews from Khotin were closely connected with the Jews from Galicia and Podolia.

Former home of Grand Rabbi Mordechai Israel Twersky of Khotyn, Ukraine. A grocery occupies structure’s first floor. July 12, 2011. Photo credit: Mordechai I. Twersky

Jews used to live in tight crowded narrow streets of Old town called “anticipation of Istanbul”. People said that it was possible to bypass the whole Old town on the roofs of the Jewish houses.

After Russian Revolution

In 1917, after February revolution in Russia the first secular Jewish community was organized in Bessarabia. In 1929, it was acknowledged by Romanian authorities. A school with a Tarbut system was established. Hebrew was taught to adults and primary school students were taught in Yiddish, a Jewish bank and social organizations were formed during the period of Romanian rule. Since 1925, Tsaddik rabbi Mordekhai Israel Tversky has been living in Khotin. In 1930, the Jewish population was 5,785 people (37.7%).

Admor of Khotin – Rabbi Mordekhai Israel Tversky. He was killed in 1941

In 1930, 5,788 Jews lived in Khotin.

Holocaust

Only a few of Jews had been called to the army. Some of them had escaped just before the Romanian occupation which took place on July 7th 1941.

Romanian authorities gathered all local Jews in the building of the women gymnasium for the registration.

Former synagogue in Khotin. Building was reconstructed and used as an apartment block

They had been kept there for several days without water and food. People slept on the floor. At nights German and Romanian soldiers took the girls out and nobody saw them again. After authorities selected and transported all the intellectuals including lawyers, teachers, and rabbis to the Jewish cemetery. About two thousand people were executed there. The names of 558 victims were found out.

On July 8th, at night, Einzatskommando 10b shot 150 “Jews and Communists”. They were taken to the country and executed in the field behind the cemetery of soldiers of WWI. The Jews were robbed every day. The synagogue was destroyed. A lot of Jews were killed in their own homes.

On July 9th 1941, the Romanians and Germans arrested 80 people selected from the local intellectuals. They all were taken to Siguranta ( Romanian secret police), lined up and convoying outside the town. They were led into the swamp (former lake) and shot. Then soldiers and officers began to destroy Jewish property. The bodies of the dead Jews were allowed to be buried only next day. The Jews dug out a mass grave and buried 80 people there.

On August 1st 1941, about 4,300 Jews who had survived were gathered in a local square and then driven to the Dniester River. 200 (according to other sources – 500) of them were killed on the road to the river in Sokiriani forest. The rest of the  3,800 Jews were settled in Sokiriani.

In October 1941, 400 Jews were sent to Transnistria. On May 20th 1942, 126 Jews lived in the town. In June 1942, almost all of them were deported to Transnistria. Only 20 families were left in the town according to Mayor’s instruction from October 11th 1942.

Headstone (right) of Grand Rebetzin Batsheva Twersky of Khotyn, Ukraine in Murafa Jewish cemetery, Murafa, Ukraine. July 14, 2011. Photo credit: Mordechai I. Twersky

Former head of Khotin police Smidu was one of the first chiefs of the local administration. He was known as a shameless bribe-taker and extortionist. He led the shooting of 40 best Jews of the town and made the rest of them leave the town.

Holocaust mass grave in Khotin Jewish cemetery

However, the Romanians left one Jewish family of each occupation in craft.

After WWII

After the war the Jewish part of the town was completely destroyed. A lot of houses were ruined even in the trade center.

The synagogue (restored) in Khotyn, Ukraine. July 12, 2011. Following the war it was used as a storage facility. Photo credit: Mordechai I. Twersky

The majority of those Jews who had survived the Holocaust left Khotin after the war and moved to Israel.

In 1970, about 1,000 Jews lived in Khotin. There was a synagogue. A number of Jews was greatly reduced though.

Old PreWWII Jewish houses in Khotin, 2016

The Jewish families have been moving to Israel, the USA, and Germany since 1991.

In 2016, only several elderly Jews lived here. They couldn’t gather in the synagogue to celebrate autumn holidays because of their poor health…

Jewish Cemetery

Moshny is a village of Cherkassy district, Cherkassy region. Its population was 4,799 people in 2001.

In the early ХХ century it was a shtetl of the Cherkassy uyezd, Kiev gubernia.

Moshny is situated sixteen miles west-northwest of Cherkasy, a short distance north of the Vilshanka River, and about five miles southwest of the Dnieper River.

Moshny was granted Magdeburg rights in 1592.

The Moshny Jewish community was primarily a Hasidic community. Its population in the late eighteenth century was a mere one-hundred-thirty.
There were several tragedies, not unique to a Ukrainian Jewish shtetl, that befell the Moshny Jews.

A fire in 1881 destroyed sixty Jewish homes.

In the early ХХ century, there were three synagogues and a Jewish cemetery in the village. We know where two of the synagogues were situated.

PreRevolution photo of market square in Moshny

Before the Revolution a Jew named Lakhman had organized production of resin in the village. The locals still call this area “Lakhman”.

According to information from local historians there was a big tavern in the center of the village. Its owner helped more than 100 Jewish families immigrate to the USA.

August of 1919 saw the Moshny Jews assaulted by Denikin and his White minions. We don’t know for sure who else organized Jewish pogroms in Moshny besides Denikin’s army. We can assume that the local population took an active part in those pogroms as well. As a result of the pogroms the community was completely destroyed. Most Jews escaped to Cherkassy.

In documents of Soviet commission were mentioned Jewish girl from Moshny (16-17 years old) who was raped by denikin’s soldiers. She did misbirth.

Site of the synagogue in the center of Moshny

In the memorial book of Cherkassy there are the names of two Jews from Moshny who were opressed in the 1930’s: Mark Izrailevich Motorskiy (born in 1897), arrested in Kiev and shot; Mariya Markovna Rubanenko (born in 1909) sentenced to eight years in prison.

During World War II Germans shot 75 people in the village. According to local historians’ information most of them were Jewish. I didn’t manage to get any other information.

During our visit to Moshny in 2017 there was no visible trace of the Jewish community. The synagogue buildings were destroyed in the 20th century. There was just a field on the site of the former Jewish cemetery.

There was a Moshny Jewish cemetery in this field, 2017

In 2017, a few completely assimilated descendants of the local Jews lived in the village.

Kalihórka Mokra (Polish), Мокрая Калигорка, Mokraya Kaligorka (Russian)

Mokra Kaligorka is town of the Katerinopol district, Cherkassy region. It has been known since the early XVIII century, at which time it was incorporated into the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. It has been a part of the Russian Empire since 1793. In the XIX-early XX centuries, it was the town Kaligorka Mokraya of Zvenigorod uyezd, Kiev gubernia.

Most information for this article was provided by teacher of the local school Ludmila Diduk.

We don’t know when Jews first appeared in Mokra Kaligorka.

In 1896, a Jewish almshouse was functioning in Mokra Kaligorka. In 1914, Jews owned a drugstore, bakery, and 52 stalls including 13 factories and two grocery stores.

Mokra Kaligorka entrepreneurs list from Russian Empire Business Directories by 1913

There was also a landlord’s mansion, a Jewish synagogue, a bakery, the Jew Benia’s inn (he was mentioned in the book “Black Raven” by Vasyl Shkliar), various shops, workshops, and houses in the centre of the village.
Jews were tailors and shoemakers, hiring their assistants from the peasants and offering part-time jobs to children. They washed bottles, carbonated water, and did all the dirty work to earn their living.

In 1913, 1,300 Jews lived in the village. The community had its own synagogue, which was situated in the center of town behind a former food products factory on Kotovskii lane.
Jews settled the central part of the village, owned tailor, shoemaker and hattery workshops, and a Jew, Ben, owned a tavern. Ben was shot by Red Army soldiers in the early 1920’s.
During the revolution the town suffered a great number of Jewish pogroms.

As a result of all the pogroms more than 50 Jewish stalls were burnt in the center of the town. In 1920-1921, the Jewish population was being constantly terrorized by Grizlo’s band.

There were Jewish shops on this street

The Jews of Mokra Kalyhirka suffered from the raids of Popov’s, Kozakov’s, Zahorodny’s, Kotsyura’s and Gryzlo’s gangs, until the arrival of Denikin’s gangs in August 1919, which continued the pogroms for the following three months. By August 1919 Mokra Kaligirka had faced five pogroms, which had been carried out by local bands.  There were people killed and wounded, property was looted and torched. The Jews largely stayed in Mokra Kalyhirka in dilapidated homes and did not seek refuge in other cities. Following the entry of Polish forces into the town, the peasants from surrounding villages gathered in gangs and carried out raids on Jewish homes. In August 1920, Jews from the surrounding area fled to Shpola.

In 1922, a Jewish self-defense squad of 25 people was formed in the village. The pogroms, dispossessions, and resettlement into the collective farms caused Jews to leave the town.

Former market square

JDC report describes results of the pogrom in Mokra Kaligorka:

Mokraya-Kaligorka is about 25 versts from Shpola. It was in the path of advancing and retreating Armies and the scene of murderous attacks by marauding bands, such as those led by Grigoriev, Denikin, Popovsky, Grizlovsky, Petrenko, Panteley, Sinigousa and Boyco, which have resulted in 16O Jews being murdered.

Before the pogroms this town had a total population of 8,000. Now there are only 4,000 of which 500 are Jews. There were 350 houses and 186 shops, but now only 93 houses remain and there are no shops. The decrease in the total population was mainly Jewish.

PreWWII house in the former center of shtetl

The town has two steam, mills, one grits mill, and one weaver loom, but trade is at a stand-still. There are 75 orphans in Mokraya-Kaligorka. The JDC has distributed 25 food packages, 30 shirts, 20 undergarments and 15 sweaters in Mokraya-Kaligorka for individual relief.

Leiba Tubelskii was a rabbi and a shochet in the 1920’s.
Avrum Yankelevich Zilenber, a Jew, 62 years old, was among the victims of the artificial famine of the 1932-1933. He died of starvation on the 19th of May 1933.

On July , 30th 1941, Wermacht units occupied the village. I couldn’t find any information about the victims of Holocaust in Mokra Kaligorka.

There are the names of the following Jews among the men who had been called up to the Red Army and died at the front of the WWII:
Shulia Ivanovich Frenkel, Andriy Yosipovich Faliush, Anton Sidorovich Khokha, Vasil Gordiyovich Shmegerovskiy, Abram Shlomovich Vekoler, Semen Shlomovich Vekoler, Meyer Iupovich Zilbervart, Khaskel Ankelovich Kripovalov, Ilshi Kharitonovich Godliovskiy, Khaskel Ankelovich Kripovalov.

After the war several Jewish families returned to the village.

There was a synagogue on this place

In 1947, five Jewish families lived in the village. At that time Petro Isaakovich Zigbervan, a Jew from Shpola, built a creamery and a mill in Mokra Kaligorka. Arkadiy Musiyenko was the manager of the creamery. Oleksandr Belinskiy was a baker after the war.

By the 2000’s, no Jews lived in the village.

The Jewish cemetery was destroyed after the war.

Site of Jewish cemetery. Gravestones were stolen by local Ukrainians

In 2014, film director from Geneva, Peter Entel, visited the village. His family moved to New York in 1914 from Mokra Kaligorka, and he was born in 1952.

Famous Jews from

Aron Yosipovich Burshtein (1890, Mokra Kaligorka – 1965, Odesa), was a doctor of medicine, hygienist, professor, honored worker of Kazakh SSR.

Genealogy

Information from the archive concerning the Jews of Mokra Kaligorka is kept in Fund 1166 of Kiev Archive. Here there are the documents for 1854, 1856, 1857, 1858, 1859, 1860, 1861, 1862.
1858 census of merchants and burgers from Mokra Kaligorka is kept in State Archive of Kiev region – Fund 280, inventory 2, case 1382.

