Piatigory is a village in the Tetiyev district of Kiev region.
In the XVI – XVIII centuries, it was a part of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Starting in 1793 it was in the Russian Empire.

In the XIX – early XX centuries, it was a shtetl of Tarascha uyezd, in the Kiev gubernia.

In 1787, there were ten traders among the Jews. In 1873, a synagogue was functioning in Piatigory. In 1865 – 1910, Moyshe Lerman (? – 1910) was a rabbi in Piatigory. When M.Lerman had died his son Tsvi-Itskhok (1866 – ?) took his place and was a rabbi in the shtetl starting in 1910. In 1914, two synagogues were opened in Piatigory. There was a Jewish cemetery in the shtetl.

Jews owned both chemists’ warehouses, both mills, and 46 stalls in Piatigory, including all 15 groceries, all nine manufactories and all 11 bakeries.

During the Civil War the Jewish population of Piatigory suffered pogroms, including the pogroms committed by the parts of the Volunteer Army in 1919. The majority of Jews left Piatigory.

In 1925, a society of immigrants from Piatigory was organized in the USA which helped the Jews living in Piatigory.

Piatigory entrepreneurs list from Russian Empire Business Directories by 1913

In the 1920’s, a Jewish school was open in the shtetl.
In the end of 1930’s, Klotsman (his name is unknown) was a head of the village council.

Former shtetl center, 2018

Piatigory local school 7th grade, 1937. Some children are Jewish…

Holocaust

Before the war Piatigory had the largest Jewish population in the Tetiyev district.  200-300 Jews lived here and there were about 50 Jewish houses. (Tetiyev Jewish community was exterminated in pogroms in 1919-1920.)  Because of this, Jews from the entire Tetiyev district were brought here to be killed.
The majority of Jews hadn’t evacuated and stayed in their village.
On July 19 1941, Piatigory was occipied by Wehrmacht regiments. On the 31 of July 1941, two Jewish hostages were killed in Piatigory. On August 28 1941, all Jewish men age 14 and older were ordered to come to school for a meeting. The 17 Jews who came were all killed. Bunia Klotsman and Avram Strizhevsky were among them.

Grave of 17 Jewish man in Northern outskirst of Piatigory

In November – December 1941, Piatigory was incorporated into Tarascha gebit , Kiev general district.
Soon a ghetto was formed. On April 25 1942, all able-bodied Jews of Piatigory were deported to the labor camp in Buki The rest of the Jews (133 people) were shot on November 16 1942 in the local park.

Grave in the park – “At this site, on the 6th of Kislev 5703 (November 15/16, 1942) the mass murder of the Jews from surrounding villages took place. Merciful Father, who is in Heaven, in his great mercy. He will keep the memory of the pious, upstanding and righteous holy communities, who gave up their souls in the name of God. Those who are beloved and dear during life, are not parted after death. May their souls be bound in the bond of life”. Monument was erected in 2008

Afterwards, some of the police went to the relatives of the Jews who had been killed and demanded money for having buried their dead relatives. In the spring 1942, mass arrests of the Jews took place on the territory of Tetiyev district, the village of Kashperovka. Some Jews, women in particular, who had little children were allowed to go home. The rest of the Jews were sent to Tetiyev. The next arrest of women and their children took place in the fall 1942. In August 1942, two Jews were shot in the village of Kashperovka. The old blacksmith I.Kh. Kuperman was arrested and sent to Piatigory. On December 15 1942, all the Jews who lived in the villages of Tetiyev district were arrested and sent to Piatigory. They had to live in a house that belonged to Grebeliuk, who had been shot earlier. The people had been told that they would be sent to work. However, the doors and windows were nailed shut at night. The house was guarded by police. At 6 o’clock in the morning on December 16 1942 all the Jews were escorted from this house to the territory of Piatigory machine tractor station (MTS) and locked in the barn. The Jews were taken out of there in groups. German police officers ordered each of the local police to short at least five people. All the police in the district and the neighboring Buki district were present at the the shooting. As a result, 300 people were killed.

Eight women managed to survive during the shooting. With the help of some Ukrainian police officers, they were able to prove they were Ukrainians. A chairman of Hilfspolizies of Kashperovka village and one local resident adopted two girls whose mothers had been shot. Eight people were saved in total.
The Katz family had been warned about the shooting and manage to escape, however,during this escape. The police wounded the mother and caught the daughter. The mother died in Piatigory. The father had been hiding but in July 1943 he was caught by the local police and sent to Belaya Tserkov. However, two brothers and a sister survived. R.L. Kleyner, a citizen of Piatigory survived with the help of Galina Mikhaylova, a clerk of the village council. The latter testified that Kleyner’s father and husband were Russian. Later she worked in the village and on November 25 1943, she entered partisan detachment “Iskra”. Kh. M. Shvartsman also managed to survive. She was hiding with her child at F. Muzyka. K.L. Kogan also stayed alive. She escaped to Aleksandrovka village together with her daughter and left in an unknown destination.
Several Jews fought against the occupation and were participating in with Soviet fighting groups. A member of the underground from Tetiyev K.A. Simis died in the fight against the occupants. More than 300 Jews living the villages of Tetiyev district died on the territory of the local MTS in Piatigory. Piatigory was liberated on January 3rd, 1944.

Site of the synagogue in Piatigory

Local Jews were gathered in at Khil Grebeniuk’s house prior to the shooting and then taken to the place of shooting. This house was still in the center of the village in 1999.
Local teacher Sizerin Klotsman (maiden name – Bit) together with her two children were among those who had been killed.
Khil Aletko was the only one who had survived among those who were taken to Buki for work. After the war he lived in Piatigory.
A woman Anna Khrypa saved Sonia Shvartsman.

Holocaust memories which were published in local newspaper in 2000:

Before the war the Shangayt family owned a bakery in the center of the village, its bread was delivered to Zhashkov to be sold. There were ten children in the family. Only one of them, a daughter Anna, managed to survive. She was a wife of the a Ukrainian man She and her son Yosef were saved by her husband’s relatives. The son Yosef was called up to the Soviet Army. The rest of the family, including eight children , was were shot by Ukrainian police.

Holocaust victims list from local village council:

The monuments on the grave of Holocaust victims were established in the 2000’s. Prior to that time the graves had been marked only by small hills.

After WWII

After the war there were only five Jewish families return to the village. Those were the Jews who had come back from the evacuation and those who had survived in occupation.
– the Khmelinsky family – a head of the family, Yosif Matveyevich with a wife and three children;
– Nemchenko
– Shvartsman
– the Aletko family with two children
– Buzevsky – a glazier, later moved to Uman.

Rebuilded PreRevolution Jewish house in the center of former shtetl

There were also several families where one of the spouses was Jewish.
There was a market square surrounded by Jewish inns and shops in the center of the Jewish shtetl.
Last three wooden inns were dismantled in the late 1970’s when all the Jewish inhabitants had left the shtetl after the war.

There used to be a water mill which belonged to a Jew on the other side of the river.

Old Jewish house in the center of former shtetl

During our visit in 2018 only one Jewish woman with children and grandchildren lived in the village.

Genealogy

The State Archive of Kiev region – District Courts of Kiev Province – Taraschansky, f. 803, 1782 – 1871, 2047 d. contains lists of Jews living in Piatyhory. The State Archive of the Russian Federation has the case f. 8114, ??.1, case # 944, pages 61–83 – memoirs of Raisa Zelenkova on life in the shtetl of Piatyhory. These materials were used when compiling the book “Unknown Black Book – Testimonies of the Eyewitnesses on the Holocaust of the Soviet Jewry (1941-1944)”.

Memories about Holocaust in Piatogiry by Raisa Zelenkova can be found here.

Jewish cemetery

A Jewish cemetery of Piatigory is situated on the hill of a local park. After the war there were up to 200 gravestones there.
Many matseyvas were stolen by local population and used in for building materials. things. Many of the graves have been dug up by people trying to find something of value.
In 2018, during our visit, the territory of the cemetery was so totally covered with the bushes that it was impossible to enter it.

Bushes and trees on the Jewish cemetery, 2018

The head of the village council, told us that a part of the matseyvas was just taken away from the graves and put in a pile in the park.
Expeditions of Lo-Tishkah managed to take a few photos of Piatigory Jewish cemetery in 2009.

Belilovka is a village in the Ruzhin district of the Zhitomir region.

In the XVI through XVIII centuries, it was a village of Kiev county and voivodship, 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 Berdichev uyezd, Kiev gubernia.

The first records of Jews in Belilovka date back to 1719.

We learned that in April 1735 an attorney of Duke Liubomirsky, the owner of Belilovka, complained about several dozens of cossacks having attacked the village. They robbed, beat, and humiliated people of the shtetl, particularly Jews. Three Jewish citizens were tortured to death.

There used to be a market on the place of a current park by the 1920’s. A current market is also situated in the center of the shtetl but it covers only a small part of the pre-revolutionary one.

In 1863, there were two synagogues in Belilovka. Shloyme Makhrinsky (1880 – ?) was a rabbi in Belilovka starting in 1900. In 1912, a savings and credit society was functioning in Belilovka.

The main occupation of the Jewish population of Belilovka was traded. However, there were also Jewish pharmacists, dentists, and tailors in the shtetl. There was a tannery and a grits factory in the shtetl as well. Up to 200 Jewish families lived in Belilovka.

View to the former shtetl’s center from the hill

In 1919, the Jewish population of the shtetl suffered from a pogrom. Belilovka Jews were looted. I didn’t find more information about this period

Modern market square occupies an only a small part of old market

In the 1920’s, a Jewish school was opened in the shtetl. In the 1930’s, it was turned into a Ukrainian school but locals kept calling it “Jewish” even after WWII. The school building existed until 1981, and then a new school was built.

The synagogue was closed in the 1920’s and building was preserved until the 1960’s. It was used as a stable and a granary. In the 1960’s, it was ruined and a mill was built in its place. Mill, 2018

Holocaust

In 1939, 633 Jews lived in Belilovka. They were 11% of the total population. It was occupied in July, 1941. Some of the Jews had evacuated to the East before the occupation. Also, many young men had been called up for military service in the Red Army. About 300 Jews remained in the village…

In July – October 1941, the village was ruled by the German military commandant’s office. Starting in November 1941, Belilovka was incorporated into Ruzhin gebit in Zhitomir General County of Reichskommissariat Ukraine. In Belilovka, Jews were ordered to wear the Star of David, to surrender all their gold and valuable, they were forced to do hard labor without being paid, they were prohibited from leaving the village, and they were constantly tortured and looted by the Ukrainian police. The Roytman and Kipnis families were shot in their houses. Their properties were looted. The Jew Gershzon was beaten to death.

On the 10th of September 1941, the police gathered all the Jews in the center of the shtetl and announced an “evacuation”. The column of Jews was surrounded by the local police and escorted to the local railway station. While heading to the place of the shooting some Jews gave their children to the Ukrainians. The number of children who were saved in such a way is unknown. After the war these children were taken by their relatives who returned from the evacuation. At this day unknown number Jews were shot near Rostovitsa railway station.

More details about Holocaust in Belilovka can be found in interview of Holocaust survival Boris Lisyanskiy.

Holocaust mass grave:

Some Jewish names can be found on the memorial to the locals who were drafted to Soviet Army and killed in 1941-1945:

In the 1950s in Belilovka some Jews erected a monument to the local Holocaust victims with inscriptions in Yiddish and in Russian.
The Yiddish inscription says: “Eternal memory to the murdered ones, murdered by the German fascists on September 10, 1941 (the 19th of the month of Elul) in the town of Belilovka. We are one.” The Russian inscription says: “Eternal memory to the victims of German fascism, murdered on September 10, 1941 in the town of Belilovka. From all their relatives and dear ones.”
On the back of the monument, there is a third inscription, in Yiddish and Russian. This text notes that 850 people are buried at the place where this monument stands.

Relatives of perished Jews near the mass grave in Belilovka, 1980’s

After the shooting locals looted the Jewish houses. However, some buildings were preserved until the 1980’s – 1990’s. One of them served as a drugstore for a long time. In 1981, a new school building was erected in the center on the place where old Jewish stalls used to be. An old well was situated in the territory of the school. In fall 1941, Jews threw their valuables and jewelry in that well when they were led to the place of the shooting. After the war locals tried to find those values but they failed.

After the Holocaust

After the war several Jewish families returned to the shtetl. Locals remember Berko who managed to survive during the war: He hid in Maryanovka and was engaged in weaving nodes. They also remember a tailor David and shop director Matus Pinkhusovich.
One local woman recalled an elderly Jewish couple who used to live in a dilapidated house. However, she couldn’t remember their surname.

The last Jewish woman in the village was Fruma Grigorevna Yuditsky (1914 – 2017). Though she wasn’t quite local as she moved to the shtetl from somewhere in Russia after World War II.

Famous Jews from Belilovka

Shloyme Lopate (Lopatin) (1902, Belilovka – 1943, died at the front), a poet.

Jewish cemetery

We can assume that the first burials were at this cemetery in the XVIII century. It was the only Jewish cemetery in Belilovka.
After World War II the cemetery wasn’t used and local Jews buried their relatives at the Ukrainian cemetery.

The majority of the gravestones are absent. They might have been stolen by members of the local population. A part of the cemetery is cultivated and serves as village vegetable gardens. Only a few dozens of gravestones have been preserved.

Krivoye Ozero is an urban type village founded in the 18th century. It is located on the banks of the Kodyma River and holds a long history of both vibrant and tragic Jewish life.

Since the 1970s, the village became the district center of the Nikolayev region, having previously belonged to the Odessa region.

Between the 16th and 19th centuries, Chumaky Way, a trade road through which products from Southern Ukraine were delivered to the center, laid across Krivoye Ozero, including during the time of the Russian Empire. In the late 19th to early 20th centuries, the village became part of the Balta Uyezd (Podolia Gubernia).

Beginning

Jewish life in Krivoye Ozero came about parallel to the founding of the village in 1762. Almost a century later, there were three functioning synagogues. In 1896, five years after a pogrom took place, Nokhum Zeyev Tabachnik became the village rabbi.

Family of Mordek and Feiga Anchipolovsky, Krivoe Ozero 1910’s. Feiga Anchipolovsky died before the WWII in age of 98.

However, it was in 1905 after a wave of pogroms in neighboring villages that Jews began to settle more in Krivoye Ozero, leading to the rapid development of shtetl life. By 1910, there were six synagogues, one Jewish cemetery and a private Jewish college. Two years later, a Jewish savings and credit society was organized.

In 1914, Leyba Eyzelevich Lemberg became the official rabbi of the shtetl.
During this time, the main occupations of the Jewish population were craft and trade. Jewish owners also operated:
three drug stores, one inn, ten forest warehouses, two creameries, 23 stalls, 33 manufactories.

Krivoye Ozero entrepreneurs list  from Russian Empire Business Directories by 1913:

Amongst the Jewish population there were:
two doctors, a jeweler, 20 blacksmiths, 20 carpenters, nine tinsmiths, twelve glaziers, 60 cobblers, 100 employees in 10 different creameries.