Synagogue registers of marriages for 1854-1916 are kept in Cherkassy region state archive.
The following surnames are mentioned there: Niberovich, Kosminovich, Gershkovich, Boykevich, Mashkovich, Volkovich, Chupovich, Mindich, Moshko, Murko, Barko, Moshevolko, Shamesov, Spivakov, Zinkov, Shkliarov, Avrumov, Mendrov, Leyzorov, Shishkov, Mirerodskiy, Vovkovskiy, Lisinskiy, Chirkoskiy, Dolinskiy, Pushinskiy, Podovskiy, Gorkovskiy, Chornobilskiy, Yalovskiy, Zaslavskiy, Mikhelskiy, Tubilskiy, Kamenskiy, Bilopolskiy, Vinogradskiy, Kobrinevskiy, Olshanskiy, Khvastovskiy, Basitskiy, Varshavskiy, Polskiy, Brodskiy, Braverman, Dinershtein, Fenbershtein, Goldenberg, Burshtein, Kotiyar, Shvarusman, Drudman, Berka, Goysfon.

Jewish cemetery

The only remaining tombstone has been recently placed in the center of the cemetery.

Last gravestone on local Jewish cemetery, 2017

Inscription on the only surviving tombstone:

פנ
איש חשוב מוהר רי
זלמן בר יצחק זל
לעבעדינסקי
תרצה
תנצבה

Zelman I. Lybedinsky
Died in 1935,
is buried here.
A honorable man, our teacher and rabbi
Zalman, son of Isaac Lybedinsky
Of blessed memory,
[…] in the year 5695
Let his soul be bound in the bond of life

Malin is a historic city located in Zhytomyr region, center of Malin district. The city’s estimated population is 26,934  (as of 2013).

In 1793, when Poland was divided for the second time, the town of Malin became part of Russia. Four years later, in 1797, government authorities formally incorporated Malin into the Radomishl district of Kiev Gubernia.

Although the first mention of Jews in Malin was in 1784, many historians believe the community existed earlier. By the late XIX century, records show a synagogue, two Jewish prayer houses and a Jewish hospital there. In addition, we know that a Jew named Yakov Rabinovich and his brother Aron owned a furniture factory, dairy farms, and a dairy plant.

PreRevolution center of Malin

Malin entrepreneurs list from Russian Empire Business Directories by 1913. Part 1

Malin entrepreneurs list from Russian Empire Business Directories by 1913. Part 2

At the turn of the century Nakhum Vaisblat (born in Narodichi in 1864) ,became a rabbi in Malin. Researchers have found references to his popularity, due to his brilliant sermons, his wise and fair decisions in disputes, his excellent teaching in the yeshiva, and his charity work. In 1902, he became the first rabbi in Kiev, where he died in 1925.

PreRevolution photo of the market in Malin

During this same period, and before the revolution, I.L. Doktorovich was a very popular physician in Malin. People said that there was no disease that he couldn’t cure.

During the revolution, the town’s governing council changed often reflecting political realities on the ground.

In April 1919, Sokolovskii’s band carried out a pogrom in Malin. The number of victims is unknown.

In the early 1920’s, in the village of Ksaveriv (in the Malin district), authorities formed a department of culture, identified in documents as the “Culture League”.

Youth group of Jewish activists in Malin, 1925-1928. Head of the group was Srulik Volkovich Kamenir (1905, Malin – 1964, Lvov). He is sitting in the middle. His brother Ydka Volkovich Kamenir(1906, Malin – 1972, Malin) is standing in the middle. Photo provided by Emil Kamenir in 2017

We also know that a Jewish school was functioning in Malin in the 1920-30’s.

Jewish theatre in Malin, 1928. Photo was found in archive of Iliya Levitas (1930-2014), Kiev.

Although there is little information about the Jewish schools themselves, we do know a “second” Jewish school had 315 pupils in 14 forms and a third Jewish school had 352 pupils in ten forms. It is also known that 65 teachers were working in Malin Jewish school during this period.

There was a Jewish school in this building before the WWII

Group of pupils in Malin second Jewish labor school, PreWWII photo. Teacher: Maks Davidovich Gitman, pupils: Roza Privaratskaya, Dosia Aizman, Siniya Rabinovich, Manya Nushechik, Buzya Slabodoetskaya.

Students of different nationalities studied in three Ukrainian schools. A breakdown of students’ nationalities shows 197 Ukrainians, 12 Russians, 133 Jews, 16 Poles, and eight Germans attended the first school.

In 1939, 3,607 Jews (32% of the population) lived in Malin proper and 226 Jews lived in the district outside town.

Holocaust

Soon after Malin was occupied 120 people, mostly Jews, were taken from their homes to the territory of the town’s chair factory, which was later referred to as the furniture factory. They were kept outdoors in the factory yard for several days and then were murdered. The adults were shot while the children were buried alive. According to some sources .the victims included 30 women with young children. The exact date of the murder operation remains unknown. Some sources say the victims’ bodies were taken to Shcherbov Yar and buried there.

Shcherbov Yar in the end of 1940’s

Most of Malin’s Jews were shot in the course of a number of murder operations during August and September 194 by members of Zonderkommando 4a. Among the victims were children and old people. According to Soviet reports, the Jews who were shot (numbering between 670 and 1,000) were buried in five mass graves in the area of Shcherbov Yar.

Monument in Shcherbov Yar, 2017

According to official information 1,113 people were shot in Malin, most of them were Jews.In addition, occupants shot 50 Jews including elders, women, and children in the nearby village of Ksaveriv.

1953, local Jews reburied the remains of martyred Jews who had been shot in the Jewish cemetery and transferred the monument with its Yiddish inscription from the ravine to the cemetery as well. Today, the ravine is filled in and the land has been designated for development.

Holocaust mass grave in Malin New Jewish cemetery

After the WWII

After the war, survivors who returned to the community erected a small monument in the Shcherboviii Yar (ravine) in memory of those Jews who perished there. In addition, they purchased a private house and used it as a synagogue. Zus Abovich Cherniakhovskii served as its rabbi. The community was registered on the 25th of April 1945.

Building of the synagogue in Malin

According to the census of 1959 1,200 Jews were living in Malin. However, the Jewish population continued to dwindle as young Jews left to seek better educational and work opportunities and did not return. A list of Jewish families living in Malin during the 1950’s-60’s has been compiled by Emil Kaminer.

With the break up of the USSR, most of the remaining Jews of Malin emigrated to the USA, Israel, and Germany.

Former Jewish house in the center of Malin, 2017

The community was officially reorganized in the 1990’s. Leonid Budilovskii, a chief power engineer of local paper plant, took a leadership role in this process.

In 2017, there were less than 30 Jews. Most of them are elderly people…

Famous Jews from Malin

Malin Jews of note include Shmuel Aba Gorodetskii, a Jewish historian and researcher of Hasidism and Kabala. He was born into a Hasidic family in 1871. Although he had traditional Jewish education, at the age of 18, he learned about the ideas of the Haskala and engaged in many years of self-study. He moved to Western Europe (namely Switzerland and Germany) in 1908 and survived the war, Gorodetskii died in Tel Aviv in 1957.

Batya Lishanskaya (b. 1910), a sculptor, who died in Tel Aviv in 1992;

Tsvi Fridland (b. 1898), an actor, and theatrical activist, who died in Tel Aviv in 1967;

Solomon Osipovich Kotliar (b.1890), a political activist. Kotliar began his revolutionary activity in 1907 as a member of Bund and held several important administrative positions in the USSR. In the purges of 1949, he was arrested and sentenced to 10 years in prison for his activities with the Jewish Antifascist Committee. He was freed in 1956 and died in Moscow in 1967.

Shloyme Brianski (1899–?), playwright, educator, and literary scholar. Shloyme Brianski was born in Malin, Ukraine. In the 1920s, he produced plays in Vinnitsa and Kiev, and in the 1930’s he published critical and bibliographical studies of Dovid Bergelson, Moyshe Kulbak, Osher Shvartsman, David Edelstadt, and Itsik Fefer. His career ended abruptly in 1935 due to his mental illness.

Jewish cemeteries

The old Jewish cemetery in Malin was founded sometime in the XIX century. The last recorded burials there were in the late 1930’s. It is reported that in 2016, all the trees had been cut down and the cemetery was overgrown with bushes.

The new Jewish Cemetery organized after WWII and is very neat. A watchman is constantly living in the cemetery.
There is a mass grave of Holocaust victims in the center of the cemetery.

Novi Velidnyky (English), Wieledniki (Polish), Новые Веледники – Novye Veledniki (Russian)

Veledniki is a village in the Ovruch district, Zhitomir region. The village’s estimated population is 783 (as of 2001).

The settlement dates back to 1545. In the XVI-XVIII centuries it was in the Ovruch povet (district), Volyn voivodship of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. In 1793, it was incorporated into the Russian Empire. In the XIX-early XX centuries, it was a shtetl Veledniki of Ovruch uyezd, Volyn governorship.

Beginning

First Jews settled in Novyye Veledniki in the XVII century.

In the early XIX century, Veledniki was the center of Khasidism in the Volyn region. In the XIX-early XX centuries, small-scale crafts and trade were the main occupations of the Jewish population.

In the late XIX century, there were two synagogues in Veledniki.

Veledniki was part of the Pototskys’ estate in the XVIII century. In 1757, local Jewish tailors and furriers were granted the right to set up workshops here.

In the early XIX century, Israel Dov was the local rabbi. This was before the Russian authorities forced all Jews to get surnames so the rabbi was known by his double first name. Rabbi Israel Dov was born in 5549 (1789) in the village of Kotelnia, half-way between Berdichev and Zhitomir, in a melamed’s family. Following his marriage, Israel Dov became a rabbi at Veledniki, which is now known as Old Veledniki, as opposed to New Veledniki village nearby. Israel Dov became known as the “Baal Shem” from Veledniki in 5589 (1829). On the 21st of Tevet 5610, rabbi Israel Dov died. He was buried in Veledniki. People say that before his death the rabbi promised to help anyone who would come and hold the door handle to his “ohel” (the crypt). More about life of Israel Dov you can find here.

Grave of Rabbi Israel Dov in Veledniki

The tsadik’s house was across the road from the cemetery. Such was the dedication of the local Jewish women, that they started a tradition of bringing new linen for the tsadik’s bed. When the tsadik’s house was destroyed by the communists, the pile of linen on the bed was over a meter high.

Veledniki entrepreneurs list from Russian Empire Business Directories by 1913

In 1897, the Jewish population reached 659 people or almost 50% of the total population.
Before the revolution, there were nearly 125 Jewish families living in the shtetl.

Civil War pogroms

In July 1919, the shtetl was attacked by one of the marauding gangs. The gang’s leader (ataman) was curious and entered the Rabbi’s “ohel”. In a few minutes, he emerged pale and drenched in sweat.
-Saddle your horses, fellows!,- he said, – We are leaving! The Rabbi said: “Lekh kibinemat! (“F… off here!” – a mixture of Polish and Russian)
Not much is known about pogroms in the civil war period beyond this local legend.
In 1920, the Polish troops brought typhoid to the shtetl, with a large number of local Jews dying from the disease.

Before the Holocaust

After the 1917 revolution, Mordekhai Vaisblat became a rabbi in Veledniki. In 1922, he was sentenced to five years for withholding the rimonim (precious finials that are placed on top of Torah scrolls) from being requisitioned. However, he managed to escape arrest and in 1924 he became the rabbi of Zhitomir.
In 1924, there were 427 Jews in Veledniki or 24% of the total population of the village.

Old house in the center of former shtetl Veledniki

In the 1920s, a Jewish school opened in the shtetl, only to close 10 years later during the early stages of Stalinist purges and anti-clerical campaigns.

There were two synagogues in Veledniki at the time the World War 2 started, Beysmidrash for men and Shil for women. Isroel-Berl Feldman (1898-1991) was the khazan in the men’s synagogue. Both synagogues were destroyed during the war.
Before the war, local Jews got on well with the Ukrainians. The locals remembered their Ukrainian neighbors helping with bringing in hay on Shabat with the Jews returning the favor on Sunday.

Site of Rabbi Israel Dov’s house

Holocaust

When the war began, ten Jewish families managed to evacuate to the east of the Soviet Union, among them the Kaplans, the Promeranets, the Vainbrandts, the Feldmans, and the Groismans.

Most men were called up to serve in the Red Army. The last train leaving Veledniki before the Germans occupied the town was going to Chernigov.

Veledniki was occupied by the Germans in mid-August 1941.

According to some eye-witness accounts, local collaborators abused the Jews and forced them into labor until the day they were murdered. The Jews of Novyye Veledniki were murdered on October 18, 1941. Soviet documents report that the number of victims was 38, while the inscription on the memorial says that 93 Jews were shot in the village, with children, women, and old people among them. The mass murder was carried out in the field not far from the village.

Holocaust mass grave in Veledniki

Gershl Feldman was betrayed to the Germans by his Ukrainian neighbor and murdered with other locals. 220 Jews from Veledniki and other regions were forced to work at the local sawmill. In 1943, only 40 Jews survived. 39 people were rescued by a local Jewish partisan unit led by Moshe Gildenman several days before the sawmill was destroyed. Glazier Shmul from Baranovka killed the sawmill manager Fridrikh Krifal, avenging the murder of his 16 year-old son. He dragged the German under the band saw and died alongside his enemy.

The village was liberated by the Red Army in November 1943.

In occupied Veledniki, the Rabbi’s “ohel” was the only place that the German soldiers and the Ukrainian collaborators were too terrified to enter. They tried to turn the “ohel” into army fuel storage. On the very first night, heavy barrels of gasoline rolled off the storage rack and killed the caretaker. The morning after, a German officer laughed off the fears of the local Ukrainians which he called “silly religious superstitions”. He entered the “ohel” and immediately came out again, pale and breathless.
At some point, the Germans tried to set up an electrical generator inside the “ohel” but it failed to work even though it worked perfectly well if run outside. After that, the Germans left the “ohel” alone.

Following the initiative of a Yakov Plitman, a small wooden memorial was placed at the site of the killing in a field near the village. Later this was replaced by a brick one. Nowadays, there is a concrete memorial at the murder site. The Russian and Hebrew inscriptions on the memorial say: “Mass Grave Here lie 93 Jews from Veledniki murdered by the Nazis on October 18, 1941.”

After WWII

After the war, several Jewish families returned to the village, among them the Plitmans, the Kaplans, and one of the Pomeranets whose wife, his daughter Rosa and his son perished of malaria in the evacuation.
After the war, many Jews from Veledniki relocated to Ovruch because their houses were looted or taken by local Ukrainians. The Feldman family was among them. Berl Feldman started the process of restoration of the Rabbi’s ohel after his return from the army in 1946. He hired a builder, and they were both working on the ohel at night.

Berl Feldman with his family in Ovruch, 1950’s. Photo provided by Raya Turovskaya in 2017

In 1950’s, it was decided to place a transformer substation in the “ohel”. The pit for the transformer installation had to be dug, but after a whole day of digging, the workers would find the pit filled with soil in the morning! They dug again but the same happened again and again. Terrified laborers refused to work on the site. Eventually, the Soviet authorities had to give up on the site, just like the Germans did earlier.
Later, kerosene storage was set up in the “ohel”.

Grave of Rabbi Israel Dov, 1960’s. Photo was taken from book “Stars in the night” by Batiya Barg

Bliuma Moiseyevna Shmerman cared for the rabbi Israel DovBer’s ohel.
In the 1950s, the authorities wanted to destroy the remaining graves at the Jewish cemetery. The head of the local collective farm, a Ukrainian, was tasked with this job, but he refused.
In 1960, Yakov Isakovich Plitman became the head of the local collective farm and occupied this position for over 30 years. He was greatly respected by the locals.

Old buildings in Veledniki

Jewish cemetery

Inside the Ohel:

Rokitne is an urban-type settlement located on the Ros River in Kiev region. It is the administrative center of Rokytnianskyi district. In 2001, population was 13,790.

In the XIX-early XX centuries, it was a shtetl Rakitne of Vasilkov uyezd, Kiev governorship.

The town of Rokitne had already been known before 1518, owned at that time by Prince Ostrozkiit. In the XVII century, Rokitne was a remarkable settlement with a palace in it. In the mid of May 1648, Kazaks and Tatars captured Rakitnoye and destroyed the local Jewish community.
In 1683, Rokitne belonged to landlord Gurskii.

I couldn’t find any facts of the history of Jews in Rakitne from the pre-revolutionary period

Old Jewish house in the center of Rokitne

In 1905, workers of Rakitne carried out a pogrom but it was put down by local peasants.
In February 1919, peasants from Siniava attacked Rokitne. They robbed wealthy citizens and killed three Jews. Koval, a peasant from Siniava led the attack. On the 14th of August, when Bolsheviks had left the town, Koval, former head of the volost council Vikula Suk, and Larion Vanchenko became the leaders of the peasants. They made the Jewish population contribute 300 thousand roubles which the Jews paid the same day. The next day they were demanded to pay 40 thousand roubles more. This money was paid immediately.

The biggest pogrom was carried out by the Chechen military part of Denikin’s Volunteer Army. As a result, 26 Jews were killed and 40 Jews were wounded. Up to 100 Jewish women aged from 12 to 60 were raped. Eight-ten people took part in raping a small Jewish girl. Local peasants together with policemen robbed the rest of Jewish property. Robberies had a devastating character. Peasants took all valuable and invaluable things, put them on the carts and exported everything to outside the town. They left nothing, neither a pot nor a glass. They took the window frames, broke the doors, and afterwards burnt the houses.

During the Civil War a squad of Jewish self-defense was formed in Rokitne. They guarded the town at nights. They produced weapons themselves in the workshops. Motl Levintant headed the squad. In 1922, there were 40 people in it.

In the late 1920’s – early 1930’s, a national Jewish village council worked in the town. Motl Levintant, Idl Levintant, Mark Gutman, and others were its active participants.

Activists of Rakitne national Jewish village council (from left to right): 1st – Idl Levintant, 3rd – Motl Levintant, 6th – Mark Gutman.

There is a stamp of Rokitne Jewish village council on the back of the previous photo. The stamp was in Yiddish. 1920’s-1930’s.

A Jewish seven-formed school worked in the town at that time. Mark Gutman had been its principal for a long time. He was a teacher of Physics. After the war he was a principal of a Ukrainian seven-formed school, and then he worked as a teacher of Physics.

There was a building of synagogue before Revolution.

Motl Levintant, Idl Levintant, and Tarnavskii were arrested in the period of Stalin’s repressions. They were prosecuted for keeping a weapon which they had buried it because they didn’t need it anymore. However, someone denounced them and they were sentenced to three years in prison.

There were many artisans and traders among the Jews of the town. The artisans were of different specialties: smiths, cart-wrights, carpenters, tailors, sewers, saddlers, coopers, barbers, hatters, and others. A lot of them had their own workshops and smithies. Work united different families. Older artisans taught their children or just young people to prepare them to take their place. Eyna Poliachenko, Khaim Levintant, Leiba Poliachenko, Avrum Levintant, Zus Levintant, Osia Levintant were the most popular smiths. Boris Boguslavskii and Biniumen Gildin were the best workers. Moyshe Grinberg, Tarnavskii, Dubosarskii, Yankel Kravchenko were the best saddlers.
The Koretskiys, Kofmans, Kagans, Radutskiys were the best traders.

Remains of old Jewish house in the center of Rokitne

Many Jews lived in the villages of Rokitne district: Nastashka, Teleshivka, Zhytni Gory, Siniava, Zapruddia, Romashki. They were mostly engaged in agriculture.

Holocaust

Rokitne was occupied from July 25th, 1941 till February 6th, 1944. In November – December 1941, it was incorporated into gebitskomissariat Belaya Tserkov.

On December 27th ,1941, three Comsomol girls were hanged not far from the police office in Rokitne. One of them was Jewish.

In the autumn 1941, about 111 Jews from Rokitne were gathered in the yard of a collective farm in village Bakumovka. They had been kept there for a couple of days and then shot in Rokitne field.

Most of Rokitne Jews were killed on this site

The spring 1942 was the last phase of the destruction of Jews from Rokitne. Jewish families who lived in the villages of Rokitne district including Olshanitsi were arrested in this period. They were sent to Rokitne district police and then to Belaya Tserkov where a part of them was shot. Those people whose Jewish nationality hadn’t been proved were sent home. Arrests and further shootings were continued in the spring 1942. Some people were shot on the seventh military square of Belaya Tserkov.

In September 1941, 20 Jewish families were shot in village Nastashka. After the war the remains of the people who had been shot were reburied in mass grave at the Jewish part of a local cemetery in Kievskaya street, Belaya Tserkov. In 1956, Mikhail Malin erected a monument there.

Holocaust mass grave in Rokitne Jewish cemetery

According to the Extraordinary State Commission 124 people were killed in Rokitne. According to documents of the Soviet intelligence agencies, about 400 Jews died in Rokitne.

Grigorii Rabinovich (1922, Rakitne – ?, Israel) remembers:

On July 6th, 1941 I received a conscription notice from the army in Rokitne. They gathered a column of 80 conscripts. The Ukrainians had escaped from the column on the way and when we reached Dnieper crossing near Kanev there were only Jews and a few Ukrainians left. They were mostly sons of activists of the village and soviet workers. In 1944, as soon as I entered my native village I was immediately recognized. People said “there is Rabinovich’s son coming”. The bodies of five people were hanging in the central square, those were village policemen and German accomplices. I used to know all of them before the war: Sakalskii, club accordionist Bulvinskii, and so on. On the ground nearby there was a body of a dead woman. She had already been taken out of the loop.

Almost all my friends who had been called up to the army in 1941 died. Only Grisha Levich managed to survive. He had lost his arm though.

Yelena Semenovna Boyko, Vasilina Semenovna Sitko, Nadezhda Markovna Derii, Kristina Ivanovna Grinzhevskaia (village Savintsi) were the Righteous people of the World from Rokitne and neighboring villages.

After WWII

After the war the following Jewish families returned from the evacuation and front: Lemberskii, Shapiro, Roizen, Khodirkin, Kagan, Levitant.

List of Jewish WWII veterans who died in Rokitne after the WWII

Isaak Radutskii got group 1 disability after the war. He became a director of a restaurant. The other Radutskii was a director of Rokitne MTS. Oleksandr Moiseievich Hodirner worked as a mechanic of Teleshovka MTS.
Lazar Naumovich Kagan has been working as a head of a consumers’ cooperative for a long time. Isaak Borisovich Radutskii was a director of a restaurant which wan the first places in competitions in former USSR. His mother used to stuff fish and bought it near her house.

After the war the remains of the Jews who had been shot were reburied in a mass grave in the Jewish cemetery.
Oleksandr Moiseyevich Khodirkin made the first sign on a grave of Holocaust victims. There was a list of those whose names they had managed to find out on it. He was an informal head of the post-war Jewish community during the Soviet period. The sign was innovated in the 2000’s.

In 2017, only three Jews lived in Rokitne

Famous Jews of Rokitne

Boris Moiseyevich Kotliarskii (1914, village Nastashka, Rokitne district – 1993, Kiev) lieutenant colonel, was awarded the title of the Hero of the Soviet Union for successful boosting the rivers Visla, Bug, and Oder on the 27th of February 1945.

Boris Moiseyevich Kotliarskii

Moshe Mikhael Milner (Mikhail Arnoldovich; 1886, Rokitne  – 1953, Leningrad), a Jewish composer and conductor.

Jewish cemetery

Holocaust mas grave:

Old part of the cemetery:

New part:

Kagarlik has been a town since 1971, a district center of Kiev region. It’s history goes back to 1590. In the XVII – XVIII centuries Kagarlik was a part of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Kagarlik was incorporated into the Russian Empire since 1793. In the XIX and early XX centuries, it was a shtetl of Kiev uiezd, Kiev gubernia.

Part of the information for this article was provided by Lubov Petrovna Tkachenko, who had been the head of the Kagarlik museum for 40 years.

In the XIX – early XX centuries, most Jews of Kagarlik worked in crafts as well as the wholesale and retail trade. The town had market days and fairs where people could buy and sell cattle.
Jews owned 83 industrial enterprises, shops, and bars. 15 factories out of 16 were owned by Jews. The Jews also owned six bakeries, three butcher shops, an inn, as well as other enterprises.

Since 1875 The Rabbi was Tsvi-Leibish Podgoretskii (1847-?)