From December 1919, a pogrom committed by detachments of a volunteer army lasted several weeks. As a result Jewish homes, warehouses and shops were looted and destroyed. The number of deaths is unsure. While some sources claim 280, others claim that approximately 600 Jews were killed, and hundreds were wounded. Many Jews fleeing the pogrom froze to their death in the harsh winter conditions.
Another pogrom was committed by Denikin’s soldiers. They killed hundreds of men on their way to Shabbat prayer on a Friday evening. The next pogrom was committed by Petliura’s people, who killed anyone who came into their sight. This led to over 80 Jewish families taking refuge in Odessa.
Consequently, a Jewish self defence league was organized in the 1920’s. Around the same time, a society founded in the USA assisted a Jewish agricultural community near Krivoye Ozero.

Old PreRevolution in the center of Krivoye Ozero:

Full description of Civil War’s pogroms can be found here (in Russian).

List of the Jews who suffered during the pogroms in Krivoye Ozero (original list can be found here):

During the Holodomor of 1932-1933, more than one thousand Jewish residents died in the shtetl. It is said that at the end of the Holodomor there were no living cats or dogs in the village; they were eaten by starving and dying residents.

Jewish orchestra in Krivoye Ozero, 1920’s-1930’s. Photo from local museum

The majority of the teachers who taught in the Jewish school were repressed by Stalin’s regime after the doors of the school shut in the 1930’s. In a 1994 interview, third generation and life long Krivoye Ozero resident Aleksandr Anchipolovsky (1934-2008) recalled the last name of only one teacher: Misherovsky.

A two storied building of the central synagogue of Krivoye Ozero was closed in the 1930’s, was heavily affected during the war and alas destroyed in the 1950’s. A man named Shloymele was the last “gabai,” assistant to the rabbi.

In 1939, 12,745 Jews (6.45% of the population) lived in Krivoye Ozero.

Holocaust

In June 1941, the USSR entered World War II. Two months later, on August 14th, Wehrmacht detachments occupied Krivoye Ozero. Two weeks later, they rounded up 45 Jewish men in the agronomic school (previously a synagogue) and led them to behind the hospital where they were all shot. Soon all the village Jews were ordered to register at the commander’s office. The Jewish residents were obliged to wear a sleeve band with a Star of David.
A ghetto was organized on the grounds of the agronomic school. There, Jews were forced to work. However, the ghetto was fenced but not heavily guarded, making it somewhat easy to escape.

On October 14th, the German occupiers gathered surviving Jews near the building of a former synagogue where they were informed that they would be resettled. The Jews were lined up and escorted to a mine in a field surrounded by Nazi police and dogs. It was located near Vradievka. The Jews were forced to undress and bathe in the dirty puddle at the bottom of the pit. After the forced bathing, the Jews were led in groups of 10-15 people to the edge of the pit and shot, their dead bodies falling in. Children were thrown alive into the pit. The next day, almost 3,000 people were shot into this pit. The shooting was ordered by Higher SS and Police Leader of Central Russia command Erich von dem Bach-Zelewski. Company 314 of the police battalion and local Ukrainian police also participated. Pits quickly turned into mass graves.

Holocaust memorial near Vradievka

During this time, several local Jews participated in underground activity as part of the patriotic group of T. Petrichenko in Krivoye Ozero. Anna Polischuk and Klavdiya Rozina were some of the members that took part in sabotages, robberies of weapons, leaflet distributions and summary reporting to the Soviet Information Bureau. They were both awarded with medals of merits after the war ended.

The majority of Krivoye Ozero’s Jews died during the German occupation of the village. After the territory was handed to the Romanian troops, mass killings came to an end. It was also possible to bribe the Romanian authorities. However, during this time, local police posed the greatest danger. One of local police officers nicknames was Todik, and he was known to be a real sadist. He alone killed more than one dozen Jews in hiding. Todik was caught in Odessa after the war ended and was judged but not hung. He returned to Krivoye Ozero in 1953 and was killed by the surviving sons of a murdered Jewish couple. Another story involved a tailor with the last name Shlakman who sewed clothes for the Romanian authorities. They later arrested him on charge for sewing clothes for the partisans. Shlakman was judged in Tiraspol and shot. His family escaped to the village of Mazurovo and survived the war.

Of the people who were saved by local and neighboring villagers, some information:
The Davidzon family escaped to Lukanovka village, and was saved there
Local Ukrainian resident Tosia Belinskaya rescued Genia Shlakman and Etlia Melamud
The Mechetner family was also saved by local Ukrainians
Girgoriy Tsybulko hid and saved the family of Yuriy Oyberman

Out of the local Krivoye Ozero Jews who were driven to Domanevka, a nearby village, only 20 people survived. Luba Slobiker was one of them. Krivoye Ozero was liberated on September 29th 1943.

The bodies of the shooting victims near the hospital in 1941 were reburied in the Jewish cemetery soon after the war. Although the bodies started to decompose, some could still be identified. Melamud, Kupershmit, Kuperberg and Anchipolovsky men did the reburrying. There were four non-Jews found in the graves, suspected to be Romanian refugees.

After 1945

After the war, many surviving Jews returned from evacuation to their former shtetls. In Krivoye Ozero the survivors re-settled mostly in the center; on May 1st, Mayakovsky and Shevchenko streets. Religious life also renewed. The Ukrainian family Timokh saved a Torah scroll, shofar and some Siddur prayer books, which surviving Jews began to use again.

Jewish youth eventually started to leave Krivoye Ozero for Odessa, Nikolayev and other big cities in order to study and find work opportunities. After a while, the parents of the youth would join them, and the amount of Jews in Krivoye Ozero slowly started to reduce.

Religious Jews would gather in the home (and former inn) of the Anchipolovsky family. A rabbi from Savran would come to the shtetl to lead the prayers. The shtetl also had its own shoykhet. Krivoye Ozero resident Yankel Melamud became the unofficial rabbi thanks to his knowledge of ancient Hebrew and his Torah reading abilities. The last gathering for prayer happened right before Yankel’s death in the 1980s; after that no one in the village knew how to read Hebrew.

Although there were more than ten synagogues in Krivoye Ozero, little information about the buildings is known and available. During the Soviet period one of the buildings of a former synagogue became a gym, then a school and finally a bank. In the 1990’s, Aleksandr Anchipolovsky was offered to take this building for the community but he could not accept due to the lack of financing available to maintain it. Today it is the House of Children’s Creativity.

Former synagogue in Krivoye Ozero

In the 1990’s, Aleksandr Anchipolovsky encouraged the revival of the small Jewish community and used his home for Shabbat and holiday gatherings. The people who attended were mostly elderly, some of their last names were Polur, Pekar, Aptekar, Shor, Goykhman and Slobidker. The chief rabbi of Nikolayev region Sholom Gottlib greatly helped the community. Aleksandr’s wife Gretta Abramovna Anchipolovsky (1942-2014) dedicated lots of time and effort into helping the establishment of the monument for the massacre of over 7,000 Krivoye Ozero Jews. Aleksandr himself was a very honorable resident of the village. He had worked at a food factory for many years and was a member of the inventors and innovators’ movement. During the Soviet times, he was worked as a roofer. Some local authorities asked him to take down crosses from churches but he refused despite the threats. Aleksandr found and preserved a rare icon, and was offered 5,000 soviet rubles for it. When the Orthodox church had reopened many years later in the village, he donated the icon to the priests.

A New York resident with the last name Uchitel made a donation to the head of the village council for the building of a memorial following his visit in the 1990s. The monument is located in the Jewish cemetery of Krivoye Ozero. A large Menorah stands with the names of killed residents listed on the bottom, and a figure of a mourning woman weeps alongside it.

After Aleksandr’s death in 2008, the few remaining members of the community no longer gathered, and his widow Gretta left for Israel to join their children. The last known Jew of Krivoye Ozero was Grigoriy Pekar who passed away in 2015.

Aleksandr Anchipolovsky (1934-2008) with his wife Gretta (1942-2014) during interview for Shoa Foundation, 1994

House of Aleksandr Anchipolovsky

Aleksandr inherited and owned the oldest house in Krivoye Ozero, a representation of Jewish history of the village. It was built originally as an inn by his grandfather Mordechai Anchipolovsky in the 19th century. The house stopped being an inn in the early 20th century when the Anchipolovsky family began fishing in the lakes around Krivoye Ozero. A stable was also built near the inn.

In the 1960’s, Aleksandr built a new home on the grounds, keeping half of the original inn intact. Today, nobody lives in the historic home, but the Anchipolovsky fishing gear can still be found there. Aleksandr’s wife Gretta donated the scales used for fish to the local museum.

Jewish cemetery

Most tombstones from old part of the cemtery were stolen by local and there is an empty field.

Holocaust mass grave and memorial:

Another graves:

אַנאַניעוו‎ (Yiddish), Ана́ньїв (Ukrainian), Ананьев (Russian)

Ananyev is a city and the administrative center of Ananyiv district in the Odessa region. It stands on the Tyligul River. Population: 8,495 (2015 est.)

Ananyev became part of the Russian Empire in 1792, registered as a district town (uyezd) of Kherson gubernia in 1834-1920, then assigned to the Odessa gubernia in 1920. In 1924-1940, Ananyev was part of the Moldavian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic within the Soviet Republic of Ukraine.

David Vladimirovich Neifleisch (born in 1948), a deputy of the local town council and one of the last remaining Jewish residents of Ananyev shared his memories of the post-war Ananyev in the summer of 2018.

David Neifleisch giving an interview near Holocaust memorial, 2018

His father’s first family, a wife and two children (a boy and a girl) perished in Ananyev during the Nazi occupation. Neifleish could remember the photo of his father’s killed son which remained on the wall of their house for the rest of his father’s life.

Some documents relating to the Jewish history of Ananyev are being kept in Tiraspol, the capital of as yet internationally unrecognized Transnistrian Republic. These documents are therefore very difficult to access as travel permits remain problematic.

Beginning

Ananyev was founded in 1753. In 1792 it became part of the Russian Empire. Jews began to settle there in the beginning of the XIX century. A Talmud Torah operated from 1880.

Map of Ananyev, 1889

Most Jews in Ananyev were engaged in tailoring and trade. In the 1810s, there was just one synagogue in Ananyev, with four more and two Jewish cemeteries by the turn of the XX century.

PreRevolution photo of Ananyev from collection of local museum:

In 1837, the Khevra Kadish was established, in 1899, the Society for the Assistance to the Poor, in 1893, a State Jewish college and a private Jewish Women’s college, in 1903, a Society for the Assistance for the Students, in 1912, a Jewish Savings and Credit Society.

In the 1860s, Solomon Nukhimovich Chernetsky was appointed a rabbi in Ananyev.
Solomon Markovich Zgut and Felix Fantukh were the district rabbis.
Since 1908, Abram-Volf Berenshteyn (1872 – ?) served as a rabbi in Ananyev.

On April 27, 1881, a pogrom broke out in the shtetl. As a result, 175 houses were destroyed.

Mikhail Krasniansky recalls:
My grandfather was one of the most distinguished citizens of Ananyev, he was a 2nd guild trader and owned several shops and warehouses, a photo studio, and a haulage firm. He chaired the board of trustees of the local Jewish school. He was killed together with his wife Sofia, my grandmother. They were killed by a Petliura’s gang in 1919 during terrible Jewish pogroms.

PreRevolution Ananyev postcards from collection of local museum:

Jewish self-defence unit was created in 1920. There were 300 soldiers but 220 of them were killed in the battle with Tutunnik’s gang.

In 1919, a Jewish agricultural association (artel) was formed in Ananyev. Later, it was transformed into a collective farm. In 1921, a local unit of Yevsektsiya (the Jewish section of the Soviet Communist Party) was organized.

Former PreRevolution Jewish school

By 1930, several synagogues were still open in Ananyev. In 1934, the Jewish school was closed.

PreRevolution building in Ananyev, 2018:

Holocaust

In 1941, the head of the town council was Jewish.  His surname is unknown.
According to a former military commissar, 30% of those called up to fight in the Red Army in 1941 from this area, were Jewish.

Evacuation during the war was complicated as the town is located far away from the railway. Some Jews who had managed to escape came back. Ananyev was occupied between August 7th 1941 and April 1st 1944.

On August 23rd 1941, the Germans ordered all local Jews to be registered and deported all Jewish refugees.
On August 28th 1941, the local police gathered all Jews on the pretext of a general meeting. Three hundred Jews who turned up were shot by the Sondercommander 10 B. According to the Extraordinary State Commission data, which may be exaggerated, 1,600 people were killed.

The Romanians who occupied the area after the Germans had left on September 3 1941, formed a Jewish ghetto in Ananyev. More than 300 people lived there. Some Jewish children were baptized by a local priest Goncharov. In early October 1941, Romanians deported about 200 Jews from Ananyev to Dubossary where they were murdered. The remaining Jews, over a hundred people, were murdered in Gvozdavka village on November 11, 1941. Five people managed to escape.

The Jewish ghetto of Ananyev was located in Kriva street (now Shevchenko street) and lasted for two and a half months. It was surrounded by barbed wire and was guarded. The local Jews lived in terrible conditions. The locals used to throw food to the prisoners over the fence. The guards shot those who tried to hide.
Seven people were shot in the yard of what is now the building of the town council. They were I.Kh. Krasniansky (a labourer), B.Y. Bekker ( an accountant), Y.Bekker (a doctor), Bedniat (a labourer), Shoykhter (a teacher), Lekhtman (an accountant), Lekhtman (the director of a local creamery).
Many older residents of Ananyev still remember the ghetto inhabitants, a huge crowd of women, the elderly, and children, being driven up Sovetskaya street (now Nezavisimosti street) to the village of Zherebkovo.

Members of the local Jewish community near Holocaust memorial near Novogeorgiyevka village, 1990’s:

Also, a lot of people were forced to live in the basements of the houses in K. Liebknecht street. It was often called Jewish Street. The inhabitants of Ananyev I.Robul and G.Golovko said they often heard shouts and cries, moans and requests for water and bread from those basements.
The Gitman family with their daughters Mania, Zhenia, and Fira were all shot. Mania remained alive after the shooting; she got out of the pile of dead bodies and crawled to the village at night. The people from Novogeorgiyevka (Maynovo) rescued the girl. Despite this, after the war she died of tuberculosis.
The residents of Novogeorgiyevka also saved Mania Kleyman and Lyalya Ladyzhenskaya. The latter lost her children.
Buzia Neifleisch and her three children, Iba Neifleisch, Basia Litvak with her two children, Seibl Bidniak with two children, the Erlichmans with two children and many other Jews with their children were shot….
Many war prisoners and civilians from other towns and villages found their final resting place in those deadly anti-tank ditches.
Many war prisoners were reportedly brought from Balta, Gvozdavka.

Holocaust memorial near Novogeorgiyevka village, 2018

The local police took an active part in killing of the Jews. Many collaborators lived in Ananyev after the war, Sergey Kinash was one of them. Most of them avoided trial and were never even investigated.

The first memorial was erected in the 1980s. The descendants of the Ananyev Jews from all over the world raised funds for a new memorial in the 2000s. Semyen Neifleisch (1930-2013) took an active role in fundraising and designing the memorial.
In 2013, a memorial was erected to mark the mass grave in Novogeorgiyevka (Maynove) where 360 Jews were murdered. According to other sources, 80 Jews were killed there.