Kagarlik entrepreneurs list from Russian Empire Business Directories by 1913. Part 1

Kagarlik entrepreneurs list from Russian Empire Business Directories by 1913. Part 2

The royal commission from St. Petersburg reported that Tzaddik David Tverskoi had an impact on the Jewish population of South Russia during the late 19th century: “Huge Hasids were riding horses along the streets of Kagarlik. They looked for the Jews who were hiding in their houses and didn’t want to meet Tzaddik Duvidl. Hasid Moshko Krivoi was riding a horse with a trumpet in his hands. He was blowing into it and screaming: “Long live David, king of Israel! Kagarlik is in our hands. Kagarlik is ours!!!” They found a gabbai of the local synagogue, took him out of his house and put him in front of the leading hasids. They asked him, “Do you accept the power of Tzaddik rabbi Duvidl, king of Israel?!” He answered he did.”

Former center of shtetl

In 1909, there was a synagogue and Talmud-Torah in Kagarlik.

In the period of the Civil War the Jewish population of Kagarlik suffered from pogroms and robberies.

In 1918, a Jewish cemetery was destroyed. 63 Jewish people died during the pogroms which were carried out by local bands. Three people were wounded.

25 Jews died during the pogrom organized by ataman Zelenii’s detachments in June 1919.

On August 30th 1919, soldiers from the Volunteer Army started a pogrom in Kagarlik. About 30 Jewish residents were killed, 22 wounded. In total, 131 Jews were killed, 25 people were wounded, and 215 Jewish people died of the diseases in 1918-1920. 111 Jewish families (464 people) escaped to Boguslav. 167 Jews died because of epidemics in Kagarlik and 48 in Boguslav.

On August 23rd 1920, a pogrom was carried out by Zavziatov from Zelenii’s band. Seven Jews were killed, and three were wounded, five Jewish apartments were destroyed.

Former synagogue in Kagarlik

In the 1920’s-1930’s, the Jewish population of Kagarlik was further reduced when a lot of Jews moved to other towns.

Holocaust

On the third of August 1941, Kagarlik was occupied by the Wehrmacht.

On the ninth of September 1941, Germans carried out the first shooting of the Jewish population on the outskirts of town near the grain elevator. 72 Jews together with a group of war prisoners who had dug the mass grave were shot.

Holocaust mass grave near the grain elevator, 2017

In the period of the occupation the shootings of civilians took place in the ravine of Kalinovii Yar. The Jews who had been hiding were found and also shot there.

Kalinovii Yar, 2009

On January 28th 1942, 750 residents of the town were shot there. The number of Jews among them is unknown.

Some Jewish families were shot in the park. Director of a sugar factory Grigorii Ovseievich Turok, his wife Tatiana Grigorievna, and their young daughter Liuba were shot by the fascists.

Jew Lonfenfein’s family was amongst those who were killed. Lonfenfein himself was at the front at that time. His wife and two daughters were killed. His son was grazing the cow while his family was taken away. When he came home, he found no one. Neighbor Litvin told the boy about his loss. She was hiding him. However, other neighbors betrayed the boy, and he was killed.

We have 2 lists of the perished Kagarlik Jews – civilians and Soviet soldiers:

Unmarked Holocaust mass grave in local Jewish cemetery

After the WWII

Local Jew Lonfenfein returned from the war in 1946. His wife and three children were also shot by the fascists. He erected the first monument on the mass grave.

Lonfenfein’s monument (it was replced in 2010’s by the cross):

The following families returned from the evacuation and front after the war: Geisman, Sokolson, Andelman, Kovler, Shnaiderman, Povolotskii, Sklianskii, Bialskii, Levinskii, Chornobilskii, Orlik, Polishchuk, Aronskii (he had two daughters), Iakov Ostrovskii with his wife Yeva, Frenkel, Lamburskii (had eight children), Labunskii (one son and a daughter), Loifenfeld, Berezovskii Nionia and Pepa, Khait, Korsunskii, Chizhevskii Boris and Polina (worked in trade, had a daughter and a son), Ostrovskii. There were about 100 people. They settled in a central district of town Moskovshchina which was a traditional place where Jews used to live.

The building was built of red cement for landlord Chortkov’s servants in the beginning of the XIX century. In the XX century, Jews from Kagarlik lived there.

However, the number of Jews decreased. Elders died, youth either left the town or married non-Jewish partners.
In 1972,the first Jewish families left for Israel. Mykhailo Moiseievich and Alla Abramovna Shargorodskii were among them.

In the 1990’s, a small Jewish community was organized in the town. Aleksandra Andelman was its first head, then it was Lev Geisman, then Petr Frenkel, his wife Mariia Frenkel was the next head after his death.

In 1999, only 15 descendants of the local Jews lived in the community. During my visit in 2017 there was no community in the town. Only several absolutely assimilated descendants of the local Jews live in Kagarlik. The number of Galakha Jews is unknown.

Two former synagogue buildings are still preserved in Kagarlik. The first synagogue was built in the late XVIII century because of the visit of Empress Ekaterina II to Ukraine. A post-office was there. In the early 19th century, the building was bought by the Jewish community. A synagogue had been functioning by the early 1920’s. Then a military committee was located in there. In 1975, the building was covered with brick. In 1970-2010, the building belonged to the local museum. In the 1970’s, shreds of a Torah scroll were found in the attic of the museum. There were holes in the roofs of both buildings. Those holes had been made for Sukkot celebrations.

Former synagogue in Kagarlik

Famous Jews from Kagarlik

Aleksandr Danilovich Tsirlin (1902, Kagarlik – 1976, Moscow) a soviet military activist, Colonel-General of the Corps of Engineers (1945), Doctor of Military Science (1956), Professor (1958).

Aleksandr Danilovich Tsirlin

Semen Moiseievich Kogan (1906, Kagarlik – 1993, Kiev) a bridge builder, Colonel, head of department “Kievavtodormost”, awarded with seven medals

Jewish cemetery

A Jewish cemetery was organized in the mid XIX century. It was situated on the outskirts of the town. In 2015, the cemetery was tidied up and surrounded by a fence. Adenauer Fund paid for it.
The participants of the expedition from project “Lo-Tishkakh” explored it in 2008. They discovered about 20 gravestones. The oldest one dated back to 1957, the latest – 1991. But during my visit in 2017 only several graves were left there. All iron parts of the monuments and monuments themselves had been stolen by the local population over the last several years.
There are no traces of pre-war graves in the cemetery. A few mass graves of the Holocaust period are still in the middle of the cemetery. The head of the local museum says that those Jews who had been shot by the Germans in the town were buried here.

Cemetery in 2008:

Cemetery in 2009 (photo by Klavdiya Kolesnik):

Cemetery in 2015:

Cemetery in 2017:

Rachmastrivka, ראחמסטריווקא (Yiddish), Rotmistrzowka (Polish), Ротмистровка, Rotmistrovka (Russian)

Rostmistrivka is a village in the Smiliansky district, Cherkassy region. Its population was 2,156 people in 2001.

Before the revolution, Rotmistrovka was a shtetl of Cherkassy uyezd, Kiev guberniya. In 1905, it had two synagogues.

A Jewish community appeared in Rotmistrivka in the XVII century.

In 1863, the population of the town consisted of 1,946 Christians and 965 Jews. According to the census of 1897, 4,823 people lived in Rotmistrivka, including 1,785 Jews.

Rotmistrovka entrepreneurs list from Russian Empire Business Directories by 1913

In the second half of the XIX century, the spiritual leader of the community was Rabbi Yohanan Tversky, and Rotmistrivka was transformed into one of the centers of Hasidism. He was succeeded by his son Rabbi Mordechai.

Rabbi Yohanan Tversky

Rabbi Yohanan Tversky (1812, Chernobyl – 1895, Rotmistrivka) – the eighth son of Rabbi Mordechai of Chernobyl, the grandson of the founder of the Chernobyl Hassidic dynasty, Rabbi Menachem Nohum Ben Tzvi.

In 1911, the rabbi was S. Olin.

In 1914, about 350 Jewish families lived in the shtetl.

This mill belonged to local Jew Shaya

In May 1919, during a pogrom by Grigoriev’s gangs, 14 people were killed and nine injured, the town was looted and some houses and shops burned. After the pogrom some Jews fled the city, mostly to Cherkasy and Smela. In December 1919, Denikin’s troops arrived in the town and all Jews hid in the synagogue. The soldiers tortured the Jews. The village was subject to various rioting gangs almost daily. The Jews, who had begun to return to Rotmistrivka after Denikin’s pogroms, fled the town again.

As a result of the pogroms the community has almost disappeared. Rabbi Mordechai from Rotmistrivka – son of rabbi Yohanan Tversky, moved to Jerusalem after the pogroms where he died in 1920.

Former Jewish school, it is a music school now.

Among the refugees from Rotmistrovka more than 80% of Jews died of the famine and diseases in Smela.

In the 1920’s-1930’s, some Jews lived in the village. Unfortunately, we haven’t managed to find more detailed information.

Former Jewish center of the shtetl. Now it is a park

In January 1941, the Jews from Rotmistrivka were deported to Smela and murdered there.

Before the war a local Jew Sonia married a Ukrainian. During the war he served in the German police and hid his wife till the end of the war.

Remains of Jewish gravestones near the ohel of Rabbi Yohanan Tversky

After the war Sonia and her sister Tsilia who used to be in evacuation worked as barbers. One more Jew also came back to the village after the war . However, he moved to Kamenka later.

Former Jewish cemetery

A Jewish cemetery was destroyed in 1950’s and the land was appropriated for private use.

Ohel of Rabbi Yohanan Tversky in Rotmistrovka

Turn right after the gas station, go along Pershotravneva Street. From the road one can see a white brick house with a red roof – the ohel of Rabbi Yochanan Tversky. There is a plaque on the fence with a text in Hebrew. The ohel is approached by crossing the yard.

Zaddik Yokhanan Tverskoy’s grave was at the edge of two lots. The owner of the first lot let Hasids visit the grave but later she forbade them.  This owner asked a truck driver to dig up the lot to look for valuables. The truck driver did not accomplish much – he died.

For some time the Hasids had to make a different entrance to the ohel. It was from the lot where they were allowed entrance.

2 enterance to the ohel:

After the owner’s death in car accident both the house and the land were bought by the Hasids.

Vasilkov is a city in Kiev region with a population, as of 2013, of 36,672.

Vasilkov was incorporated into the Russian Empire in 1686 and belonged to the Kiev-Pechersk Monastery till 1785.
In 1796, it became a center of the Vasilkov uyezd of Kiev gubernia.

In 1648, Vasilkov was conquered by chmielnicki’s cossacks who massacred its inhabitants, Jews and Poles alike. Since Vasilkov was annexed to Russia in 1686 no Jewish community existed there until the second partition of Poland in 1792.

Vasilkov was a Chasidic community and for some time David b. Nahum Twersky of Chernobyl lived there. The Jews in Vasilkov engaged in crafts, small-scale business, and worked in local tanneries.

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

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

In 1861, there was one synagogue and two prayer houses in Vasilkov.Tailoring and trade were the most spread occupations amongst Jews of Vasilkov uiezd. There were approximately 4,400 Jews in the town and nearby villages.

In 1881 the town experience a several-day-long pogrom during which a number of Jews were murdered and Jewish houses and property were looted or destroyed.

The number of Jews in Vasilkov grew steadily in the course of the XIX century. In 1897 Vasilkov’s 5,156 Jews constituted 39.3 percent of the total population.

Former synagogue in Vasilkov

Four synagogues and 34 prayer houses with four rabbis were officially registered in 1907.
In 1909 there was a Talmud-Еorah, a primary girls training school, and two private specialized schools. The Vaisberg brothers owned three tanneries.

Russian soldiers in Vasilkov, 1910’s

Civil War

The Jews of Vasilkov suffered greatly from the violence accompanying the years of revolution and civil war in Russia. In the series of pogroms staged in 1919 by various warring parties a number of Jews was killed, Jewish women were raped, and Jewish property was severely damaged or destroyed.

Ruins in Vasikov after the pogrom, November 1919

In February 1919, Petlyura’s army conducted pogroms in Vasilkov, massacring 50 Jews and 60 Russians suspected of being communists; the Jewish community was forced to pay a special contribution.

Many of Vasilkov’s Jews left the town during this period, seeking refuge in Kiev.

List of pogrom victims provided by genealogist Nadya Lipes and jewishpogroms.net.ua:

Between the Wars

When the Soviet regime was established, Jewish communal life was discontinued.
In 1926, the Jews in Vasilkov numbered 3061 (14. 4% of the total population).

The ban imposed by Soviets on any kind of private economic activity seriously affected the Jewish population of Vasilkov. In the 1930’s there was a Jewish collective farm, “Nayer Veg” (New Way) in Vasilkov.

PreRevolution building in the center of Vasilkov

In addition, many of Vasilkov’s Jews found employment at the local leather factory.

In the 1920’s and 1930’s there was a Yiddish school in Vasilkov.

In 1939 1,736 Jews lived in Vasilkov, where they constituted 11.4 percent of the total population.

Holocaust

Vasilkov was occupied by Wehrmacht on August 31st, 1941.

On August 22nd 1941, a leading command ZK 4 was sent to Vasilkov. It shot more than 300 Jews (according to other sources – 105). The shootings of Jews took place in different places: in the territory of Pokrovskii cemetery, in the sewerage field, in the ravine of Zastugne, in the yard of the mill “Zagotzerno”, and in the railway station Vasilkov-I.

Holocaust mass killing site in Vasilkov

Shootings of the Jewish war prisoners were carried out in the town. A transit-camp was located in the yard of the mill “Zagotzerno”. Those Jews who had managed to come back home were arrested by the Ukrainian police and sent to this camp.

In July-August 1942, 40 Jews and 11 gypsies were shot by the district police in Vasilkov. Jews brought to Vasilkov from other towns and villages of Vasilkov County, apparently including Jews from Borovaya, were murdered in Vasilkov, together with local Jews.

A lot of Jews managed to escape from the place of the execution. In September 1941, Jew named Roza hit the executioner and ran away during the shooting.

A message about four Jews’ escape from the prison of Vasilkov was published in the local newspaper. The release date of the newspaper was October 10th 1942, meaning that the Jews were pursued even after the actions of total destruction.

Righteous among the nations in Vasilkov and Vasilkov district:

Jewish soldiers from Vasilkov who was perished during WWII:

Vasilkov was liberated by the Red Army on November 6, 1943.

PostWWII period

After the war a lot of Jewish families returned to Vasilkov. Jewish religious life was prohibited. Iakov Iosifovich Zarkh (1904-1976) was an unofficial rabbi. The community gathered money to help those who were in need.

A minian, mostly consisting of elderly Jews, was gathered in different houses because of the persecution by the authorities. Minian was also gathered in carpenter Lankel Margulis’ house. His two daughters live in Israel now. The following Jews of Vasilkov used to attend the prayers: Bluvshteins, Aizenberg, Perlovich, Zark, Zilman, Galperin, Shatiykins, Kolonskiis.

Matsah was baked in Ukrainian Khors’ house, as he wasn’t persecuted by the authorities and had a stove.

Former synagogue in Vasilkov, now it is a school №1. In the 1950’s, the attic of the school was open and all Torah scrolls and books which had been kept there were thrown to the street. Children were playing with them.

In the 1950’s, the attic of the school was open and all Torah scrolls and books which had been kept there were thrown to the street. Children were playing with them.

A Jewish community was organized 20 years ago in 1997. Semen Isaakovich Teninskii was its first head. When he had died, Mikhail Gershkovich Perlovich took his place. Next chairman was Tatiana Markusovna Rozenberg.
In 2017 Iefim Zavadskii was elected as the head of the community.

Famous Jews from Vasilkov

Volf Mendelevich Beilis (1923, Vasilkov – 2001) an orientalist, historian.

Volf Mendelevich Beilis

Itskhok Polishchuk (1882, Vasilkov – 1964, Chicago) a publicist, MD.

Itskhok Polishchuk

Iakov Aizikovich Khelemskiy (1914, Vasilkov – 2003, Moscow), a poet, writer, interpreter.

Iakov Khelemskiy

Eli Gershevich Spivak (1890, Vasilkov – 1950, Moscow, Lubianka jail) a linguist, literary critic, professor.

Eli Spivak

Genealogy

Vasilkov census of 1897 has the following Jewish names: Kovelman, Shifris, Nerubai, Moloment, Nemtsov, Iolin, Fuks, Kats, Iolin, Eidlis, Perel, Iudkis, Kotliar, Iaroslavskii, Ritbarg, Chernobilskii, Rovner, Kisilenko, Novak, Rozenfeld, Lishchiner, Dligach, Ozirianskii, Daich, Rabinovich, Ozirianskaia, Zhuravitskii, Chudnovskii, Grach, Roitbarg, Novoselitskii, Poberetskii, Kofman, Sukhkolinskii, Pritsker, Kotsupei, Sandler, Pritsker, Kortsev, Podgaietskii, Borsuk, Blumen, Koshovatskii, Brodskii, Brodskii, Zlotnik, Bliumen, Feldshtein, Sigalov, Brodkin, Alter, Zaritskii, Kazan, Barishpolskii, Vainshtein, Libok, Bas, Soroka, Cherniavskii, Drobner, Pritsker, Pritsker, Sandler, Sokolovskii, Vaismanova, Vaismanova, Dubinskii, Menis, Drobner, Cherniakhovskii, Boguslavskii, Dubinskii, Olshanskii, Vishnevetskii, Vishnevetskii, Vilpan, Shub, Matiushanskaia, Borodkova, Svidkii, Lishchinskii, Goldshtein, Goldshtein, Barishpolskii, Pritsker, Cherkas, Fishman, Goldman, Ruvinskii, Pishchonskii, Tonkonogii, Shinkarov, Pritskerova, Iampolskaia, Libok, Levik, Novoselitskii, Brodskaia, Filkovich, Shapira, Vaksshokher, Korelman.

Also, valuable records regarding Vasilkov Jews in XIX century can be found on this Wikipedia page.

New Jewish cemetery

Cemetery was created in 1950’s.

In 1951 the bodies of the Holocaust victims from Vasilkov were reburied in the town’s Jewish cemetery and a fenced off obelisk was erected. The Russian inscriptions on the plaques attached to this monument say: “Their eternal memory will live in the hearts of all their descendants. To those shot by the German-Fascist barbarians in 1941-1942” and “The remains of the victims of Fascism are buried here.” The monument has no indication of the Jewish identity of the victims.

In 2017, Yacob Tamarkin repaired a memorial plaque on Holocaust mass grave and restored names of killed Jews. They were hidden on opposite site of the plaque according to request of Soviet authorities in 1950’s.

Yacob Tamarkin with results of his job

In 1950’s, a house of the watchman was built in a Jewish cemetery. He received a salary of 60 roubles from the community. Later the watchman got an apartment in a new house and moved from the cemetery. The house was demolished.

New memorial plaque was placed on memorial, 2017

Pokotilovo is a village in the Novoarkhangelsk district of the Kirovograd region in the Ukraine.  In the XIX and XX centuries, however, it was considered a shtetl in the Uman Uyezd, and part of Kiev province.

Beginning

According to historians, the first Jews settled in Pokotilovo in the XVIII century. By 1897, more than half of its residents were Jewish.

Reports differ on the number of synagogues or prayer houses that existed during the XIX century.  Some say two; others report three.  The number appears to be dependent on what constituted a synagogue and how stable and prosperous the community was at any given time.

One historian identified a rabbi by the name of Khaim (or perhaps Chaim) Goldstein (1845-?) in 1866.  Another identified  Matvey Leonovich Galperin as a state rabbi in the 1900’s.

Pokotilovo entrepreneurs list from Russian Empire Business Directories by 1913

From the memories of  Michael Stiefel (1871-1954):

My father had had several businesses. He bought and sold oxen and also operated a distillery. During the summer months they would pasture the oxen on the steppes and during winter they would keep them near the distillery. During the sultry hot weather these oxen would be sent from the steppes to the markets of the larger cities where they would be sold. Then, during Spring, the winter oxen would be shipped to market. In addition to these, my father also held the concession leased out by the lord manor of the province of Pokotilov.

Valednitzky family in Pokotilovo. Photo taken from kehilalinks.jewishgen.org

There were about 500 Jewish families in Pokotilov in a general population of 1,000 families. The Jews lived within the town and the non-Jews on its outskirts. But, during all these years, both Jews and non-Jews lived together peaceably and on very friendly terms. In fact, during the 1880’s when pogroms were raging throughout all of Russia, we were left unharmed.

There was one large synagogue (“Beth Ha-midrash”) where most everyone would worship. For the wealthier elite and for the more learned Jews was a “Kloiz” (a synagogue) and for the youth was also a Kloiz called the “New Kloiz.”

When I was three years old I was sent to the “Cheder” (elementary Hebrew school) of a teacher (a “melamed”) named David Isaac Somchas. He was a good, honest Jew (also a Kohen), but very quick-tempered. From him I received more than my share of swats and blows.

Our home was the largest and the most beautiful one in town, occupying number of blocks. The trees surrounding the house practically reached th clouds The acacias, broom-trees, conifers, flowers and roses grew everywhere. On one side was an orchard. Then, behind the house was a large field of cucumbers. In the courtyard stood a number of buildings.

We departed on the following day, my grandfather, Nissan Stiefel, who was the wealthiest man throughout our entire area, gave us one thousand rubles for expenses — just to get rid of us.

In 1928, four agricultural cooperatives were formed in Pokotilovo. In 1929, government officials organized two collective farms there, one Ukrainian and one Jewish. In 1930, the two farms merged.

All synagogues were closed in 1920’s-1930’s.

Vishnevetskiy family, Pokotilovo 1920’s

Holocaust

War came to Pokotilovo in August,1941, when members of the Wehrmacht (the German Nazi war machine) occupied the town. That winter, on 12 February 1942, the Podvysotskiy police(Ukrainians nationals) of about 70 people and the Zhandarmery (armed Germans) of 100 men, organized the mass murder of the Jewish population.

According to witnesses, the policemen arrested the Jews in their houses, escorted them to a local school, and then led them to the banks of the Yatran River for execution.  While the Germans shot the local Jewish population, the local policemen stood along the river bank, on the bridge, and on the frozen surface of the river to prevent anyone from escaping. One Jew managed to escape the area near the mill but changed his mind and came back saying that his life no longer mattered as all his children had been shot.

Local residents reported hearing screams for a long time and from many kilometers away. The number of Jews short that day was 333 .

Some Jews managed to hide during the first day of the executions, but the cold weather made it difficult for them to remain in hiding. The Ukrainians did not allow those Jews who avoided execution to return to their homes.  Those who survived the first day of executions were massacred the next day.

After the executions, Ukrainian residents filled the village center where the Jewish population had resided and robbed the martyr’s possessions and destroyed Jewish-owned homes.

The Memorial to the victims of the fascism was built in the 1970’s to commemorate all the Jewish people killed in February 1942. Jews weren’t mentioned on the monument. It was restored in 2006.

After the WWII

After the war, only two Jewish front-line soldiers returned to the village. That was Vladimir (Volko) Bilomlinskiy (? – 2000’s) and the orphan Boris Ivanovich Broitman (? – 1977?).

Volko, a glazier, was married to a Ukrainian woman. His grandchildren still live in the village.

Center of the village is full of abandoned buildings. Former shtetl is slowly …

Boris Broytman, a cattle dealer,  was the richest resident of the village. People remember him as a good man who gave candies to village children and helped his neighbors.

One of the village synagogues was purportedly closed in the 1920’s. A club was organized in its place, then a shop. In the 1990’s, village residents wanted to use the building for a church, but because of the Jewish history of the building, they refused. Now there is a warehouse.

Jewish cemeteries

Today, the town of Pokotilovo has two destroyed Jewish cemeteries.

The older one sits in the center of the village. Visitors can find several large gravestones there but inscriptiuons are unreadable.  There were many more,headstones in the 1980’s,  but local residents stole the stones to use for building.  Prior to WWII, the community had a  watchman live in a special house in the cemetery. This building no longer exists.