Documents of Soviet commission, 1944:

Unfortunately, there are no exact records of the people murdered during Holocaust.

After the WWII

After the war, some Jewish families returned to Ananyev, among them the Galitskys, Zachs, Umanskys, Maischtuts, Schoklers (used to work as barbers), Odivets, Scheinsons (used to work as a glazier, had five children) and many others.

Former Jewish neighborhood in Ananyev, 2018. Now it is a Evreyskaya Str.

Berl Schtern, a glazier, was an unofficial rabbi after the war. Local Jews gathered at his place for prayers. He survived to over 90 years of age.
In the 1960s, the minyan was held in the Leya Odivets’ house with Yefim Schoklet (1890-1960), Umansky (1878-1957), Goichinder (1852-1959), Beilin Mikhail among the congregation.
The local Jews baked matzos themselves.
After Berl Schtern passed away, the minyan was held at the house of Mikhail Beylin. He was a shop manager. He knew how to pray and read the Torah. After his departure to Israel, the Jews of Ananyev lost their leader and the Jewish life in the town dissipated.

Umanskiy family, Ananyev 1960’s

From the interview by David Neifleisch:
Spektor, Schtern, Schaienson, they all were artisans. Neiman was the manager of the industrial plant, he had a relative Ruvim Tsap who used to clean cesspools with his bare hands. He had a cart, a couple of horses and he raked out everything and took it to the filters himself. Those were the Ananyev Jews, workers and common people. There were of course doctors, teachers, and people of different professions among them.
Yakov Moyseyevych Kheiman was the headmaster at a local school. His wife was a teacher.
Mass emigration of the Jews began in the 1970s.

Mikhail Beylin with his family, Shapiro, and the Elbergs were the first who left for Australia, the Perednik family moved to Canada.
The Goroshin family went to Israel, and the Guks went to the USA in the 1980s.
By the 1990s, there were very few Jews in Ananyev. In the 1990s, only the Venerov family moved to Israel.
In 1998, just 20 Jews remained in the town.

Famous Jews from Ananyev

Wolfkovich Semen Isaakovich (1896, Ananyev — 1980, Moscow) — a Soviet chemist, academician of the USSR Academy of Sciences (1946). was awarded the Stalin prize in 1941. There is street in Ananyev named in his name.

Semen Wolfkovich

Alter Lev Benzianovich (1907, Ananyev – 1968, Moscow), a Soviet economist, PhD (1959), professor. The key work – “Bourgeois political economy of the USA” (1961).

Litvak Iosif L’vovich (1907, Ananyev — 1987, Moscow), electricity engineer, in the years 1956—66 he was a chief engineer of Dinamo plant.

Jewish cemetery

There were two Jewish cemeteries in Ananiv. This first, older Jewish cemetery was lower down the hillside from the newer cemetery.
This cemetery no longer visibly exists. In its place is a department of transportation, built around 2001. The Jewish community members who would speak of it said that they conserved as many gravestones as they could haul up the grassy hill to the modern cemetery.

This second, more recent Jewish cemetery contains mostly Soviet-era families with birth and death dates ranging from 1884-1999.

The older cemetery (which was lower down the hillside) no longer visibly exists. In its place is a department of transportation, built around 2001. The Jewish community members who would speak of it said that they conserved as many gravestones as they could haul up the grassy hill to the modern cemetery.

Every May 9th, the Jews gathered at the cemetery and recalled those who had died during the war. However, in the 2000s this tradition was lost as all the Jews had moved away.

In the 1990s, the cemetery was fenced and a memorial to commemorate the Jews who had died during the Holocaust was erected there.

Holocaust memorial in local Jewish cemetery

David Vladimirovich Neifleisch, the only Jew of Ananyev, is looking after the cemetery now…

Ushomir is a village in Korosten district, Zhytomir region. The village’s population is 1323 (as of 2019). Ushomir is located on the Uzh River, a tributary of the Pripyat.

In the late XIX – early XX century, Ushomir was a shtetl in Zhitomir district, Volin guberniya.

In 2017, local teacher Nikolay Palamarchuk was our guild in the village. He provided a detailed map of Jewish places of former shtetl which you can see below.

Beginning

The first mention of Jewish families in Ushomir date back to the XVII century.

Market square of former shtetl…

For 20 years (between 1870 and 1890) there were breweries, two leather factories, three tar factories, and glass factories functioning in Ushomir. A brick factory and a pottery shop had been expanded. Almost all enterprises employed Jews – from masters to workers. Some of the industrial enterprises also belonged to the Jews.

Ushomir entrepreneurs list from Russian Empire Business Directories by 1913

In 1847, 1,080 Jews lived there. Then, half a century later, in 1897, there were 1,754 Jews out of 2,381 inhabitants of the town.

There were three synagogues in the shtetl.

Most of the population were artisans, tailors, shoemakers, potters, saddlers and many others. Jews were prohibited to be engaged in farming. Most of the population of the town was poor.

The photo of the Klezmers from Ushomir was printed in the article of Menakhem Kipnis in one of the Jewish magazines. Meyer Kagan is with the violin on the right, the other man with the violin is his brother Borukh

Pogroms

In the summer of 1919, peasants from the neighboring villages occupied Ushomir and forced all local Jews between the ages of 16 and 40 years old, to pay 10 rubles.

Site of the synagogue. It was burnt during WWII

On October 9, 1920, a detachment of Polish troops plundered the shtetl and killed four Jews. I could not find more mentions of any anti-Semitic incidents during the Russian Civil War.

If we take into consideration the Jewish population in the 1920’s, we can conclude that the Jewish community was not badly affected during the pogroms of the Civil War because the number of Jews did not decrease at this time, as it did elsewhere.

Between the Wars

In the 1920’s, a Jewish village council was formed in the shtetl. Also in the 1920’s, the entire center of Ushomir was occupied by Jewish business including blacksmiths, taverns, and stalls.

In 1926, 1,749 Jews lived in Ushomir. It was 69.29 % of the whole population.

I. Nudelman and Mendel Bresker represent Ushomir in Korosten Rabbi’s conference. Guess, both of them were local rabbis.

In Ushomir, until about 1938, there was a Jewish school apart from the Polish and Ukrainian ones. 13 students finished grade 7 of the school: ten girls and three boys. Those included Yasha Golubchik (he lived in Kievskaya street and after the war he worked on a mill in Kiev); Abram Fleyshman (born in 1924 to the carpenter Eyna; lived in the center; his house is still there. He was a tankman during the WWII. A captain. He used to live in Ushomir and worked as a military training teacher at school. His son Isaak was born in 1960. He was a military pilot, an Afganistan. Now he is a pensioner, a businessman, and lives in Kherson.); Buzia Vaysband.

Former Jewish school. It locates in the territory of modern school, 2018

There was a Jewish collective farm in Ushomir by 1936-37. The farm’s office was situated in the building where a new wing of a school was built in the 60’s.

On Zalman Shkliar’s site there are several stories of pre-war Ushomir. The names and surnames of Jews who lived in the shtetl before the war are mentioned in those stories: Isburg, Adelia Latman, Mania Kipnis, Feldman.

Locals remaine a Jew Gogerman who was a seller in a local shop before the WWII.

In the 1930’s, a synagogue was ruined and a courthouse was built in its place.

In 1931, 1,593 Jews were registered in Ushomir.

Buildinf of Jewish council in 1920’s, 2018

Holocaust

The shtetl was occupied from August 6, 1941 until December 30, 1944.

In September 1941 an SS detachment destroyed all Jewish men. There is an assumption that it happened in August 10, 1941 and that the action of destruction was committed by 10th infantry regiment of SS. According to other information, during the first days of the occupation of Ushomir 58 civilians and 283 prisoners of war were shot. In September 1941, remaining Jewish women and children were shot.

“Grandpa Koshil” (his surname is unknown) with the wife saved a Jewish girl. They hid her in the basement and were hiding her there up to the end of war. After the war Lena Lubimova (saved girl) was a barber in Ushomir.

Mansion of “Grandpa Koshil”, 2018

According to the data of Korosten historical museum, 59 Jews were shot near the river Uzh (now it is not far from the post office) in Ushomir in August 1941. The place had been “breathing” and “moaning” for two days.

From the memories of Vasiliy Seghiyovich Turovskyi (born in 1933) which were written down in 2017. A group of about ten Jews had been hiding in the basement of gasoline warehouse by December 1941. Some locals revealed them and the Jews were shot on the bank of the river Uzh. The shooting was committed by three German soldiers.

In 1965, their remains were reburied at the local cemetery in Korosten. While the remains were being dug up, two golden things were found. They supposedly had been swallowed.

In 2017, we were told a story of a local policeman who was driving a Jewish boy to the place of shooting. But they hadn’t reached it as the policeman hit him to death. The boy was buried between two Jewish houses in the village.

“El Maleh Rahamim” near unmarked grave of unknown Jewish boy who was killed in 1941

Local inhabitants said that one local police officer was an accomplice in searching the Jews. It is unknown whether he was sentenced but he died after the war. He gagged on his own vomit masses.

After the WWII

After the war very few Jews came back and stayed in Ushomir because their houses were captured by the local Ukrainians.

To village returned next Jewish families lived in Ushomir: Landman, Yosia and Buzia Trosman, Mayzenberg, Fridman, Eyna Fleyshman, Vayman. Old Jew Shivka sold pharmaceutical goods. Bella Mironovna Zilberbandt worked as a gynecologist. Yeva Kogan organized and led a village choir.

Former Jewish houses in Ushomir, 2018:

The last Jews of the village were the Landmans. They left in the 1990’s.

In the 1960-1970’s, a small dam was made on the river Uzh. Later a road was laid upon it. This dam is situated very close to the former Jewish street of Ushomir. During the excavations the locals discovered jewelry which had been buried by the Jews. The whereabouts of those jewelries is unknown.

A lot of Jewish houses are still preserved in Ushomir. They are located mainly around the center though the center has suffered a lot from the fire during the war.

Collection of the teacher of local school Konstantin Palamarchuk who lived in the blacksmith’s neighborhood ( Kusnezhnaya Str.) and found all these metal manufactures in the ground

Famous Jews from Ushomir

Levin Kipnis (1894, Ushomir – 1990, Tel-Aviv) was an Israeli children’s author. He mainly wrote in Hebrew. His first poem was published in 1910. In 1913 he immigrated to Erets-Israel. He wrote approximately 800 stories, 600 poems, and 100 books. His works were translated into Yiddish, English, French, German, Russian, and Arabian languages.

Levin Kipnis

Menakhem Kipnis (1878, Ushomir –1942, Warsaw), singer and folklorist.

Shloime Rabinovich (1903, Ushomir  – 1971, Moscow), soviet journalist.

Ushomir Jewish cemetery

Golovanevsk is a district center of Kirovograd region. Population is  5 982 people (2016).
In the XIX – early XX centuries, it was a shtetl of Balta uyezd, Podolia gubernia.

Jews lived in Golovanevsk starting in the late XVIII century.

In the shtetl there were two synagogues in 1889, a private male training school in 1909, and a Jewish savings and credit society in 1912.

In 1905, a pogrom nearly happened in the shtetl. 15 Jews from Golovanevsk were fiercely beaten at the fair in the neighboring village of Troyany (now Zaporozhye region – editor’s note), a Jewish market was looted. After that event there was great anxiety among Jews of the shtetl. The non-Jews who came from Troyany after the fair to the village were beaten severely.

Former synagogue in the center of Golovanevsk, 2017

A man was sent to Balta in order to buy 15 revolvers for the shtetl. Khaim Ostroy organized a self defense detachment in the village. He collected money from wealthy Jews and bribed some officers in Balta, so they sent 100 soldiers to guard the shtetl. Thus, the pogrom was prevented in 1905.

Golovanevsk entrepreneurs list from Russian Empire Business Directories by 1913

Civil War pogroms

On December 18, 1917 a pogrom took place in Golovanevsk. It was stopped by the forces of the self-defense detachment. Nine non-Jews were killed.

In 1918 Chaim Ostroy organized a Jewish self-defense unit that numbered several hundred armed people. The unit successfully protected the county population from pogroms and attacks of gangs. 

Thanks to the self-defense detachment, Golovanevsk became an asylum where thousands of Jews fled from nearby shtetls that had been seized by pogroms. Because of the overcrowding, a typhus outbreak occurred in the shtetl killing hundreds of people.

PreRevolution building in the center of Golovanevsk

Unfortunately, the self-defense detachment couldn’t confront huge military forces. In August 1919, the detachment was defeated by the Volunteer Army under the command of General Slaschev. Khaim and Yakov Ostroy were shot on Saturday, 12 days before Rosh ha-Shana. As a punishment for the fierce opposition of the detachment, the White Guards massacred 200 Jews in Golovanevsk. However, the local Roman Catholic priest hid the families of the detachment fighters, and consequently many Jews survived including Esfir, Khaim Ostroy’s daughter. It happened on August 4, 1919.

Boris Shmidt and Yakov Zaydman, members of the detachment, testified about the Ostroys’ murders in the Golovanevsk People’s Court which took place on the 28th of October 1931.

The pogroms caused a wave of internal emigration. According to statistical data, 43 families of Jewish refugees from Golovanevsk lived in Odessa in 1920, 156 people in total.

More information about pogroms and Jewish self-defense you can found here and here.

Between the Wars

In March 1921, Yevsektsiya (a Jewish section) of the Communist Party of Ukraine received financial assistance from the United States designated for the Jews of Golovanevsk who had suffered as a result of the pogroms and war.

Former Jewish school, 2017

Old Jewish houses in the center of Golovanevsk:

In 1925, the natives of Golovanevsk formed a Jewish agricultural association called “Friling” in the Odessa region.

In the 1920’s, a Jewish school was opened in the town.

In 1939, 1,393 Jews lived in Golovanevsk. In the 1930’s, Golovanevsk was a center of the Jewish National Village Council (3,230 inhabitants in 1931).

Holocaust

Golovanevsk was occupied by German troops on July 30, 1941.

The Jewish population of the village was annihilated in two major murder operations: in late September 1941, when 570 people were shot at three execution sites located next to each other, and in February 1942, when another 165 Jews were shot. Other sources report the number of Jewish victims to have been 900. 

In February 1942 the second mass murder operation directed against the Jews of Golovanevsk was carried out. The shooting took place in the yard of the local Consumers’ Coop. Before the shooting, the victims were rounded up by police. The Jews were then taken by a police investigation officer to the yard, to a cold storage pit. There the local police chief and his deputy immediately shot the Jews and threw their bodies into the freezer. The number of victims is estimated to have been 166, including 49 children. 

In late September 1941, Jews from Golovanevsk had been assembled in the Pioneer club, located about one kilometer to the northwest of Golovanevsk, There, in two fat-boiling pits two meters apart, Jewish victims were thrown into the pits alive. When the pits were full, the [remaining] people were executed with sub-machineguns.

On September 23-25, 1941, Golovanevsk’s Jews were collected in the Pioneer club. Then they were murdered at three sites. Some of the Jews were taken by Gestapo members to the Volovik Ravine about one kilometer northwest of Golovanevsk. There a pit had been prepared. The Jews were unloaded from the trucks and forced to kneel facing the pit. Then they were shot to death with sub-machine guns. After the shooting the pit was covered with earth. 