Last trace of Pokotilovo Jewish community

A new Jewish cemetery is situated outside the village in the middle of a field. The territory is covered with bushes so it is impossible to check the gravestones in summer.

Pokotilovo New Jewish cemetery

Medvedovka (Yiddish Transliteration), Медведовка, Medvedovka (Russian)

Medvedovka is a village in Chigirin district, Cherkassy region.

In the XVI-XVII centuries it was a part of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, in the early XVII century it got Magdeburg Rights, and from 1793 it was incorporated into the Russian Empire.

In the XIX-early XX centuries it was a shtetl of Chigirin Uyezd, Kiev Gubernia.

In 1790 an 18-year-old rabbi, Rebbe Nachman and his family, settled in Medvedovka surrounded by numerous Hassidim. In 1798, he decided to visit The Holy Land. Having sold all his belongings he gathered money for the road and on the 18th of Iyar, on Lag ba-Omer, he left Medvedovka together with one of his students.

Former center of shtetl

The Rabbi’s family waited for him in the village until he returned in 1799, and in a year he moved to Zlatopol.

In the XIX century, the main occupations of the Jewish population of Medvedovka were crafts (tailoring, shoemaking, saddlery, cooperage, and others) and small trade; fairs were organized in Medvedovka three times a year and markets were open twice a week. In the early 19th century, Jews owned several stalls: a wine cellar, a tavern, and a mill.

In 1844, there were two synagogues in the shtetl. 97 men and 113 women attended the first synagogue, six men and eight women attended the second one.

Medvedovka entrepreneurs list from Russian Empire Business Directories by 1913

In 1910, a Jewish savings and loan association functioned in Medvedovka. In 1914, Jews owned a pharmacy, a bakery, six inns, two tea houses, and 66 stalls including 12 groceries, five haberdasheries, and 12 factories.

During the pogroms at the times of the Civil war town Medvedovka was completely destroyed and turned into a common village.

Here is a report of the representative of Cherkassy district I.Vernik to the committee of the Assistance to Pogrom Victims, 1919:

In late spring 1919, a Jewish pogrom carried out by ataman Grigoryev and local peasants asted for six weeks in Medvedovka. After Grigoryev’s people had been driven away from the village, the bandits hid in the cave near Medvedovka. They attacked the village every day. They had been robbing the inhabitants for six weeks until they forced all the population to escape from the village without money and belongings. 62 people were killed and six people were injured in Medvedovka. 200 people escaped to Cherkassy, 50 – to Smela, 900 – to “unclear”, and 100 – to Kremenchug. At that moment the bandits were  knocking the houses down in the village. When several Jews tried to get there to take some of their belongings, those daredevils were killed. The refugees lived in awful conditions. A considerable number had become sick with tuberculosis and typhoid. They needed emergency clothing,and even underwear to change into. The refugees from Medvedovka weren’t able to go to the emergency room because they had no shoes and clothes.

In 1926, only 26 Jews lived in Medvedovka district. The village was a district center.

This piece of metal was found in Medvedovka in 2010’s

In 1932 the Jew Aizenberg was a chairman of the local collective farm. His wife was a teacher. At that time the church was closed. The authorities wanted to destroy it. However, Aizenberg had saved the building and a warehouse was organized there.

Almost all the Jews had left Medvedovka by 1939.

In 1941, after Medvedovka had been occupied by the Wehrmacht, two people were killed: the judge and his driver. We couldn’t find out whether they were Jewish or not.

During the war the head of the local collective farm Aizenberg was evacuated, and after the war he returned to the village. We assume that he was the last Jew in the village.

Jewish cemeteries

There were two cemeteries in the shtetl. They were completely destroyed. The gravestones were taken apart by the local inhabitants.

There are villagers’ gardens in Old cemetery. There are no visible remnants of the cemetery. In the 1990’s, a US citizen, a descendant of Medvedovka emigrants build a small memorial on the site of Old Jewish cemetery. It disappeared later.

Site of Old Jewish cemetery

The demolished New Jewish cemetery used to be located behind the buildings of the former agricultural complex in the village, behind the forest plantation, to the right of the road.

Site of New Jewish cemetery

Moshny is a village of Cherkassy district, Cherkassy region. Its population was 4,799 people in 2001.

In the early ХХ century it was a shtetl of the Cherkassy uyezd, Kiev gubernia.

Moshny is situated sixteen miles west-northwest of Cherkasy, a short distance north of the Vilshanka River, and about five miles southwest of the Dnieper River.

Moshny was granted Magdeburg rights in 1592.

The Moshny Jewish community was primarily a Hasidic community. Its population in the late eighteenth century was a mere one-hundred-thirty.
There were several tragedies, not unique to a Ukrainian Jewish shtetl, that befell the Moshny Jews.

A fire in 1881 destroyed sixty Jewish homes.

In the early ХХ century, there were three synagogues and a Jewish cemetery in the village. We know where two of the synagogues were situated.

PreRevolution photo of market square in Moshny

Before the Revolution a Jew named Lakhman had organized production of resin in the village. The locals still call this area “Lakhman”.

According to information from local historians there was a big tavern in the center of the village. Its owner helped more than 100 Jewish families immigrate to the USA.

August of 1919 saw the Moshny Jews assaulted by Denikin and his White minions. We don’t know for sure who else organized Jewish pogroms in Moshny besides Denikin’s army. We can assume that the local population took an active part in those pogroms as well. As a result of the pogroms the community was completely destroyed. Most Jews escaped to Cherkassy.

In the documents of a Soviet commission, there is mention of a Jewish girl (age 16 or 17) who was raped by Denikin’s soldiers. She suffered a miscarriage.

Site of the synagogue in the center of Moshny

In the memorial book of Cherkassy there are the names of two Jews from Moshny who were opressed in the 1930’s: Mark Izrailevich Motorskiy (born in 1897), arrested in Kiev and shot; Mariya Markovna Rubanenko (born in 1909) sentenced to eight years in prison.

During World War II Germans shot 75 people in the village. According to local historians’ information most of them were Jewish. I didn’t manage to get any other information.

During our visit to Moshny in 2017 there was no visible trace of the Jewish community. The synagogue buildings were destroyed in the 20th century. There was just a field on the site of the former Jewish cemetery.

There was a Moshny Jewish cemetery in this field, 2017

In 2017, a few completely assimilated descendants of the local Jews lived in the village.

Искорость – Iskorost’ (Russian), Коростень – Korosten’ (Ukrainian)

Korosten (Iskorosten – by 1923) is a town, a district center in Zhitomir region. Since the 14th century it has been incorporated into the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. Since 1569 it has been a part of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Since 1793 – a part of the Russian Empire.

In the XIX – early XX centuries it was a shtetl of Ovruch uyezd, Volyn gubernia.

Beginning

Jews in Korosten were first mentioned in 965.

In the mid-XVII century, Cossack squads of Bogdan Khmelnitskiy almost completely destroyed Jewish population of Korosten. A Jewish community was reborn in the XVIII century.

In 1865, there were two synagogues in Korosten.

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

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

In the XIX century, the construction of the Warsaw – Kiev – St Petersburg railroad line contributed to the demographic and economic growth of the settlement. In 1897 1,266 Jews were living in Korosten, where they comprised 48 percent of the total population. By 1914 numerous local shops and small businesses were owned by Jews.

Six synagogues were functioning.

In 1918, the organization “Poalei Tsion” was functioning in Korosten.

Civil War pogroms

In February 1918, military units of Central Rada carried out a pogrom against the Jews of Korosten.
On the 13th of March 1919, Red Army units also carried out a pogrom. 70 houses were destroyed. A cantor of the synagogue was killed. The pogrom was stopped due to unexpected cannonade from Petliura’s side who began to attack Korosten.
On the 20th of July 1919, Sokolovskiy’s band organized a pogrom.

In 1919 – 1920 also while revolting against Soviet rule, numerous local armed groups attacked Jews and plundered their property in various settlements around Korosten. In reaction, many Jews fled to Korosten.

Between the Wars

During the early Soviet era most of Korosten’s Jews were artisans and could barely make a living. In 1925 a Jewish agricultural cooperative “Obraztsovyy Trud”(“Model Labor”), consisting of 21 families, was organized in the town.

In 1925, branches of various Zionist organizations were functioning. Two Yiddish speaking clubs, five libraries with Yiddish books, four Jewish six-form schools, and 15 organizations of Jewish youth functioned in Korosten. In 1925, the Jews from Korosten organized seven Jewish agricultural collective farms in Kherson region: “Red cereal grower” (53 people), “Royter Poer” (98 people), “New life” (44 people), “ Rakovskiy collective farm” (77 people), “ Nae Lebn” (34 people), “Red worker” (100 people), “Usher Shwartsman collective farm” (18 people).

In 1926, a Rabbis’ Conference took place in Korosten on Sh. Kipnis’ initiative and upon authorization of the Soviet Power. 50 rabbis from different regions of the USSR took part in it. Y.I. Shneyerson was elected as a head chairman. The conference decided to merge Jewish religious communities to counteract the threat of faithlessness and assimilation. An executive board was elected. Right after the conference, Kipnis was arrested and the executive board was dissolved.

This photo was captured from video of Korosten media company:

Rabbis’ Conference in Korosten, 1926

A two-storied prerevolutionary synagogue “Gornostaypol” was on Bannaya street. It had been functioning since before the war. The 1926, rabbis’ conference took place in this building. This building doesn’t exist anymore.

Yehoshua Chaim Matusov was a rabbi in Korosten.

In 1929, 80 children studied in underground kheders.

School #1 was a Jewish school before the war.
In 1939, 10,991 Jews lived in Korosten. It was 35.68% of the total population.

Holocaust

On the seventh of August 1941 it was occupied by German troops. The majority of the Jews managed to evacuate to the East during the period between the beginning of the war and the capture of the town. All men liable for military duty were called up to the army or became volunteers. Approximately 12-13% of prewar Jewish population weren’t evacuated.

In July-October 1941, German military police controlled the town. The German military administration formed a city-government with auxiliary Ukrainian police. The latter was formed out of the local citizens and took an active part in all “Jewish actions”. In late October 1941, the power passed to the German Civil administration. Korosten became an administrative center of the gebiet (region). Korosten gebiet was a part of Zhitomir general district, Reichskommissariat Ukraine.

Soon after the occupation of Korosten “a Jewish residential area” (an open ghetto) was formed. It was situated on one street. The Jews were prohibited to leave or to buy food products from the Ukrainians, and the Ukrainians were prohibited to get in touch with the Jews. The Jews were also obliged to wear a band with a yellow six-pointed star on their left sleeve. Jewish men had to work hard and were bullied and humiliated by the Ukrainian policemen.

Holocaust mass grave in Korosten

An announcement “All the Jews are to gather in school number five on the first of September and have all the documents and valuable things with them” was posted all over the town.
During the first three weeks of the occupation of Korosten a Sonderkommand 4a had carried out three actions which led to mass shootings of the Jews. They shot approximately 1,000 people.  The Ukrainian police drove the Jews to the building of school number five. From there they were driven to the shooting place which was two kilometers away from the town. Commander of Sonderkommand Standartenfuhrer SS Paul Blobel led the execution himself. A chief of operational unit C brigadefuhrer SS dr. Otto Rash took part in the shooting.

The Jews from Hungary were also killed in Korosten district in 1943. They appeared in Ukraine in 1942 together with parts of the second Hungarian army, where they served as workers. The Hungarian Jews appeared in Zhitomir region in 1943. Hard work, poor feeding, and violent treatment caused their depletion; diseases contributed to the death of many workers. A hospital for sick people was organized in the village Kupische, nine kilometers away from Korosten. It was located in a brick house and had several rooms. The majority of the patients lay in open barns. The whole territory was surrounded by barbed wire. A lot of people died of typhus every day. Their bodies were piled at the wall of a neighboring stable. On the 29th of April 1943, the occupants decided to stop this source of infection. One of the barns with 600 people in it was burnt. Those who tried to flee were shot. Still one small group of the Jews had managed to escape in spite of their wounds. They survived and told what had happened. When Hungarian Minister of Defense V.Nagy got to know about this he ordered a special commission to conduct an investigation to reveal the perpetrators. However, the commission came to a conclusion that “the fire was a consequence of Jews smoking”.
Partisan detachments were functioning in Korosten district. They included more than 200 Jews. Among the soldiers of Moyshe Gildenman’s detachment a 17-year old girl Sarah-Liba Zigman was a very remarkable figure. Partisans called her Liuba. She shot the head of Korosten police Peter Tsukanov, the former lieutenant of the Red Army. He had been captured by the Germans, finished special “gestapo” school and took an active part in the operations of the German troops against the partisans.

Jews from Hungary were killed on this site. Photo by YadVashem

Korosten was first liberated by the Red Army on November 17, 1943 but was reoccupied by the Germans on the following day.
The town was finally liberated on December 28, 1943.

Memorial to Hungarian Jews in Kupische village. Photo by YadVashem

In early 1944, an emergency commission made an investigation of the atrocities of Fascist Germany. According to Soviet sources, the total number of Jewish victims from Korosten and the surrounding settlements was 6,000 – 7,000. Journalist Mikhail Prigornitskiy was a member of the commission and a witness. He described all the deeds in the newspaper “Korosten truth”. Yanina Nikolayevna Ivashchenko told about the shooting. She lived opposite the place where the ditch was:

These photos of the list of Holocaust victims were shot in 2017 during Summer expedition in the office of the local Jewish community:

After the WWII

After 1945 some Jews came back to Korosten. The Jews from nearby villages and shtetls moved to Korosten as well. Their communities were completely destroyed during the war.

After the WWII, it was almost Jewish steet. Families Kipnis, Guralnik, Gendelman and many other leave there

In 1946, a synagogue was opened in Korosten on 55 Kirov street. 30-50 people used to gather for prayers on weekdays, 70-80 people – on Saturdays, and up to 400 people – on holidays. Shokhets and activists of the community were Abo Avrumovich Farovich (1880 – ?), he was also a moel, Gersh Aizikovich Karant (1885 – ?) and B.I. Shleifman (1885 – ?).

On this site was synagogue after the WWII. Building was destroyed in 1980’s-1990’s

In the late 1940’s, the community gathered money to repair the synagogue, and help poor Jews. They also organized cartels which baked matza and led memorial services at the mass grave. In the late 1940’s – 1950’s, several minyans were gathered in private houses. In 1957, the synagogue was closed and a pioneer house was opened in it. However, religious life wasn’t over in the town. In the 1960’s – 1970’s, Trosman was a rabbi. In the late 1970’s – early 1980’s, an illegal minyan was functioning in Korosten. They also had a shokhet.
Since the late 1980’s, Jews from Korosten have been moving actively to Israel and other countries.

In 1989, a society of Jewish culture was formed in Korosten. It was located in an old one-storied building which belonged to the Jewish community. The first bar mitzvah was organized in 1990. Rabbi Shlomo Brayer from Berdichev was invited to conduct it. He brought the first tefilin to the town.

There was a synagogue in 1980’s. Now it is an office of local “Hesed” branch

In 1992, society “Mitsva Chernobyl” and a Jewish Sunday school were founded in Korosten. In 1994, club “Mazeltov” was started. In 1992, a rabbi from Israel Aron Berger (born in 1963 in Israel) came to Korosten. The revival of active Jewish life in the town was due to him. Boris Kogan has been the Head of the Jewish community since the beginning of 1990’s.

The local authorities gave the community an abandoned dormitory building which was repaired. There was constructed building with a mikvah and a synagogue in the yard.

Complex of synagogue, hotel and mikvah in Korosten, 2017

In 1994, a Jewish school for boys was started. In 1995, a synagogue was opened. It also had a small yeshiva and mikva. 42-43 boys studied at school in its best years. The school had a dormitory.
Rabbi Aron Berger left for Israel in 2008. At that same time, the Jewish school was closed. Chabad Rabbi Rabinovich’s yeshiva was in the building of the school for a short period.

Inside Korosten synagogue

Famous Jews from Korosten

Iosif Yefimovich Samusenkov (Meylakhstein) (1928, Korosten – 1991, Moscow),was a football player and a coach.
Yefim Aronovich Tartakovskiy (born in 1928), was a surgeon.

Old Jewish cemetery

Cemetery was destroyed after the WWII

Site of destroyed Old Jewish cemetery in Korosten

New Jewish cemetery

It is locating in Western outskirts of the city, near the Zhytomyrs’ka railway station. There are thousands of graves.

Horodnytsa is a town in Novograd-Volynskyi district of the Zhitomir region. Its population was 5,470 in 2011.
Before the revolution of 1917, Horodnytsa was a small town in the Novograd-Volynskiy uyezd of the Volin gubernia.

Horodnytsa is situated on the River Sluch, 42 km northwest of Novohrad-Volynskyi and 121 km northwest of Zhytomyr. The small town initially belonged to the Korecki family and from 1651 – to Princes Chartoryski. In 1810 it passed to Princes Lubomirski, and in 1856 – to Waclaw Rulikowski.

We don’t know for sure when the Jews first arrived in Horodnytsa. We can only assume that it was sometime in the XVII century.

In the XIX century, the history of Horodnytsa was connected to the local faience and porcelain factory, which was established by Prince Jozef Chartoryski in Korets in 1799 but moved to Horodnytsia in 1807.

Horodnytsa entrepreneurs list from Russian Empire Business Directories by 1913

Throughout 1882-1907, while the factory belonged to succeeding owners, its leaseholder and manager was Aizik Fishl (Feliks) Sussmann from Lviv. Sussmann employed about 350 Jewish women to do various tasks in the factory. The Horodnytsa porcelain factory continued to function during Soviet times and was named “Komintern” (after the Communist International). It closed in the 2000s.

The rest Jews worked as stallers, artisans, and traders. They mostly sold lumber and wooden products. However, their income was also connected with the porcelain factory. The town’s population included several prosperous families.
During the tsarist period, there wasn’t a state-appointed rabbi in the shtetl, only a spiritual rabbi. That’s why the state-appointed rabbi from Korets, Rabbi Gershgorn, used to come to the shtetl on official visits.

In the early XX century, a typhus epidemic broke out in the shtetl. Jews erected a “black chuppah” in the cemetery for the poorest Jewish man and woman of the shtetl in an effort to stop the epidemic.

In the late XIX century, according to memoirs published in 1947, the majority of Jews in Horodnytsa were Hasidim and they existed 5 synagogues and prayer houses and one Kloyz.

One of these was wooden Great Syangogue which was probably built around 1890 and mentioned in 1898, when a Zionist preacher delivered a eulogy on the death of the head of Hibat Zion movement Rabbi Shmuel Mohilever (1824-1898). The town was heavely damaged by fire in June 1903 and seemingly all houses of prayer were burnt down. At least some of them were probably rebuilt, but we know specifically of only two. Soon after the fire, the erection of a new masonry building for the Great Synagogue began, on the initiative of its gabai Yeshayahu Dov Aizenbarg. In spite of “conflicts and clashes”, which the project provoked within the community, the Great Synagogue was finished in 1913. The memoirist recounted that the erection of new synagogue caused jealousy among the Christian population, to the point that they convinced the local landowner to build a new Russian Orthodox church in Horodnytsa.

Big Synagogue before “repairment”, 2014

In the late XIX century, the Bund party first appeared in the shtetl.
The first Zionist society, called “Gertsl,” was founded in 1904. Its membership exceeded 100 people, including many workers who became disillusioned after the 1905 Revolution and left the Bund.
By 1917, Zionists dominated Jewish society in the shtetl. They founded a public library, improved the cheder (where they taught Hebrew, mathematics, and Russian), and formed charity organizations.
Froim Kuperstein was a manager at the porcelain factory. He was a son-in-law of Rabbi Shloime Bolekhover’s Gaon. Jewish and Ukrainian workers, and all those who had had business with Froim, worshipped him. Everybody respected and appreciated him for his honesty and bravery. He was very generous in giving to charity and attending to social needs.
Melamed Volf Donder was a founder of the Zionist movement in Horodnytsa.

Big Synagogue after “repairment”, 2017

During the pogroms of the Russian Civil War, a self-defense detachment was organized in the shtetl.

Between the Wars

After the peace treaty between the USSR and Poland, the shtetl was given to the Soviet Union. As a result, the majority of Zionist activists left the town to continue their work in Poland. Several activists remained and kept working illegally under the Soviet rule, especially in the area of Jewish culture. Two of them were sent to Siberia.
The gabbai of the Bolshaya [Large] synagogue Yeshayahu Dov Aizenbarg, was a respected person not only inside the synagogue but also among the authorities of the shtetl and district. He gathered money and organized the construction of the Bolshaya synagogue before the Bolshevik Revolution.

Former Jewish school in Horodnitsa, 2017. It was rebuilded several times during XX century.

When Horodnytsa was incorporated into Soviet Ukraine, the Yevsektsiya (a Jewish section of the Soviet Communist Party) was placed in charge of the Jews. The Yevsektsiya began to confiscate prayer houses in the shtetl, though they could do nothing with the Bolshaya synagogue because Yeshayahu Dov Aizenbarg did his best to oppose them. He sometimes convinced the local council to cancel Evsektsiya orders. If the 70-year-old rabbi failed to secure the local council’s support, he would travel all the way to Kharkiv, despite the lack of good roads, to complain to the state council about the Yevsektsiya. This is how orders to confiscate Bolshaya synagogue were cancelled several times. Eventually, his son-in-law was denounced for Zionist leanings. As a result, his son-in-law, daughter, and two small grandchildren were sent to Siberia. Finally, the Yevsektsiya managed to confiscate the only remaining synagogue in the shtetl. It was turned into a grain warehouse. Old and depressed, Rabbi Shae-Ber left the shtetl and moved to Zhitomir. He died there after several years of loneliness.

Verification letter of Yacob Hunovich Yasnobulko from local porcelain factory with signs of another 10 Jews

Between 1920 and 1939, Horodnytsa was a border village. The nearby Sluch River divided the USSR and the Republic of Poland.
In the 1920s-30’s, a Jewish national village council functioned in the shtetl.

Holocaust

I have not been able to find much information about the Holocaust in Horodnytsa. The number of Jews living in the shtetl before the war is also unknown.
According to one version of the story, a ghetto was formed in Horodnytsa. However, I have not been able to find its exact location or proof of its existence.
On the July 19, 1941 (Saturday, the 24th of Tammuz 5701), the Germans shot 21 local Jews three kilometers southwest of the village. According to other accounts, 89 people were shot that day.
A group of Jewish children was shot by the Germans near the village Ostrozhok (Baranovka district). There were children from the Horodnytsa district among them.

Holocaust mass grave in Horodnitsa Jewish cemetery

According to some unsubstantiated information, only three Jews survived the German occupation of Horodnytsa.

After the War

After the war, several Jewish families returned from the evacuation. Some of their houses had been destroyed or been occupied by their Ukrainian neighbors. As a result, they had to move to Novograd-Volynskiy.
In 1945, a detachment of Banderovtsy attacked the shtetl. As a result, one Jew was killed.
After the war, an unofficial minyan met in private houses. Zelik Trakhter, Yankel Zalts, Arvum Kovzalo (who moved to Lvov), Aharon Vainstein, Mikhail Goltsman, Yankel Leybovich (1882-1966), and Yankel Fishman were among the regular participants of minyan. Unfortunately, young Jews took virtually no part in religious life.
The local Jews had a Torah scroll that they moved from family to family. Its last known residence was with the Taller family, which later moved to Israel. No one knows what happened to the scroll.
Shmulik Peysakhovich Baraz was a last shoykhet in the shtetl.

Today, there is still a street named in honor of Sholom-Aleichem in Horodnytsa. After the war, the majority of the local Jews lived on that street. Mikhail Vladimirovich Goltsman (1906-2001) was the last Jew to live on Sholom-Aleichem Street.

Sholom-Aleichem street, 2017

Former Jewish houses in Sholom-Aleichem street:

In the 1990’s, a Jewish community was officially registered in Horodnytsa. One room in the building of the former synagogue was allocated for the community’s use. The Jews made repairs there. Sergey Srulevich Sytner was the first chairman of the community. Because of mass emigration to Israel and Germany, the number of the Jews in Horodnytsa fell dramatically.