Names of the victims on the Holocaust mass grave:

The town was liberated by the Red Army on March 17, 1944.

According to some sources the bodies of the Jewish victims were buried at the execution site, the County Consumers’ Cooperative Building, in June 1947. In 1958, following the decision of local authorities, the remains of the victims were exhumed and reburied in a mass grave at a local public garden, which today is next to Suvorov Street. In the early 1960s, Goykhman, head of the Golovanevsk Consumers’ Cooperative, initiated the erection of a memorial at the burial site.

Mass grave at a local public garden, 2017

The Ukrainian inscription on the memorial does not mention the Jewish origin of the victims. It reads: “The shooting place of residents of Golovanevsk village.” 

After the WWII

I could find very little information about after-war Jews of Golovanevsk.

After the town had been liberated, Jews began to return from the evacuation and front. The Miller, Shnayder, Gomberg, Zaltsman, and Shames families were among those who came back to the town.
Ikhil Goykhman was an informal rabbi. Minyan was gathered in his house. Nobody gathered for praying after his death.
In the 1970’s, an open trial was given to the local police officer for his brutal deeds during the war. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find out what he was sentenced to.

During our visit in 2017 we couldn’t find any Jews in Golovanevsk.

Jewish cemetery

The last grave at the local Jewish cemetery is dated back to 2015.

Gates of Golovanevsk Jewish cemetery, 2017

New part of the cemetery:

Old part of the cemetery:

Ладижинка (Ukrainian)

Ladyzhinka is a village in Uman district, Cherkassy region. Since 1726 it was a part of the Polish Lithuanian Commonwealth. In 1793, it was incorporated into the Russian Empire. In the XIX – early XX centuries, it was a shtetl in Uman uyezd, Kiev gubernia.

Beginning

Jews lived in Ladyzhinka from the XVIII century. In 1795, the Jewish community consisted of 400 people.

In the second half of the XIX century, the village grew into a town, and craftsmen began to settle there, particularly tailors, weavers and blacksmiths, who were mostly Jews. They lived in the center of the town, built houses and shops there and a few wealthy families were tenants. There were also three inns in Ladyzhinka and the owners were Jews. The population consisted of 1,470 Orthodox Christians, 12 Roman Catholics and 825 Jews.

Ladyzhinka entrepreneurs list from Russian Empire Business Directories by 1913

By the end of the XIX century, Jews accounted for 31,5% of the total population (1173 people). The town had two synagogues and a Jewish cemetery.

During the pogroms in 1906, many Jews left Ladyzhinka. In the 1910s, a Jewish savings and loan society operated, Jews owned eight stores, two inns, a restaurant and a pharmacy.

In 2017, one local citizen recalled rich Jewish woman Gesia who used to rent three ponds and owned a mill before the revolution.

There was one large synagogue and perhaps a smaller one in the shtetl. The location of the second synagogue is unknown. The main synagogue was destroyed during the pogroms of 1919. An inn was situated near the main synagogue. It was destroyed after the war.

Pogroms

The pogroms in Ladyzhinka did not differ in severity from those throughout the Uman area and there was looting and attacks on old people, women and children. Particularly brutal was the gang from Semiduby. On May 14, 1919, during the pogrom, 100 Jews were killed. In July 1919, almost all the Jews left Ladyzhinka in search of asylum, most fleeing to Golovanevsk, Uman and Odessa.

In May-June 1919, more than 100 Jews of Ladizhinka were killed by their Ukrainian neighbors.

The biggest pogrom in the shtetl happened on July 12, 1919 during a weekly fair. The horrors of this pogrom are described in Russian below. Peasants cut both arms off of the local rabbi and stabbed him with pitchforks. After the pogrom 69 dead bodies were buried as well as unknown remains of bodies – arms, legs, and heads. The pogrom was organized and carried out by local Ukrainian peasants. Some of the Jews had predicted that there would be a pogrom, and escaped to Golovanevsk before it occuredoccurred. The rest of the Jews escaped to Golovanevsk after it. About 30 Jews remained in the shtetl. They were mostly elderly or suffering from typhoid, with their wives and children who took care of them.

During the pogrom, Jews were driven to a synagogue. They were tortured for several days. The girls were raped. Later, two Jews were killed in the synagogue, five died of diseases, and the rest escaped to nearby villages. There were no Jews left in the village.

More than 1,000 Jews from Ladyzhinka moved to Golovanevsk where a strong self-defense detachment was and there were no pogroms. However, a local community couldn’t help such a huge amount of refugees so many of them died of typhoid and wounds they had got during the pogroms.

Sometimes you can see results of pogroms from the space. The center of the shtetl was empty due to the disappearance of the Jewish community. Jewish houses were dismantled and taken by local Ukrainians. In 1937, a big park was organized in the center.

Between the Wars

In a result of pogroms, only a few families remained in town, among them the Vigdoroviches, who had remained in Ladyzhinka until 1937, and who then moved to Uman.

Site of the synagogue in Ladyzhinka. Now it is a garden of local peasant

In the 1920’s, a Jewish family named Balin from Romania came to the village. The name of the head of the family is unknown, his wife’s name was Reyzia and his daughter’s name was Betia.
In the 1930’s, NKVD (the People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs) repressed a local Jew who produced vodka.

Sometimes, you can see results of 1919-1921 pogroms from the space…

On this place was Jewish inn…

According to the Russian Jewish Encyclopedia, in 1939, there were 101 Jews (2%) in Ladyzhinka, but as locals recounted, before the war there were no Jews in the town.

Old PreRevolution house in the centre of former shtetl, 2018

Holocaust

In August 1941, the non-local Polizei brought 21 people to Ladyzhinka (it was a group of refugees from the nearby shtetl of Ternovka). Among them were children, the elderly and one 15-year-old member of the Komsomol. They were locked in a house, where they were tortured for a week, and then all the village residents were gathered. The Jews were ordered to dig their own graves. A little girl was holding a book “My Childhood”. All Jews were shot, nobody managed to escape.

The father and the daughter Balin managed to evacuated in 1941. His wife Betia stayed in the village for unknown reasons. Germans didn’t shoot her at once. She wore “Jude” band and worked as a janitor in a commandants’ office. She was killed in 1944, a few days before the liberation of the village. The village was liberated by the Soviet Army on March 10, 1944.

During the construction of the new Kiev-Odessa road in 1970’s, the bones of 21 Ternovka’s refuges were dug up by bulldozers and taken away to an unknown location.

After the WWII

After the war the following Jews came back to the village:
– Yankel Khaimovich Kuperman with his wife and daughter Basia
– Raya (surname is unknown), Yankel Kuperman’s niece.
– Sara (surname is unknown)
– The Popogaylo family with three daughters. One of them was Golda.

Basia Kuperman (1916 – 2012), Taisiya Yakovlevna Kuperman according to her passport, moved to Uman in the 1990’s. She was the last Jew in the village.

In 2017, six pre-revolutionary Jewish houses were still in the center of the village.

The house of Ihil (Ilya) Davidovich Vigdorovich has been preserved. On the wall of the house there is a plaque which mentions his involvement in the military operations.

Soviet soldier Reyzik Borisovich Shoyhed (probably Shoikhet) is buried in a mass grave in the centre of the local park together with another soldiers who were killed during liberation of the village in 1944.

Jewish cemeteries

There were two cemeteries in the village. The one was old near the forest right to Ladyzhinka to Kolodiste road. Now it is a field. There was a small house, and a well. A garbage dump was made there but later it was cleaned.

Remains of another cemetery locate in the village (near the river along Odesskaya St.).

According to the Director of Ladyzhinka museum Andrey Silvestrovich Zaritskiy (died in 2016), there used to be a second (new) Jewish cemetery in the village. In 1938-1939, 13 people from Ladyzhinka were reburied in a Jewish cemetery in Uman.

Kanetspol – XVIII, Sawrań (Polish), Саврань – Savran (Russian)

Savran has been an urban-type village since 1957, a district center of the Odessa region.
It has existed since the late XIV century. In the XVI – XVIII centuries, it was a part of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. In 1793 it was incorporated into the Russian Empire. In the XIX – early XX centuries, it was a shtetl of the Balta uyezd, Podolia gubernia. Since 1926 Savran has been a center of a Jewish national village council.

We visited Savran during our expedition in the summer 2018.
In 2019, Vladimir Chaplin, a director at the Odessa Jewish Museum provided us with audio records and photos of the ethnographic expedition to Savran in 2012.
An interview with unofficial head of the Jewish community of Savran Mikhail Usilnikov was especially valuable for us. He died in 2016.

Beginning

I didn’t find information about Jewish community of Savran in the XVIII-early XIX century.

In 1870, two synagogues were functioning in Savran. In 1889 there were three, in the early XX century – four.
In 1912, there was a Jewish savings-and-credit society in Savran.

In the XIX – early XX centuries, the main occupations of the Jewish population of Savran were crafts and trade.

Savran entrepreneurs list from Russian Empire Business Directories by 1913

In 1914, Jews owned four drugstores, both hotels, both forest warehouses, two mills, the only creamery, 66 stalls and shops, including all 17 groceries, all 17 textile shops, all three shoe-making shops, the only furniture shop, all three wine stores and all six bakeries.

Savran Hasidic Dynasty

Rabbi Moshe Tsvi Giterman was born in approximately 1775. He is considered to be the first Savran rabbi, a great student and follower of Levi Itskhak from Berdichev. and also of Rabbi Barukh from Medzhibozh, a grandson of Baal Shem Tov, the founder of Hasidic Judisiam.
(after Levi Itskhak’s death Giterman become a rabbi in Berdichev)

In 1811, rabbi Moshe Tsvi Giterman became a rabbi of Savran shtetl and a leader of Hasidim. He founded one of the most powerful Hasidic dynasties. His authority as a Tzaddic increased gradually, he became as famous as rabbi Israel from Ruzhin and rabbi Mordekhay from Chernobyl. He arranged assistance to hasids by collecting money in Israel. Rabbi Moshe Tsvi’s hasids lived mostly in Podolia and partly in Bessarabia. He gained the reputation of a scientist and a wise man who took an interest in everything that happened in the world. Thus he was very popular among Maskilim (followers of Haskalah movement). In the 1830’s, he fought against Bratslav Hasids. In 1831, Moshe Tsvi left Savran. This probably happened because of the epidemic there. He moved to the shtetl of Chechelnik which later became a main center of Hasidism. His son, Shimon Shlomo, and his two grandchildren, Moshe and David, became Tzaddiks both in Savran and Chechelnik. Such an admiration of rabbi Moshe Tsvi’s grandsons was connected with a special status of Tzaddics from Chernobyl. When their father had died, they were adopted and brought up by rabbi Yokhanan from Rotmistrovka. The latter arranged marriages between his daughter and rabbi David and between rabbi Moshe and rabbi Aron’s (from Chernobyl) granddaughter.

Ohel of the rebbe from Savran’s dynasty in old Jewish cemetery in Savran:

Inscription on the ohel’s door, 2018

Rabbi Moshe Tsvi died on Tevet 27, 5598 (December 1837) and was buried at the old Jewish cemetery of Chechelnik.
After Shimon Shlomo’s death, his sons Moshe Giterman , who became a successor in Chernobyl, and David Giterman, who became a successor in Savran, competed with each other.
Shomo “Second”, Moshe Giterman’s son from Chernobyl, was very young when he became a very popular leader. His descendants served as rabbis in Podolia and Bessarabia. After the Holocaust some of his descendants stayed in the USSR while the others moved to the United States and Israel.
Rabbi Moshe Giterman’s (1827 – 1876) grandson rabbi Shimon Shlomo Giterman (1800 – 1848) and rabbi Shlomo “Second” Giterman’s (1858 – 1919) great-grandson were buried in ohel in Chechelnik.
Savran rabbi’s both grandsons rabbi Itskhak Meir Ager (1860 – 1926) and rabbi David Giterman (… – 1912) became his successors in Savran.

Plan of 2 Savran’s synagogue in 1896, photo from the collection of The center for Jewish Art, Israel:

Pogroms

In April 1918, the Jewish population of Savran suffered from a pogrom which was committed by local peasants. As a result, doctor Kleyn, the head of a self-defense detachment and his father-in-law Kirzhner were killed. In 1920 one more pogrom was committed by the squads of Volunteer Army.
Jews began to flee to Odessa and other towns to escape these pograms. In 1920, 41 families of Jewish refugees from Savran were registered. There were 151 people totally.

Between the Wars

In 1925, Jews from Savran founded agricultural colonies in Balaychuk and Friling (now Vesnianoye) in the Odessa region. 48 Jewish families (305 people) from Savran who had moved to the Crimea founded four agricultural collective the farms “Blago”, “Yedineniye”, “Slava”, “Trudoliubiye”. In 1931, 4,028 people lived on the territory of the village council. In the late 1930’s, many Jews left Savran for large cities of the USSR, especially to Odessa.

In 1939, 1,101 Jews lived in Savran, 1,227 Jews lived in the entire district. In the 1930’s, Savran was a center of the Jewish village council. In 1931, 4,028 people lived there.

Holocaust

It was occupied by the German-Romanian troops in July 1941. 600 Jews lived in the village at that time.

In late July a ghetto was formed in Chkalov Street. Since September 1, 1941 Savran was incorporated into Transnistria. In October 1941, all the Jews of the village were deported to Obodovka, Vinnitsa region by the Romanian police. Almost all the Jews died of famine and illnesses. 18 children and elderly who were not able to couldn’t walk in the column to Vinnitsa region were shot. They were buried on local Jewish cemetery.

In 1942 – 1944, a camp for Jews from Bessarabia and Bukovina was in Savran. More than 100 people died there.
In September 1, 1943 there were only two Jews from Bessarabia and eight Jews from Bukovina left in the camp.

In May 1943, 127 Romanian Jewish communists from Vapniarka camp were sent to Savran. In early 1944, they were returned to Romania. After Savran had been liberated in late March 1944, the Pustilnik family (three members) returned.

A monument to the Holocaust victims was established at the New Jewish cemetery in the 1980’s. The authorities painted a Star of David which had been on the monument.

Old Soviet’s Holocaust monument in local Jewish cemetery, Savran 2018

In the 1990’s, a Remembrance Wall to Holocaust victims was established at the new Jewish cemetery. However, it was not properly constructed because local builders stole a part of cement which was meant to be used to build the Wall. Thus, the Wall collapsed in 2017.

Opening of new Holocaust memorial on the place of Remembrance Wall, 2018. Photo from trassae95.com:

After the WWII

We don’t know the exact amount of the Jews who came back to Savran after the war.
In 2018, one local non-Jew whom we met at the Jewish cemetery remembered following surnames:
– Misha and Faina Usilnik. Misha’s nickname was “Golda Meir”. He died in Savran in 2016 but his children buried him in Israel. His wife moved to Israel and died there.
– The Shvartser family; their son Sema lives in Australia.
– The Solodky family; their son Sema lives in Germany.
– The Dovgonos family; father Isahak Romanovich used to sew hats. His son David lived in the USA, and the daughter lives in Australia.
In the 2000’s, Mikhail Usilnik collected money from the natives of Savran living in Canada, Australia, and Israel, and fenced a new Jewish cemetery.

In 2018, only one Jew lived in Savran – local math teacher who married to non-Jewish woman. He has some memories of his mother and uncle but refused to share them.

Old Jewish cemetery

The old and new cemeteries are situated near each other. Most of the matseyvas from the old cemetery were stolen by local citizens.
There are residential buildings and a school in the neighbourhood. The school soccer field is directly on the cemetery territory.

New Jewish cemetery

The new cemetery was used starting in 1910 so the oldest graves are deep within the cemetery and covered with thick bushes.

There was one more Jewish cemetery in the center of the shtetl not far from the market. Mikhail Usilnik (? – 2016) claimed that several grave stones from that cemetery were in the yard of one local Ukrainian family who lived one street away from the bus station.

Domanevka is an urban-type village, a district centre in the Nikolayev region. It was established in the early XIX century. In the XIX to early-XX centuries, it was a shtetl in the Ananyev Uyezd district of the Kherson gubernia.

When we visited Domanevka in the summer of 2018, we were unable to collect any meaningful information about local Jews. There were no Jews in the town, and local Ukrainians could tell us very little. We were shown only the remains of a New Jewish cemetery on the “Jewish mountain”. It was so overgrown by the forest that it would have been impossible to find without help.

However, in the winter 2019, I came across a novel by Valery Varzatsky, in which he described Jews of post-war Domanievka in detail. Much of this article is based on information gathered from that novel.

I didn’t find information about Jews of Domanevka in XVIII-XIX centuries

Former Jewish shop in the center of Domanevka, 2018

There is very little information about pre-war Jews of Domanevka. However, it is known that before the revolution of 1917, Mikhl Polonsky was a rabbi in the shtetl.

Furthermore, a 1913 document in the Nikolayev Archive lists the most prosperous inhabitants of Domanevka: Valer, Golduber, Granik, Granovsky, Kaushansky, Kogan, Kremenchansky, Kremer, Lenchik, Mogilevsky, Poliak, Feldman.

Though I am sure that Jewish pogroms happened during the Civil War, I didn’t find any information about them.

Antoly Vladyka, an honoured doctor of Ukraine, described describes Domanevka of the 1930’s in this way: “Before the war Domanevka was a typical Jewish shtetl with a synagogue, a street of shops, and a web of tiny flats in Jewish one-storey houses covered with tin. People used to keep all Jewish traditions.

The synagogue was closed in the 1930’s. A Jewish school was in operation until the war began.

Approximate location of the synagogue in Domanevka, 2018

Before the war Sander Kalinovich Shoykhet was a district head in Domanevka. He led the last train of party members, Soviet workers, and Jews who were able to evacuate Domanevka.

In 1939, 369 Jews lived in Domanevka; 543 lived in the whole Domanevka district.

As of 1930, there were five Jewish collective farms (1,249 people) in the district.

Holocaust

Domanevka was occupied by the German-Romanian troops in the summer 1941. On September 1, 1941 it became part of Transnistria. Soon afterward, a concentration camp for Jews was established there .
In the fall of 1941, the Jews who were still in the region , as well as some of the Jews of the Krivoye Ozero district, Jews from Peschanka (Vinnitsa Region ), and several thousand Jews from Bessarabia (including 160 Jews from Kishinev) were held in Domanevka. In January 1942, several thousand Jews from Odessa were deported to Domanevka, followed later by several hundred more. Many of the Jews was settled in the clubhouse, synagogue, and two half-destroyed stables on the outskirts of Domanevka.

In December 1941, about 600 Jews from Domanevka and Odessa were shot, at the site of a present-day stadium. Shootings also took place in January and February 1942. Many prisoners who were not executed in this way died of typhus and dysentery. The only way to survive was trading clothes for bread and a few spoonfuls of soup.

As at September 1, 1943, roughly 150 Jews lived in Domanevka, including 120 Jews from Bessarabia. According to some information, 20,000 Jews died in Domanevka during the occupation and 18,000 more during January and February 1942. In 1994, on the initiative of B. Gidalevich, a monument was erected to commemorate these Holocaust victims.

All Jews who didn’t manage to evacuate in time were gathered in the synagogue and set on fire. The ruins of that huge stone building, with its two-storey gallery and no roof, were still standing until the 1950’s.

In the spring of 1944, Sander Kalinovich served in the division that would enter Domanevka, since he was the last pre-war chairman of the district’s executive committee . He was the first civil representative of the Soviet power within the district after its liberation from German occupation . He did a great deal of work to help re-establish peacetime life in the town.

There is a memorial board on the cinema building. Tens of thousands of Jews passed that building as they were being led to their death by shooting during the occupation.

According to Lo-Tishkah project, there is a Holocaust mass grave in northern outskirts of the village, near the new Orthodox cemetery, in front of the forest. There is a memorial at the site

After the WWII

After the war, the head of the village council was its pre-war head, Sander Shoykhet.

Road to Domnevka, 2018

More than 50 Jews returned to their former town. Here is an incomplete list of them taken from the novel of Valery Varzatsky:

• Lidiya Yakovlevna Puzyrevskaya (born in 1915)
• Sofiya Vladimirovna Urman (1930 – 2012)
• Meytus, who worked as a house painter (surname unknown)
• The Roshets family, whose head, Iosif Abramovich Roshets, worked as a cinema mechanic
• The Grinberg family, whose head, Semen Yakovlevich, was a chief engineer of the collective farm named after Kotovsky, before subsequently moving to the USA
• The Polonsky family
• Anatoly Ilkovich Sheyd, a head of the Domanevka district consumer union
• The Roytshteyn family. Fania Royshteyn worked as a hairdresser, Mania Gershkovna Roytshteyn (1918 – 1993) worked as a secretary to the district prosecutor as well as being successful in reading cards for divination
• Yosia Khazan with his wife Asia
• The Mogilevsky’s family. Isahak Yutkovich worked as a school teacher, and his son Yury Isahakovich Mogilevsky (1948 – 2016) worked was a welder
• Igor Bobivsky (1939 – 1979), who worked as a dentist
• Mikhail Adamovsky, the head of the “Procurement Office ,” with his wife Polina
• Boris Yutkovich Mogilevsky, a head of an egg farm , with his wife Liuba
• Mikhail Perednik, who was disabled
• The Kovakchuk family
• The Shoykhet family
• Basia Modnaya, who lived in one house with “Baba ” Fira and “Baba ” Sonia (surnames unknown)
• Anna Savelyevna Varshavskaya, who worked as a teacher of the German language, with her husband Iosif Davidovich
• Mikhail Matveyevich Foynleyb, who worked as a household manager of the local hospital, with his wife Mira Tsalovna, who worked as a bookkeeper of a veterinary hospital
• Tsala Kremenchutskaya, who worked in the district consumer union
• Leonid Peltsmakher
• Likht, a journalist (surname unknown)
• Portnoy, a blacksmith (surname unknown)
• Monia Rozin, Dodik Peltsmakher, with friends Ida and Lelia Gaydukevich. They all lived in the same area at the intersection of Paster and Pionerskaya treets
• The Rapoport family. father Leonid Zelmanovich (1930 – 1999), who worked as a PE teacher, with mother Nadezhda Trofimovna (1937 – 1987), and sons Grisha and Sasha
• The Urman and Frenklakh families. Senia Frenklakh, the son, was a director of the branch of the “Yuzhanka” factory in Domanevka
• Yefim Aronovich Bezborodko (1897 – 1974), a butcher, with his wife Mariya and their two children
• Nikolay Iosifovich Brontveyn (1928 – 2010), a mechanic
• Yampolsky, who worked as a chief engineer of the machine tractor station, with wife Maya Davidovna, who worked as a pediatrician in Domanevka
• Tsolyk (surname unknown), who worked at the post-office

In 2018, there were no Jews in Domanevka…

Righteous Among the Nations in Domanevka

Praskovya Boyko. She rescued a Jewish boy from the ghetto concentration camp, where he was being held in the basement of a converted cinema building.

Iosif Prokofyevich Boychenko (1905 – 1982), Anna Ivanovna Boychenko (1907 – 1992). They hid a Jewish man through the entire duration of the occupation.
Nina Ivanovna Gnatiuk. She saved four Jews from two different families: Betia Shtarkman with her son Senia, and Liza Borukh with her nephew Fima.

Olga Pavlovna Diordiyeva. She saved an indeterminate number of Jews.

Nikolay Ivanovich Leleko (1896 – 1942), Yekaterina Yevseyevna Leleko (1900 – 1973). They lived at 82 Lenin street. Nikolay Ivanovich was a head of the collective farm before the war. At the request of former collective farmers, he became a head of an agricultural enterprise established by occupation authorities. He managed to obtain permission to use Jews from the ghetto as workers in his enterprise. Thus, he saved many Jews from starvation. Among those he saved was David Zusievich Starodinsky. Nikolay Ivanovich died of typhus infection in 1942 . After being widowed, his wife, Yekaterina Yevseyevna saved Roza Bialik and her sister Tania, along with her children who lived in Odessa at 6 Kostetskaya Street after the war.

Grigory Mikhaylovich Mamchur (1895 – 1983). He hid Grigory Tsirulnik from Bendera people. During the 1990’s, Tsirulnik visited Domanevka. Grigory Mikhaylovich’s granddaughter, Valentina Vladimirovna, said that when he found the house where he had been hidden for three years, he cried and kissed the ground.

Anastasiya Konstantinovna Tsekhotskaya. She saved a woman with a child. Her younger son, Vasily Yakovlevich Tsekhotsky, says that the woman visited in the 1950’s.

Vladimir Dmitriyevich Vlasiuk shared a story with us, which he heard from a Domanevka citizen When the Jews were being led to where they would be shot, they passed a bakery situated between buildings 82 and 84 on Lenin Street. Two bakery workers managed to pull a boy out of the crowd of those who were being led to die . They hid the boy in a sack of flour. Later, the boy became a leading official in Moscow, and he invited the woman who saved him to one of his jubilees.

Jewish cemetery

There are only 7 graves here.

Khaschevatoye is a village in Gayvoron district, Kirovograd region. Its population is 2,260 people. The village is on the Southern Bug River.

It used to be a town of Gaysin uyezd, Podolia gubernia from the late 18th through the early 20th century. From 1923 through 1932, Khaschevatoye was a district center of the Odessa region.

Information about Jews from Khaschevatoye was obtained from several different sources, including books by Solgutovsky and Khaim Melamud, and from various websites as well. In the summer of 2018, we explored Khaschevatoye’s points of Jewish interest, with the guidance of Yelena Mikhaylovna Vdovichenko, the principal of a local school. More information about the Holocaust in Khaschevatoye can be found in khashchevato1942.ru

Beginning

The settlement’s history goes back to 1362. It was originally a part of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and was called Kachuchinka. In the early 15th century, it was renamed Khaschevatoye. There had long been a main road from Odessa to Kiyev that went through Khaschevatoye. However, when the South-West railway was built, the road became far less popular. In 1893, a railway was constructed in the village.

In 1905, Khaschevatoye had 720 houses, with a total population of 4,335 people. The village contained an orthodox church, a synagogue, a prayer house, a village council, a post office, a village bank, a merchants’ council, a town hall, a drugstore, three pharmacy warehouses, a hotel, four inns, a water mill, one-classroom school, and a parochial school.

In the 19th century, Jews made up half of the population and played an active role in the economic life of the village. Khaschuvatoye was a large shtetl with well-developed trade and craft industries. Large fairs took place weekly and attracted traders from Uman and Balta; there they sold corn, wheat, rye, cattle, as well as products produced by various industrial and artisanal industries, such as pottery, shoes, saddles, and barrels.

There were several oil and grain enterprises situated along the street that began at the railway station. One oil mill even had a steam engine. These mills were so successful that together they employed more than ten men. On this street there were also smithies who produced carts and wheelbarrows.

Former shtetl’s market square. Now it is a territory near local’s school

In the market square, there was an assortment of workshops representing a variety of industries: timber, construction materials, cooperages, metalwork and tin, ropes, leather harnesses and other leather goods, etc. The market square’s site is now occupied by a Khaschevatoye school building. The butcher’s building was the last pre-revolutionary building on the square and was dismantled in the 1970s.

Family of emigrants from Khaschevatoye in USA, beginning of XX century

In the center of town there were rows of large and small shops, hairdressers, shoemakers, tailors, photography, restaurants and inns. The streets now known as Vorovsky, Kondratsky, and Yevreyska streets begin at the town’s center and continue down to the river; these were inhabited only by Jews.

The town had one central synagogue and three or four small prayer houses.

Building of synagogue in Khaschevatoye. Now its a mill

Jews of Khaschevatoye severely suffered from pogroms during Russian Revolution 1917-1920. More than 50 Jews were killed during pogroms of different local gangs.

About pogroms in Khaschevatoye from “Massacre book”:

When Soviet authority was established in the early 1920’s, the economic life of the town was disrupted, private enterprises were prohibited, and small Jewish artisans were forced to unite in artels. Jewish working unions, known as “kharchsmak” and “Budivelnik”, were organized. The independent Jewish artisans formed a savings and loan society consisting of 90 people.
All of the synagogues and prayer houses of Khaschevatoye were closed in the late 1920’s–early 1930’s.

After the Russian Revolution ended, two seven-years schools, one Jewish and one Ukrainian, were opened in Khaschevatoye village. The Jewish school was closed in 1937.

Similarly, there were both Jewish and Ukrainian village councils and collective farms in the 1920’s; the Jewish farm was named “Progress”.

When forced collectivization started in the late 1920’s, the Jewish population began to leave the shtetl and move to Gayvoron, Odessa, and other cities of the USSR. According to the results of the demographic census of 1926, 3,171 Jews (53% of the total population) lived in Khaschevatoye. Jews also lived in the nearby villages of Strunkovo (127), Mogilno (286), and Salkiv (133).

In the spring of 1928, many Khaschevatoye families moved to the steppe areas of the Dnieper. This was triggered by the Soviets’ decision to develop the land by giving away property; this was an important opportunity for the Jewish poor. Kh. Melamud, a writer from Khaschevatoye, described these events in his novel Land.

In the period 1937-1941, M.P.Ustenko was a head of the Ukrainian council and Samovol B.B. was a head of the Jewish council in Khaschuvatoye.

Holocaust

On the 29th of July, 1941, German troops occupied the village.

On the 14th of February, 1942, the Ukrainian police and German gendarmerie (a police force that is a part of the armed forces) ordered Jews to gather “for registration” in the village club, where they were locked inside for 24 hours without food and water. The next day, 20 men were forced to take off their clothes and were then given shovels. The police ordered them to remove the snow from the ground in the clay quarry. When they finished this work, they were immediately shot.

On the 16th of February 1942, a similar action began, under the leadership of SS troops and the chief of the Gayvoron police, Leonid Girman. They had the Jews undress and then pushed them outside in groups — it was winter and the temperature was 20 degrees below zero. Prisoners were taken outside in groups of 20 and the clothes of the Jews who had been shot before were brought inside..A total of between 895 and 962 Jews were shot in the village on that day.

The shootings lasted several days, concluding on the 20th of February. Jewish houses were robbed by the local population and many of them were vandalized or destroyed by the citizens of nearby villages.

Many mothers had done the only thing they could do to try to save their children, which was to leave them behind in the club; the police later found these children and killed them. Two children survived the massacre: an 11-year old girl who had been hidden in the village of Salkovo and Isahak Kris, who had hidden under the club.

Before the mass shooting Jewish specialists were sent to Bershad ghetto together with their families. Their destinies were different but many of them survived.

Khaschevatoye was liberated in March 1944.

A bridge above the Southern Bug, which had been previously crossed by the Soviet troops, was subsequently bombed by German aviation. As a result, the center of the shtetl was destroyed.

In 1944, a state commission of the Nazis’ crimes investigation opened the graves in the clay quarry in Khaschevatoye. The pits were found to contain 963 corpses, including 596 children, 191 women, and 176 elderly.
A woman named Rivva Tashlytsky survived the war due to the help of Terentiy Ziama and Yefim Ivanovich Levitsky’s family, which had hidden her for three years. She was eventually liberated along with the rest of the village’s survivors.

The shootings described above had been conducted under the direction of the Ukrainian police, under the direction of the Germans. About 60 Ukrainian policemen took part in the shooting; of these, 22 were caught and shot, according to decisions of the Odessa military court, issued in the years 1945-1946. Their names were: A.Ye. Belochenko, P.P. Blazhko, I.T. Gal, S.F. Lukashuk, O.I. Palamarchuk, I.I. Svirid, G.F. Chernichenko, K.A. Andriyevsky, M.A. Ragriy, T.D. Balanda, I.G. Vovk, I.D.Melnik, V.I. Lokhmaniuk, I.P. Klimkin, O.Ya. Belous, V.M. Prituliak, M.P.Liulka, Ye.I. Svirid, V.Z. Shvets, I.Z. Gavursky, S. Baydukov.

In addition:
– Police officer P. Grigorash was caught in the 1960’s and sentenced to 25 years in 1969.
– Chief of police Dorosh was caught and executed by court decision in 1962.
– Police officer Andrey Kravchenko was the last known participant of the shooting of Jews from Khaschevatoye. In 1991, while living in Russia, he was sentenced in absentia in independent Ukraine. Russia didn’t agree to extradite him to the Ukraine. In 1994, Kravchenko hanged himself in his apartment.

Memorial meeting in Khaschevatoye Jewish cemetery, 1960’s-1970’s

It should be noted that not all of the village’s Jews complied with the order to appear at the general meeting; instead, they went into hiding in various locations. These attempts were ultimately made in vain, as all of them were eventually discovered by the Ukrainians and shot. We know the following details:
– Khayka Protektor survived the shooting, but she was later found and killed.
– Riva, the wife of soldier Petr (Pulia) Tsisar who was at the Eastern Front, and his daughter Ania had been hiding in the stove of the bakery. When discovered, police officers removed and killed them.

Center of Khaschevatoye, 2018

Sergeant Petr (Pulia) Naumovich Tsisar entered Khaschevatoye on one of the first three jeeps to arrive after the massacre, in hopes of seeing his family. Locals told him what happened and that his wife and daughter had died. He left the village and did not return to Khaschevatoye until after the war.

The Samovol family had lived in Khaschevatoye before the beginning of WWII. There were six brothers: Beniamin, Bilyk, Moysey, Zamvel, Isahak, and Samuil. All of them fought at the Front of the Great Patriotic War (what most of the world outside the former USSR knows as the Eastern Front). Samuil Samovol was the only one of the six to survive.

The list of the Jews who had been killed on the 16th of February 1942 is given below. It contains only 783 names — 180 are absent. Some believe that there were many more victims, but it is impossible to establish an accurate count at this point. The list was given by Solgutovsky in the early 1990’s in the office of Security Service of Ukraine in Gayvoron.

After the Holocaust

After the war, about 100 Jews returned to the shtetl, both from the evacuation and from the Front. Among them there were members of the Fisher, Leybman, Stoliarsky, Faynman, Shaposhnik, Shkolnik, and Solgutovsky families. The heads of the local establishments were primarily Jewish. Isahak Naumovich Shkolnik was a school principal, Vinokur was a chairman of the village council, and Sarra Markovna Rakhshteyn was a German teacher at school. The heads of a creamery and the hospital were Jewish as well.

Naftula Rabinovich acted as the unofficial rabbi in the village. He had a Torah, which he was able to read, and led the prayer services as well. The minyan was made up of Naum Shpiler, the Milmans, Danil Fraymovich, Yakov Rozenshteyn, and Yania Shapochnik. They used a separate, vacant, house in the center of the shtetl as an informal synagogue. They celebrated the traditional holidays, baked matzah for Pesakh, and exchanged presents on Purim.

Abandoned hosue in the center of the shtetl which was unofficial synagogue in 1950’s-1970’s

The Jewish youth didn’t stay in the village, They would often go to the big cities to study and would later take their parents with them. As a result, the number of Jews in the shtetl was decreasing gradually, and by 1970, only 30 Jews lived there.Over the next several years, some of the Jews from Khaschevatoye managed to leave for the USA and Israel, and so by 2018, only one Jewish woman lived in the village.

Center of former shtetl Khaschevatoye, 1960’s-1970’s

The first monument to commemorate the mass shooting was established by the local Jews in the 1940’s. Some families placed small symbolic graves near the monument, in memory of their murdered relatives. A new memorial replaced the original and was installed in the spring of 2014. This memorial was funded through the donations of the Krutoy, Rozenfeld, Pushkar, Marmer, Zhadan, Shvartsman, and Galperin families, who were now scattered in the U.S. and other countries.During the construction of these memorials, some remains were found and were reburied according to Jewish traditions.
The actual grave is located between the steps to the new memorial and the old monument, but its precise boundaries are unclear. Isahak Mikolayovich Shkolnik (1917-1987) was buried in Odessa, but his relatives also installed a small symbolic grave near the memorial.
There were two Jewish cemeteries in the shtetl, an old one and a newer one, established years later.

Part of the Torah scroll from Golovanevsk in the museum of Khaschevatoye’s school

Jews from Gayvoron were also buried in the new cemetery. The gates of the cemetery were built in the 1980’s by Yuzik Klimenko, who lives in Germany now. This is the list of graves in the cemetery: Faynberg, Shuster, Tsugman, Master, Ziskin, Kuperman, Senik, Zhidkov, Shuster, Tarakanov, Milman, Shpiler, Shaposhnik, Burundik, Zugman, Korkhman, Grechanik, Denevitser, Goykhman, Vinokur, Sorokin, Vikniansky, Grechanik, Denevitser, Kerzhner, Lumer.

Former “Jewish beach” on the bank of Southern Bug River, 2018

Famous Jews from

Leonid Izrailevich Solgutovsky (1925-2002) was a World War II veteran, an historian, an organizer of a local museum, and the author of five books about the history of the village.

Leonid Solgutovsky with wife Alexandra Solomonovna

Gedal Davidovich Kosoy (1903, Khaschevatoye – 1991, Vinnitsa) was a writer.

Itsik Lvovich Bronfman (1913, Khaschevatoye – 1978, Khabarovsk) was a poet.

Itsik Bronfman

Khaim Gershkovich Melamud (1907, Khaschuvatoye – 1993, Saratov) was a writer.

Khaim Melamud

Idel Yakovlevich Khayt (1914 – 1942) defended the legendary “Pavlov’s house”, killed in action during the battle of Stalingrad.

Idel Khayt

Old Jewish cemetery

The old cemetery stopped being used before the Revolution. Later, a collective farm’s garden was established there, and you can still find as many as ten graves among the trees. In 2011, funds donated by Brad Teplitsky from the USA were used to clean the territory of the old cemetery and to erect a small monument. However, it has again become overgrown.

New Jewish cemetery

Gates to New Jewish cemetery

First Holocaust memorial

Holocaust memorial in Khaschevatoye

Holocaust memorial in Khaschevatoye

Beresowka (Yiddish),  Березівка – Berezivka (Ukrainian), Березовка – Berëzovka (Russian)

Berezovka is a city and administrative center of the Berezovka Raion in Odessa region. In 2016, the population is estimated to be 13,421.

During our visit in the summer 2018, we could get almost no information about Jews from Berezovka. There wasn’t a Jewish community in the town at that moment. Jews didn’t live there anymore.

On April 26–27, 1881, the Jews were attacked in a pogrom, and, out of the 161 buildings owned by Jews, only the synagogue and pharmacy were undamaged.

Description of 1905 pogrom:
«The population of Berezivka was extremely anxious at the rumor of the total extermination of Jews. One of the scruffles between the tradeswomen at the market turned into a fight. The crowd immediately rushed to the Jewish stalls, destroying everything on their way. There were calls to “kill the Jews who killed our Tsar”. Many buildings were set on fire. Only when a hundred Cossacks arrived, did they manage to get the situation under control. As a result of the pogrom, 159 houses, 17 stalls, and 11 cellars were devastated. The damage amounted to 450,000rubles».

Old building in the center of Berezovka

The local Jewish Community was affected by the pogroms in 1918 and 1920.

During the Soviet period Jews were employed in artisan cooperatives and Jewish kolkhozes. A Yiddish elementary school, a Yiddish evening school, a club, and a library were in operation

In 1939, 1,424 Jewslived in Berezovka (16.5% of the population), and 800 Jews lived in district villages.

Holocaust

Berezovka was taken by the Germans on August 10, 1941. Later a ghetto was formed there. On August 14, 1941, Sonderkommand 10a shot 41 Jews in Berezovka. The remaining 211 prisoners of the ghetto were killed in the fall of 1941.

At that time Berezovka became a center of Berezovka uyezd in Transnistria under Romanian control. Ten ghettos were formed in the uyezd. From January to February 1942, trains with Jews from Odessa arrived at the railway station in Berezovka. From that station, they were driven to the Southern Bug and killed on the way.

In total, 5,511 Jews were killed in Berezovka and nearby villages. Some of them, including children, were burnt alive. Jews who froze in cold wagons during the transportation from Odessa to Berezovka (according to the Extraordinary State Commission, there were 1,058 people) were buried not far from the station.

A memorial board was established near the railway crossing at 1,214 km.

View to Berezovka from Jewish cemetery, 2018

After the WWII

According to the number of graves in Jewish cemetery, we can assume that around 40-60 Jews returned to the former shtetl.

The community ceased to exist during the years 1974 – 1978, when people started leaving in Odessa and other big city.

Since 1999, the Chairman of official Jewish Community was Alexander Grigorievich Baiderman.
It is unknown when the Jewish community was established.

Current Berezovka’s musical school locates in the building of the former synagogue.
On the site of another synagogue, locates church.

Jewish cemetery

Cemetery locates on the slope of a hill near a television tower and looks severly vandalized.

Guess, there were older Jewish cemetery in Berezovka, but I didn’t find such information

Черняхов(Russian), Черняхів(Ukrainian)

Cherniakhov is a small town, a district center of the Cherniakhov district, Zhitomir region. In the early XX century it was a shtetl of Radomyshl uyezd (district), Kiev province.

Most information about the post-war Jewish life of Cherniakhov was provided by the unofficial head of the Jewish community in Cherniakhov Raisa Makovoz during our visit in the summer of 2017.

Idl Ayzman’s (1922, Cherniakhov – 2017, Petah Tikva) fascinating diaries (here and here) shed light on the Jews of Cherniakhov in the 1920s – 1930s.

Idl Ayzman

Virtually no information could be found on the Jewish life of Cherniakhov in the XIX – early XX centuries.

Beginning

The Cherniakhov settlement was first mentioned in 1545.

According to the 1897 state census, the Cherniakhov Jewish community included 1,774 members. It was just under a half of the whole population of the shtetl.

Cherniakhov entrepreneurs list from Russian Empire Business Directories by 1913

Ten pogroms occurred in Cherniakhov during the 1917 revolution. As a result, the shtetl was comprehensively looted with no record of the victims.

In 1919, the authorities of the Ukrainian Republic refused local Jews to join the enlisted army.

In the 1920s, the synagogue was closed and was turned into a club.
In 1922, a Jewish school and kindergarten were built. The building houses a printing workshop nowadays.

The Gruzinsky and Shats families used to be the drovers in the shtetl. Despite the fact that their horses were taken to the Jewish collective farm, they bought new ones and lived much better than other Jews.
In the 1920s, the local Jews Ershl, Landman, Shloyme Polevoy, Meir (surname unknown) were considered to be poor in the shtetl.

In 1920’s-1930’s, it was a Jewish school in this building. Now it is a print house.

In 1937 – 1939, a local doctor of Jewish ancestry Bliashev organised a hospital in Cherniakhovsk. For that the local authorities awarded him with a personal car, which he donated to the hospital. It was the first emergency vehicle in the shtetl. During the World War II, he was called up to the army and organized a hospital, where 30 out of 37 doctors were Jewish. After the war he did not return to Cherniakhovsk.

Jewish kindergarten in Cherniakhovsk, 1920’s. Photo provided by Raisa Makovoz.

Idl Ayzman mentions the following pre-war inhabitants of Cherniakhov: Etl Dubenko, the village council deputy; Shlema Levkovsky, Elia Vesler, tailor Itsik Igdal. Most of them were murdered in the Holocaust.
Moisey Shpoliansky led the choir and the orchestra of the Jewish school. Rokhl Leybman was a PE teacher.
The Jewish school was closed in 1937 and the language of instruction became Russian. Sheylok Giterman, its director, was demoted and became a teacher of German.
Before the war, there was a Jewish drama society which performed plays in Yiddish in the shtetl.
Idl Ayzman remembered how the Jews of the shtetl were savagely attacked and killed by their Ukrainian former neighbors.

Center of former shtetl, 2017

In the 1920s, a Jewish collective farm name Politotdel was organised in the shtetl. Moyshe Shteynberg was in charge until 1941. Mostly the poor and small shopkeepers joined the collective as private trade was prohibited. The local drovers Gruzinskys had to give away their horses to the collective farm. The Goldbergs did not join the collective but they had to give up their horses and the grain mill. A former cantor of the local synagogue called Kiva was charged with guarding the grain mill. The collective was farming quite successfully, eventually building a house and a club for its workers. A dairymaid called Kopeyka was given a state award for her hard work. This fact surprised the whole shtetl. In 1937, the collective farm was no longer referred to as “Jewish”, though known as such locally.

Class in the Cherniakhov Jewish school, 1930s. 1 – Sonya Landman (lived in Lvov), 2 – Roza Giterman (lived in Kaliningrad), 3 – Sarah Simhovna Fabrikant (1922-2002), 4 – Aaron (lived in Kiev), 5 – Mihail Vaitman (killed in action during WWII). Photo provided by Raisa Makovoz.

Elia Sheynblat led a Ukrainian collective farm named after the Soviet marchal Voroshilov. In 1938, Boris Feldman was a judge, and Levitis was a head of the village council.

Jewish school in Cherniakhov, 1937. 1 – Shura Kovalenko (lived in Cherniakov and Korosten, died in Israel), 2 – Mark Semenovich Giterman (survived in WWII, colonel, lived in USA), 3 – Kisselman (survived in WWII, died in Ashdod, Israel on Victtory day 9-May), 4 – Manya Landman (she was a nurse in Soviet Army during WWII, woked in kindergarten), 5 – Faina Makovoz (emigrated to USA). Photo provided by Raisa Makovoz.

In the 1930s, Cherniakhov was the center of the Jewish village council (3,123 inhabitants in 1931). In 1939, 1,482 Jews (20.72% of the population) lived in the shtetl.

Jewish school in Cherniakhov, 1937. 1 – Tatyana Byalik (after WWII was a teached, died in Israel in 2000’s), 2 – Aaron (lived in Kiev, emmigrated to Israel), 3 – name is unknown but he survived WWII, 4 – Sonya Landman, 5 – Roza Giterman, 6 – Lerman. All another boys from photo were killed in action during WWII, mostly in 1943. Jewish school in Cherniakhov, 1937. 1 – Shura Kovalenko (lived in Cherniakov and Korosten, died in Israel), 2 – Mark Semenovich Giterman (survived in WWII, colonel, lived in USA), 3 – Kisselman (survived in WWII, died in Ashdod, Israel on Victtory day 9-May), 4 – Manya Landman (she was a nurse in Soviet Army during WWII, woked in kindergarten), 5 – Faina Makovoz (emigrated to USA). Photo provided by Raisa Makovoz.

Holocaust

It was occupied between July 13, 1941 till November 23, 1943.

In 1941, most of the horses from the collective were requisitioned by the army, the remaining horses were used to evacuate a small number of Jews.

On the 5th – 6th of August 1941, a detachment of Sonderkommand 4a arrested and shot all male Jews in Cherniakhov, 112 “Jews and Bolsheviks”.
During two other “checks” of the village the same detachment shot 44 Jews. On the 6th – 11th of August 1941, the headquarter of the SS infantry 10th regiment with its units were located in the village. They murdered 232 Jews in Cherniakhov on August 8, 1941.
More killings took place in September 1941. In total, 568 Jews were killed in Cherniakhov.
The shootings took place between the villages of Bezhov and Devochki (later turned into a gravel quarry). Over 2,000 people were killed there.
After the war, they were re-buried in mass grave at the central cemetery of the village. According to the data of the local culture department, 576 people were buried in it. 70 people were party activists, the rest of them were Jewish women, children and the elderly.

Another execution site was located near railway bridge. More information were found by Yahan In Unum research team.

Execution site, photo by Yahad In Unum

In 1941, Idl Ayzman’s (1922 – 2017) mother Rayzl (1900 – 1941), brother Sema (1929 – 1941), sisters Fira (1932 – 1941) and Raya (1938 – 1941) were shot by the local police collaborators. Idl himself was called up to serve in the Red Army, which is why he survived.

The ethnic Germans from a nearby colony Neuborn participated in the killing of the Jews of Cherniakhov – even a former school principal Schwarz and a local Weber, who had friends among the local Jews. Later Weber was captured by the partisans, and executed by being tied to two trees and torn apart.

Only two out of 19 classmates of Semen Makovoz (1922 – 2007) returned from the war – Arkadiy (the surname is unknown) and Semen himself. 11 classmates died in battles near Prokhorovka at the Kursk Bulge, six classmates killed in action at the Kalinin front.
Nikolay Pavliuchenko pulled two little girls out of the mass grave after the shooting and his father saved them. In the 2000s, Yad Vashem awarded him the title of the Righteous Among the Nations.

List of the Jews from Cherniakhovsk who were drafted to Soviet Army and killed in action between 1941 and 1945:

In 1973, a local collaborator of the German police Vasiliy Prischepa was arrested in the Urals and sentenced to death. Eleven collaborators were also tried and sentenced to death.
In 1973, the bodies of those who had been murdered near the railway crossing were reburied at the local cemetery in a mass grave together with executed communists and Soviet war prisoners. The soil there was very damp so the bodies remained preserved for 22 years. However, after exhumation they decomposed immediately.
A woman, who was present at the exhumation, remembered seeing a mother in a white shawl cuddling two children.

Holocaust mass grave in local non-Jewish cemetery:

After the WWII

After the war, an informal minyan gathered at the rabbi’s house. After his death, his family left for Korosten and the archive was kept at their house.
After the war, a one-story building remained in the center of the shtetl. It was a synagogue closed in the 1920s or 1930s. It housed a club and a cinema, with a library in the rabbi’s room. The building was demolished in the 1960s.

During the court proceeding, the number of Jews who had been killed was revealed. It was 1,026 people.

In the 1990s, there was no formally-recognised Jewish community organisation. However, Hesed offices appeared in the town and started to take care of the Jewish elderly.
Buzia Eynovna Vugman (Karetnaya) was the Director of Hesed. She moved to Israel in 2010 and died there in 2015.
In 2017, only five elderly Jews remained in Cherniakhov.

Famous Jews from Cherniakhov

Moisey (Moyshe) Gershenzon (1903, Cherniakhov – 1943)
A Jewish playwright. He founded the Youth Jewish theater “Meshulakhes” (“Obsession”). He wrote songs, ditties, one-act plays, sketches. He both performed and directed plays. He was invited to the Kiev State Jewish (Yiddish) Theater (GOSET). He authored a famous play “Gershele Ostropoler”. He joined the Soviet Army while in evacuation. He perished in 1943 in the battle at the Krymskaya station.

Moisey Gershenzon

Buzi (Berl) Olevsky (1908, Cherniakhov – 1941)
A Jewish poet, journalist and author, Ph.D. He worked at the Yiddish newspaper “Birobidzhaner Shtern” and at the “Forpost” periodical. He died at the front.

Buzi Olevsky

Yosif Bukhbinder (1908, Cherniakhov – 1993, Kiev), a poet. His several sisters were murdered alongside with his parents in 1941.

Jewish cemetery

The cemetery is located on the east of the settlement not far from railway station between Kalinina Street and Zhukova Street.

During the war, the gravestones from the Jewish cemetery were looted by local Ukrainians. However, in 1946, a local priest noticed a matseyva in someone’s yard. He said that he would perform no baptisms, funerals or weddings until the gravestones were taken back. The locals had to replace the gravestones.

PreWWII part of the cemetery:

Semen Makovoz and his two friends moved those returned gravestones to the new part of the cemetery.
The pre-war cemetery was not fenced, so now it is overgrown with grass and shrubbery.

The new part of the cemetery is being kept tidy thanks to the informal leader of the local Jewish community Raisa Makovoz.

A monument to Holocaust victims was erected at the Jewish cemetery in 2010. Kiper [?] found the money in Germany, some money was raised by local Jews.

Symbolic Holocaust memorial

Любашівка(Ukrainian), Любашевка(Russian)

Liubashevka is an urban-type settlement, a district centre in the Odessa region of Ukraine. In the 19th to early-20th centuries, it was a village in the Ananyev Uyezd of the Kherson gubernia.

Unfortunately, I didn’t find much information about Jews of Liubashevka. In 2018, we visited former shtetl during our summer’s expedition and didn’t find Jews here. Most information for this article was provided by local teacher Valeriy Bondarenko (see video below).

Unfortunately, I didn’t find much information about Jew of Liubashevka before WWII.

The town was founded in the late 18th century.

Since 1895, the rabbi was Shmuel-Zeev Shekhter (1875–?).

In 1914, the only drugs store in town belonged to a Jew. Many armies passed through town in the period from 1917 to 1920. In 1919 there was a pogrom, arranged by the Volunteer Army units; some Jews escaped to Ivanovka.

In 1939, 671 Jews lived in Liubashevka itself, while 1,021 Jews lived in the whole district.

Moisey Shmulevich Pustylnik (1910 – 1945, killed in action) was in charge of the evacuation of Jews from Liubashevka but 50-60 Jewish families remained in Liubashevka.

Moisey Shmulevich Pustylnik

In the summer 1941, the town was occupied by the Wehrmacht units. A ghetto was established. In September 1941, about 350 Jews were shot.

The following Nazi actions took place in the summer of 1941, to terrorize local populations :

· more than 350 local Jews were shot in Liubashevka
· approximately 100 people in the village of Gvozdavka
· approximately 100 people in the village of Yasenovo

Holocaust memorial in Gvozdavka

In November 1941, in the area of Gvozdavka,20 km away from Liubashevka, Nazis organized a concentration camp. Jews from the Bessarabia, Odessa and Zhitomir regions were brought there, as well as Jews who were local to the area. About 5,000 prisoners died there: 2,772 people were shot and 2,000 died of starvation and disease.

Small list of the Jews killed in Gvozdavka (from Russian archive):

The Extraordinary State Commission carried out excavations in the village council territory of Gvozdavka-2. These excavations revealed 2,208 bodies buried beneath a 40 metre anti-tank ditch The mass shooting took place in the winter of 1941 –1942.

Periodically, people still find unknown and unmarked mass graves of Holocaust victims from in Gvozdavka.

Holocaust’s research of the local school’s student can be found here.

During the war, the synagogue in the center of Liubashevka was destroyed.

After the war a few Jewish families came back to Liubashevka.

In 1979, some 20 Jews lived here. Many enterprises were run by Jews: Gershkovich was a director of a food factory, Koyfman was in charge of a buffet, Kunkel was a director of a workshop. A local museum organizer was also Jewish, though we couldn’t determine his surname.

Fomer center of shtetl Luibashevka

Jews lived mostly in the center of the shtetl. Several inns and pre-revolutionary houses were preserved here until the 1970s, at which time the centre of Liubashevka was rebuilt, along with a new council hall.

In 2013, the last Jew left Liubashevka for Izmail (city in Ukraine) to join their children.

The local cemetery was in use till the 1980s. Later Jews buried their dead relatives at a Jewish cemetery in Israel.
In 2018, Ester Levina, a native of Liubashevka, lived in Israel. Although we were hopeful that she could have told us a great deal about pre-war Jews of the shtetl, we were unable to get in touch with her.

Holocaust mass grave

Guess, around 350 local Jews were killed in this place.
In 2018, we didn’t visit this place. I found only this Lo-Tishhach’s information.

Jewish cemetery

PreWWII part of the cemetry was destroyed and only few graves left here.

Panorama of Liubashevka Jewish cemetery, 2018

List of the PostWWII graves, created by Valeriy Bondarenko
Пустильник Кива Моисеевна 1891-1972рр.
Громадский Борис Моисеевич 1870-1962рр.
Зеленер Йойна Лейбович 1902-1976рр.
Мучник П.Н. 1947,25 лет
Блянк Сара Петровна 1899-1983рр
Бессарабник Самаил Давидович 1893-1966рр.
Краснер Михаил Аврамович 1924-1963рр.
Ивницкая Э.Л. 1910-1963
Недмець 1905-1954рр.
Саможин Ольга Кивовна 1988-1952рр.
Громадская Лидия Семеновна 1875-1956рр.
Мостовецкая София Моисеевна 1875-1956рр.
Аравкина Татьяна Аврамовна 27.01.61р.
Гершунович Анна Моисеевна 1915-1968рр.
Кушнир Анна Завелевна 1902-1971рр.
Курлянчук Сарра Марковна 1890-1970рр.
Кноп Раиса Михайловна 1925-1972рр.
Эстер Брайтман 1866-1959рр.
Резников Лэйб Моисеевич 1877-1961рр.
Балановский Рафаил Григорьевич 1916-1958рр.
Щогам А.Х. 1896-1949рр.
Сонис Григорий Борисович 1902-1947рр.
Словесник М.Ш. 1892-1946рр.
Валченбаин Борис М. 1908-1962рр.
Цигельман Даниил Исакович 1909-1974рр.
Николай Герасимович 1911-1976рр.
Шихман Соня Давидовна 1893-1973рр.
Мясковская Фаина Аизиковна 1929-1976рр.
Мясковский Михаил Мендемевич 1923-1980рр.
Клейман Сарра Львовна 1890-1974рр.
Клейман Григорий Моисеевич 1892-1985рр.
Короткая Сарра Абрамовна 1898-1981рр.
Кац Хоя-Фейга Михалевна 1886-1974рр.
Борик Израиль Самойлович 1904-1975рр.
Вайсман Двойра Мировна 1895-1974рр.
Гонис Иссак Борисович 1907-1965рр.

Вознесенск(Russian), Вознесенськ(Ukrainian)

Voznesensk is a city and a district center Nikolayev region. The city’s estimated population is 35.843 (as of 2015).

In XIX – beginning of XX century it was a shtetl of Elisavetgrad Yezd of Kherson Gubernia.

When the foundation stone was laid on May 10, 1795, the population was composed of a mix of Ukrainians, Russians, and Moldovans. From the late XVIII century when Poland was partitioned and merged with the Russian Empire, Jews began to arrive, quickly contributing to the growth of the town. From the nineteenth until the early twentieth century, it was a shtetl in Yelizavetgrad uyezd, Kherson gubernia.

From 1828 until late in the twentieth century, the town held the status of a military settlement, thus limiting the number of Jewish residents. Nevertheless, according to a 1897 census, by the late nineteenth century, Voznesensk Jews controlled nearly 85% of trade and 46% of artisan businesses.

The first synagogue was completed In 1863, headed by congregation rabbis Khaim Gertsenshteyn (1864-1869), Iyeguda Teplitsky (1869-1895), and Yakov Meir Yako (1895-?).

By 1909, the synagogue was supplemented by 6 prayer houses, private Jewish training schools for both boys and girls, as well as a Talmud Torah. In 1911, there were 85 students in the Talmud Torah, while 345 students attended the 14 kheders.

The more than 6,000 Jewish inhabitants of the town owned small tanneries, mills, and chaise workshops. Moreover, they were renowned specialists in leather currying, as well as cobbler and wheelwright businesses. Prosperous traders engaged in bread trading were among the shareholders of Voznesensk society of bread-traders’ and ship owners’ communities.

Old house in Jewish neighbourhood of Voznesensk

Adolf Kibrik, the father of XX century People’s Artist of USSR Yevgeniy Kibrik, was a major agent in the bread trade and the owned of a fleet of barges. Zaychik, another wealthy trader, owned several houses in the center of town – around the Pochtovaya market at Nikolayevskaya and Pushkinskaya streets – a predominantly Jewish neighborhood.

In 1912, a Jewish savings and credit society was formed, and a railway line connecting Odessa and Bakhmach ran through the town, significantly contributing to growth of Voznesensk’s economic life. In 1916, a Jewish artists’ community was organized under the leadership of Zaslavsky and Basmanov.

Before the revolution in 1917, Jews represented 37.7 % of the total population, consisting mostly of apolitical artisans and traders who were unsupportive of revolution.

Old Jewish houses in the centre of Voznesensk, 2018:

Ya. M. Ayzman was a local rabbi and the uncle of a large family. His nephews Vladimir and Grigoriy were the members of a revolutionary party “People’s Will”. Other prominent family members included Moisey who was a Jewish novelist, and David, a friend of Maksim Gorkiy and himself an author of popular drama and prosaic works about the life of Jews.

Today, on one of the central streets of Voznesensk (near the market) there is a restaurant called “Vladimir”. This building was the former central town synagogue. It was erected in the late XIX century and was closed by the 1930s. Among its many groups, it was home to a pioneer club. After the second world war, the building housed a restaurant called “Ukraine”; and because it had been completely renovated the structure lost its original look. A Jewish community tried to get this building back in the 1990’s but local authorities at the time refused to allow this.

Former synagogue in Voznesensk:

Two prayer houses at Pushkinskaya street, 23 (now it is a dwelling house) and a sports school at Ursulov lane, 5 have been reconstructed and preserved. One-storey house with a high roof and five windows is a part of preserved prayer house.

Voznesensk Talmud Torah is remembered in “Memorable book of Kherson gubernia, 1911”. Its director was Daniil Brodsky. Llike other training schools it was financed by a religious Jewish community. Five six year-old boy orphans lived here and were given a secondary education and some professional training to help them succeed as adults.

It was opened in a two-storey house which was built especially for this by V.Zeltser in 1895. After 1917, a seven-grade Jewish school was there then an office of military trade was there, now it is a dwelling house. The house has been preserved in its original look, it hasn’t been repaired or rebuilt. Thus, now it is in emergency condition.

A typical pre-revolutionary building is preserved at Pushkinskaya street.

Russian Revolution

I couldn’t find any information about Jewish pogroms of Civil War times, but 100% certain that they took place in Voznesensk.

On the 4th of August 1919, the famous Odessa bandit Misha Yaponchik was shot for desertion from the front in Voznesensk. There are two versions of the location of his grave: the first is that it is where the gravestone is situated now, the second is that his grave is in the part of the Jewish cemetery destroyed during the war.

Grave of Misha Yaponchik:

Two brothers – Motia and Tevel Abramovich were the participants of the Civil War. The first one died near Kiev in 1919. Tevel Abramovich was a head of the collective farm “Guzhtrans”. He was repressed in 1937 and miraculously survived. Later he took part in World War II and after the war returned to the town.

Between the WWI and WWII

In 1926, a Jewish school #3 was opened in the town. Gordon was its director. 116 children studied there with two teachers. In 1920, an orphanage for Jewish children was opened as well.

Bilingual school #4 was also functioning in the town. Batitskaya was its director.
In 1925, natives of Voznesensk founded a Jewish agricultural community in Kherson district. It consisted of seven families.

Old house in Jewish neighbourhood of Voznesensk

In the 1920’s – 1930’s, all synagogues were closed in the town.

In 1928, 500 people gathered at a meeting concerning the closing of the prayer house at Kupecheskaya street. They decided to open a communistic Jewish club in it.

In 1930’s, all synagogues and headers were closed.

Holocaust

On August 6, 1941 the Nazis captured the town.

The territory of the current Nikolayev region was divided between Romanian and German occupation areas. The boundary was mostly along the South Bug river. Voznesensk was on the German side of the river that’s why the Jews who had failed to get to the Romanian side had very little chance of survival.

Local inhabitants recall that 200-250 Jews were shot. The shootings took place mostly in the autumn 1941 in the pastures near Natiagaylovka.
Not only local Jews but also Jews from Moldova and Odessa were shot in the Voznesensk district.

Sad story about local Jewish musician:

Shootings also took place near the villages of Zeleny Yar and Vesely Razdol where 230 were shot. 3,500 people were shot near the pond and the quarries of village Yastrubinovo. More than 1,000 Jews from Odessa were shot near the village of Dmitriyevka. In 1961, a monument commemorating those murdered in the war was established here.

On March 20, 1944 Soviet troops liberated Voznesensk.

In 1972, a group of Nazi criminals were judged in Munich. They were the soldiers of operative command 11 B. One of the items of charge was their participation in mass destruction of Jews from Voznesensk.

The indictment included the episode which stated:
“On the unknown day in September 1941 a subcommand under leadership of accused Figner by order of SS Obersturmbanfuhrer Persterer shot about 200 Jews outside the town of Voznesensk – men, women, and children because of race. People had to take off their clothes in the building near the place of the execution and then in groups of 30 people were led to the anti-tank moat or gravel quarry where they were shot either in the back or in the head…”

During Soviet times, a monument was erected on that mass grave where there is an artificial lake. When it was excavated, human bones were found there. There are no words about nationality of the victims on the monument.

Holocaust memorial in Voznesensk, 2018

After WWII

After the war, many Jews came back from the evacuation and from the Soviet army.

Zaluzhin was an informal rabbi and a head of the community. Jews had to pray in the houses of illegal minyan members because they were being constantly chased. For instance, they prayed at Kogan’s, Rabuta’s or Grigoriy Burdenny’s homes.
Fayvel Grigoryevich Ryklin (1916 – 2011) was a religious Jew, knew Hebrew and could pray properly. He was the last veteran of WWII in the community.

There was a shoykhet in the town.

The current Jewish community was officially organized in the 1990’s. Its first head was Dmitriy Kasilovich Abramovich, and he served in this position from 1996 until 2012. The community used to gather in Dmitriy Abramovich’s son-in-law’s house to celebrate holidays and Shabbats. Then they had been gathering in the local library for ten years.

There was a kleyzmer band in the Jewish community from 2001 till 2006.

Charitable foundation “Khesed Menakhem” helps elders and ill people.

Famous Jews from Voznesensk

Isahak Yulisovich Barenboym (1910, Voznesensk – 1984, Kiev), was an engineer-bridge-builder.

Shik Abramovich Kordonsky (1915, Voznesensk – 1943, Konstantsa, Romania) was a hero of the Soviet Union, marine pilot of the Black Sea Fleet. In 1943, he flew his plane – which was on fire – into the enemy ship and drowned the latter.

Yulan Grigoryevich Oksman (1895, Voznesensk – 1970, Moscow) was a literary critic.

Jewish cemetery

There is only one Jewish cemetery in Voznesensk. It is still in use. We couldn’t find any information about the second cemetery. Perhaps it didn’t exist at all.

Gates of the Voznesensk Jewish cemetery

Only a little part of the cemetery has been preserved. Its bigger part was looted by the Germans during WWII. They used gravestones in repair work.

Grave of UK citizen who died in Voznesensk during business trip in 2014

A grave of Pribuzhany rabbi Pinkhas from Illyintsy, Besht’s student has also been preserved. The gravestone was renewed by Uman rabbi Meir Gabay several years ago.

The part of the cemetery that had been destroyed has since been built up with railway warehouses, homes, and a road.
A mass grave of Soviet soldiers of different nationalities who died during the liberation of Voznesensk in 1944 is situated at the cemetery.

Grave of the Soviet soldiers

There was a short period when local authorities allowed burying local non-Jews here but soon they prohibited it. For this period a few graves with crosses appeared at the cemetery.

Troyanov is a village in Zhytomir district, Zhytomir region.

Troyanov is located on the Gnilopyat River, a tributary of the Teterev. The village’s estimated population is 1929 (as of 2001).

In 19th – beginning of 20th century it was a shtetl of Zhytomir Yezd of Volyn Gubernia. 

I visited Troyanov during the 2020 summer expedition. Afterwards, I was able to put together the little information I collected about the Jews of the village. There haven’t been any new buildings in the village since the beginning of the 20th century. The only remnant reminding of a once-great Jewish community is a large overgrown Jewish cemetery. A local teacher Volodymyr Matsun took us about the cemetery.

A former resident of the village Yakov Yolin, who currently lives in Zhytomyr, told us about the post-war Jews.

Beginning

The first reference to Jews in Troyanov relates to the mid-18th century. At the end of the 19th century, the Jewish population of Troyanov numbered about 1,469 and comprising 18.6 percent out of the total population. In 1905 the town suffered from several pogroms, after which the Jews of Troyanov, together with the Jewish community in Zhitomir, organized a Jewish self-defense force.

It is known that local Ukrainian peasants killed ten Jewish boys from a nearby shtetl Chudnov, who had taken part in Zhytomyr Jewish self-defence in 1905.

Members of the Bund’s self-defense organization killed 23–26 April 1905, in Troyanov.” Russian–Polish postcard with portraits of (left to right) P. Gorvits, Y. Brodski, and A. Fleysher. (YIVO)

The central area of the village and 3 adjacent streets were occupied by the Jews. There were some 40 small Jewish stores in the market square. Troyanov used to have two synagogues: the New one and the Old one.

Troyanov entrepreneurs list from Russian Empire Business Directories by 1913

During the Soviet period a Jewish kolkhoz was established in Troyanov.

In the 1930s there was a junior Jewish school. In 1939, 581 Jews lived in Troyanov (11.3% of the population).

Former market square in the center of shtetl:

Holocaust

Very few Jewish families could escape from the village before the Germans occupied it in 1941. The village was occupied from August 15, 1941 to July 2,1944.

All remaining Jews were driven into a ghetto which consisted of a few overcrowded huts surrounded with a barbed wire fence. Five or six families were stuffed into each house.

In August, 1941, the Germans reported: “…..where the engineering unit is located, communists and 22 Jews had been liquidated”.

Mass executions in Troyanov started when the Wehrmacht together with local Ukrainian police killed 53 Jews and 6 communists. In October, 1941 493 Jews were murdered. During the occupation, 863 people were killed in the village, including 678 Jews or 78% of total victims.

The mass execution site is located 3 km from Troyanov and 2.5 km from the village of Rudnja Gorodozka, on the territory of a military training grounds. Only a few locals know where it was.
Ukrainian residents used to tell a story of a Jewish blacksmith who was bullied by the police and forced to carry a bucket of water around the village. After scoffing at him the policemen drowned him in a well.

Possibly, last Jewish house in the center of former shtetl

After the WW2, returning Jews erected a monument on the mass gravesite to commemorate the victims of the Holocaust (6 km northwest of the village). But later, the hill on the grave happened to be destroyed by a collective farm tractor. A local Jew Boris Yolin restored the monument and the hill over the gravesite.   It is topped by a Star of David and has two inscriptions, one in Hebrew and other in Russian.

The Hebrew inscription says: “Here lie all those Jewish people, children and women, who were martyred in the year 1941.”

The Russian inscription says: “Here lie those Jews of Troyanov who were brutally murdered by the German Fascists in 1941. To their memory [erected] by their relatives and friends.”

I can’t find any data on the Troyanov Jews who survived the Holocaust in these occupied territories. But I am told that after the War, there lived an old woman Hana, the only Jew, who had survived in the occupation. She managed to escape from a mass grave twice.

Post-WWII

After the WW2, several Jewish families came back to live in the area. They were the Gitelmanns (schoolteachers), the Furmans, Boris Yolin (the head of the Yolin family, deputy director of a wood processing plant), the Falkiewskis (the head of the family worked as chief of a department at the same plant). A Jewish woman Aida Viktorovna (the surname unknown) worked as a teacher at the local school. A Jewish man Grushko was the chairman of the local collective farm.

There was a synagogue on this site

Most Jewish houses were demolished or occupied by Ukrainians. As a result, the majority of the surviving Jews resettled in Zhytomyr.

After the War there was no rabbi in Troyanov. However on the Passover, the Jews secretly baked matzo at their homes.

Some 50 Jews lived there in the 1960s. It is known that in 1970 ten Jewish children attended the local school.

The older Jews were dying out and the Jewish children were leaving to study in big cities of the USSR. The last Troyanov Jews were the Yolins, who left for Israel in the 1990s. Their son Yakov Yolin remained in Ukraine and he lives in Zhytomyr. The last Jews in the village were Boris Yolin and his wife Sarah, who left for Israel in October, 1990. Boris Yolin died in Israel in 2015, and his wife Sarah died in 2017 at the age of 94.

Famous Jews from Troyanov

Aharon Gordon (1856, Troyanov – 1922, Israel), Zionist thinker.

Aharon Gordon

Yacob Roitenberg (1910, Troyanov – 1988, Moscow), soviet mathematician.

Yacob Roitenberg

Jewish cemetery

There still is a caretaker’s cabin by the Jewish cemetery, though the caretaker died long ago, so nobody lives here.

Makhnovka is a village in the Kazatinsky district of the Vinnitsa region, 12 kilometers from the Kazatin railway station. The population at the 2001 census was 3,467. A rather picturesque river Gnilopyat flows near the village. Before Revolution, Makhnovka was a shtetl of Berdichev uezd, Kiev gubernia.

From 1935 to 2016 – the village was called Komsomolskoye. In 2016, the historical name of Makhnovka was returned to the village.

Sergei Frenkel – author of this article

Beginning

Documentary references to Makhnovka have been known at least since the first half of the 17th century (according to some sources, even from 1611).

The town was the private property of the Tyshkevich magnates, whose ancestors received these lands in 1430 from the Lithuanian prince Svidrigailo, who owned this part of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. Together with Berdichev and other estates, it was inherited by the princes Radzivils. Anthony Pototsky took possession of part of Makhnovka at the beginning of the 17th century, and the other part was owned by the princes Radziwill. During this period, a stone castle and a Bernardine church were built.

Then Makhnovka completely passed to the Pototskys. (There is a lot of information about Makhnovka’s history in the Polish Slownik geograficzny tom 875).

During the uprising of Bogdan Khmelnitsky of 1648-1654, a battle took place near Makhnovka in 1648 to seize its castle, during which the Cossacks of Maxim Krivonos defeated the detachment of Prince (originally Russian Orthodox) Yarema (Jeremiah) Vishnevetsky.

In 1767, Pyotr Potocki made it his residence, built a palace, brick buildings, and a Catholic church.

Anthony Protasy (Count Prot) Potocki (Antoni Protazy Potocki,) founded in Makhnovka “large cloth factories, factories of blankets, hats, stockings, ribbons, furniture, etc., started a printing house.” For frequent fairs, it was called “little Warsaw” and “stone Makhnovka”, since Count Prot built it up with stone buildings. Pototsky settled Dutch colonists between Makhnovka and Samgorodok, brought there cattle, Spanish sheep, etc.”

Following the results of the second partition of Poland (1793), Makhnovka, in the status of a county town, became part of the Bratslav province (from 1795 – Kiev province). She was given a coat of arms.

A printing house was founded in 1793. This printing house has its own interesting history. Suffice it to say that the famous Russian writer of the 19th century, Russian nationalist and fighter against the Old Believers (staroobryadtcy, i.e. supporters of the so-called “old” version of Russian Orthodoxy) Pavel Melnikov-Pechersk wrote in his “Essays on priesthood”. It was in connection with the Old Believers that he became interested in Makhnovka. The fact is that after the third partition of Poland, the Makhnov estates of Count Potocki, incl. printing house were confiscated. The printing house was under a contract in May 1801 leased to the Moscow merchant Seleznev. He gave a subscription not to print in it the forbidden St. Synod of “seductive books for the Old Believers”, but did not fulfill the promise and printed Old Believer publications in them. The all-powerful Count A.A. Arakcheev, who was in charge of the Ministry of Police, the St. Petersburg military governor-general Count S.K. Vyazmitinov, and many others were also involved in the investigation of the activities of the Makhnovist printing house.

Makhnovka entrepreneurs list from Russian Empire Business Directories by 1913

The Kiev civil governor reported on this case to the Minister of Police of the year. Thus, the small Polish-Jewish Makhnovka became the subject of the big politics of the Russian Empire!

In Makhnovka in the 20s of the XIX century. a noble district school was opened, and in 1830 a one-class parish school was opened. The Noble District School in 1835 was reorganized into the Noble Povitov (local ) School, and since the majority of the Makhnovist nobles were Poles, it was popularly called the “Polish School”.

In 1841, a huge fire broke out in Makhnovka, as a result of which most of the buildings in, only a few stone buildings remained, including the school. In 1845 Berdichev became the center of the county. Makhnovka lost its city status and became the volost center of the Makhnovskaya volost of the Berdichevsky district of