In 2017, there were about ten Jews living in Horodnytsa.

In 2017, the local council financed the erection of a fence around the Jewish cemetery.

Jewish cemetery

Cemetery locates on the picturesque bank of Sluch River.

In 1954, surviving local Jews transported the remains of Horodnytsa Jews who had been murdered during the war. The bodies were reburied in two mass graves in the Gorodnitsa Jewish cemetery. There are two monuments with Russian inscriptions, including the surnames of those killed. On the back of one of the monuments, there is an inscription in Hebrew that reads, “killed,” with the names and surnames of the victims. It is difficult to decipher the inscriptions. We could read only four surnames: Galperin and Krays on the lefthand gravestone; Shrayber and Feldman on the right one. During the reburial, one Jew was identified because of his red hair. However, in 2017, we were unable to ascertain his name.

River Sluch near Horodnitsia Jewish cemetery

Grave of local Rabbi:

Old part of the cemetery:

New part of the cemetery:

Norinsk is a village in the Ovruch district, Zhitomir region (Ukraine), first recorded in 1545. In the XVI-XVIII centuries, it was a shtetl in the Ovruch district of the Volyn voivodship in the Commonwealth of Lithuania. In 1793, it became part of the Russian Empire and until early XX century, it remained a shtetl of Ovruch uezd in the Volyn gubernia.

According to the 2001 census, its population is 1,360 people.

Some information in this article was provided by Aleksandr Efman. He was born in Norinsk before the war and has been living in Ovruch since 1955.

Norinsk Jewish cemetery surrounded by peasants houses

In 1847, 566 Jews lived in Norinsk, in 1897, this number went up to 584 (34.7%), in 1923, to 329. Jews have been living in Norinsk since the XVIII century. The Jews of Norinsk were mainly engaged in different crafts, retail trade, and rent. In the XIX century, the local Jews took up such occupations as tailoring, shoemaking, and joinery.

In 1867, two synagogues were open in Norinsk. In 1883, Iyeshua-Falik Kipnis (1848 – ?) was a rabbi in Norinsk.

Norinsk entrepreneurs list from Russian Empire Business Directories by 1913

In 1911, Shmuel Kipnis was a rabbi.

In 1914, the local Jews owned all six grocery stores, all four hardware stores, and the only millstone shop in Norinsk. In 1918 – 1920, the Jewish population of Norinsk suffered from the pogroms carried out by various gangs.  Some Jews left Norinsk.

JDC report about Jews of Norinsk in the beginning of 1920’s:

In the 1920s – 1930s, the remaining synagogue was closed. It was a wooden single-story building. Later it was knocked down and a school was built from taht materials. In the 1990s, the building was used as a church.

The following Jewish families lived in the village before the war: Elenkrik, Efman, Gurevich, Gokhman, Sapozhnikov, Rozenstein, Gerstein, Aysman, Grinspun, and others.

In the summer of 1941, Wehrmacht divisions entered Norinsk.

Most Jews managed to evacuate. I was able to find information on six victims of Holocaust in Norinsk.
– a cobbler Baitman, his wife, and their grandson were buried alive by the local Ukrainian collaborators. The Germans protected this family and even provided a document so that they would be spared. However, as soon as the Germans left the village, local policemen murdered the family.
– old Golda was killed by local Ukrainian shepherds
– Gershl (his surname is unknown) was shot near the hill in the village

No other information about Holocaust in Norinsk was available.

After the war about 15 families returned from evacuation to Norinsk. An informal minian was held in the village.

Jews in Norinsk after the WWII, end of 1940’s

However, the young people were leaving the shtetl with only the elderly remaining. Later they all passed away or moved in with their children. In the 1990s, no more Jews remained in the village.

During my visit to the village in 2017 it was impossible to get any information about the local Jews.

Famous Jews from Norinsk

Menakhem Nakhum Tverskiy (1730, Norinsk – 1797, Chernobyl, the Russian Empire) – a Hassidic Tsaddik, Besht’s student, a founder of Chernobyl Hassidic dynasty.

Shmuel Kipnis (1883, Norinsk – ?) – a rabbi. He was born to the local rabbi family. He studied in Lubavich yeshiva in Bobruysk. In 1907, he passed his exams and became a rabbi. In 1907-1920s he was the rabbi in Ovruch. From 1934,  he became a rabbi of one of the districts in Jerusalem in Israel.

Norins Jewish cemetery

Only two graves of Feldman families are regularly tended. Those are Roza Feldman’s parents from Ovruch. The cemetery was overgrown with shrubbery.

Novi Velidnyky (English), Wieledniki (Polish), Новые Веледники – Novye Veledniki (Russian)

Veledniki is a village in the Ovruch district, Zhitomir region. The village’s estimated population is 783 (as of 2001).

The settlement dates back to 1545. In the XVI-XVIII centuries it was in the Ovruch povet (district), Volyn voivodship of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. In 1793, it was incorporated into the Russian Empire. In the XIX-early XX centuries, it was a shtetl Veledniki of Ovruch uyezd, Volyn governorship.

Beginning

First Jews settled in Novyye Veledniki in the XVII century.

In the early XIX century, Veledniki was the center of Khasidism in the Volyn region. In the XIX-early XX centuries, small-scale crafts and trade were the main occupations of the Jewish population.

In the late XIX century, there were two synagogues in Veledniki.

Veledniki was part of the Pototskys’ estate in the XVIII century. In 1757, local Jewish tailors and furriers were granted the right to set up workshops here.

In the early XIX century, Israel Dov was the local rabbi. This was before the Russian authorities forced all Jews to get surnames so the rabbi was known by his double first name. Rabbi Israel Dov was born in 5549 (1789) in the village of Kotelnia, half-way between Berdichev and Zhitomir, in a melamed’s family. Following his marriage, Israel Dov became a rabbi at Veledniki, which is now known as Old Veledniki, as opposed to New Veledniki village nearby. Israel Dov became known as the “Baal Shem” from Veledniki in 5589 (1829). On the 21st of Tevet 5610, rabbi Israel Dov died. He was buried in Veledniki. People say that before his death the rabbi promised to help anyone who would come and hold the door handle to his “ohel” (the crypt). More about life of Israel Dov you can find here.

Grave of Rabbi Israel Dov in Veledniki

The tsadik’s house was across the road from the cemetery. Such was the dedication of the local Jewish women, that they started a tradition of bringing new linen for the tsadik’s bed. When the tsadik’s house was destroyed by the communists, the pile of linen on the bed was over a meter high.

Veledniki entrepreneurs list from Russian Empire Business Directories by 1913

In 1897, the Jewish population reached 659 people or almost 50% of the total population.
Before the revolution, there were nearly 125 Jewish families living in the shtetl.

Civil War pogroms

In July 1919, the shtetl was attacked by one of the marauding gangs. The gang’s leader (ataman) was curious and entered the Rabbi’s “ohel”. In a few minutes, he emerged pale and drenched in sweat.
-Saddle your horses, fellows!,- he said, – We are leaving! The Rabbi said: “Lekh kibinemat! (“F… off here!” – a mixture of Polish and Russian)
Not much is known about pogroms in the civil war period beyond this local legend.
In 1920, the Polish troops brought typhoid to the shtetl, with a large number of local Jews dying from the disease.

Before the Holocaust

After the 1917 revolution, Mordekhai Vaisblat became a rabbi in Veledniki. In 1922, he was sentenced to five years for withholding the rimonim (precious finials that are placed on top of Torah scrolls) from being requisitioned. However, he managed to escape arrest and in 1924 he became the rabbi of Zhitomir.
In 1924, there were 427 Jews in Veledniki or 24% of the total population of the village.

Old house in the center of former shtetl Veledniki

In the 1920s, a Jewish school opened in the shtetl, only to close 10 years later during the early stages of Stalinist purges and anti-clerical campaigns.

There were two synagogues in Veledniki at the time the World War 2 started, Beysmidrash for men and Shil for women. Isroel-Berl Feldman (1898-1991) was the khazan in the men’s synagogue. Both synagogues were destroyed during the war.
Before the war, local Jews got on well with the Ukrainians. The locals remembered their Ukrainian neighbors helping with bringing in hay on Shabat with the Jews returning the favor on Sunday.

Site of Rabbi Israel Dov’s house

Holocaust

When the war began, ten Jewish families managed to evacuate to the east of the Soviet Union, among them the Kaplans, the Promeranets, the Vainbrandts, the Feldmans, and the Groismans.

Most men were called up to serve in the Red Army. The last train leaving Veledniki before the Germans occupied the town was going to Chernigov.

Veledniki was occupied by the Germans in mid-August 1941.

According to some eye-witness accounts, local collaborators abused the Jews and forced them into labor until the day they were murdered. The Jews of Novyye Veledniki were murdered on October 18, 1941. Soviet documents report that the number of victims was 38, while the inscription on the memorial says that 93 Jews were shot in the village, with children, women, and old people among them. The mass murder was carried out in the field not far from the village.

Holocaust mass grave in Veledniki

Gershl Feldman was betrayed to the Germans by his Ukrainian neighbor and murdered with other locals. 220 Jews from Veledniki and other regions were forced to work at the local sawmill. In 1943, only 40 Jews survived. 39 people were rescued by a local Jewish partisan unit led by Moshe Gildenman several days before the sawmill was destroyed. Glazier Shmul from Baranovka killed the sawmill manager Fridrikh Krifal, avenging the murder of his 16 year-old son. He dragged the German under the band saw and died alongside his enemy.

The village was liberated by the Red Army in November 1943.

In occupied Veledniki, the Rabbi’s “ohel” was the only place that the German soldiers and the Ukrainian collaborators were too terrified to enter. They tried to turn the “ohel” into army fuel storage. On the very first night, heavy barrels of gasoline rolled off the storage rack and killed the caretaker. The morning after, a German officer laughed off the fears of the local Ukrainians which he called “silly religious superstitions”. He entered the “ohel” and immediately came out again, pale and breathless.
At some point, the Germans tried to set up an electrical generator inside the “ohel” but it failed to work even though it worked perfectly well if run outside. After that, the Germans left the “ohel” alone.

Following the initiative of a Yakov Plitman, a small wooden memorial was placed at the site of the killing in a field near the village. Later this was replaced by a brick one. Nowadays, there is a concrete memorial at the murder site. The Russian and Hebrew inscriptions on the memorial say: “Mass Grave Here lie 93 Jews from Veledniki murdered by the Nazis on October 18, 1941.”

After WWII

After the war, several Jewish families returned to the village, among them the Plitmans, the Kaplans, and one of the Pomeranets whose wife, his daughter Rosa and his son perished of malaria in the evacuation.
After the war, many Jews from Veledniki relocated to Ovruch because their houses were looted or taken by local Ukrainians. The Feldman family was among them. Berl Feldman started the process of restoration of the Rabbi’s ohel after his return from the army in 1946. He hired a builder, and they were both working on the ohel at night.

Berl Feldman with his family in Ovruch, 1950’s. Photo provided by Raya Turovskaya in 2017

In 1950’s, it was decided to place a transformer substation in the “ohel”. The pit for the transformer installation had to be dug, but after a whole day of digging, the workers would find the pit filled with soil in the morning! They dug again but the same happened again and again. Terrified laborers refused to work on the site. Eventually, the Soviet authorities had to give up on the site, just like the Germans did earlier.
Later, kerosene storage was set up in the “ohel”.

Grave of Rabbi Israel Dov, 1960’s. Photo was taken from book “Stars in the night” by Batiya Barg

Bliuma Moiseyevna Shmerman cared for the rabbi Israel DovBer’s ohel.
In the 1950s, the authorities wanted to destroy the remaining graves at the Jewish cemetery. The head of the local collective farm, a Ukrainian, was tasked with this job, but he refused.
In 1960, Yakov Isakovich Plitman became the head of the local collective farm and occupied this position for over 30 years. He was greatly respected by the locals.

Old buildings in Veledniki

Jewish cemetery

Inside the Ohel: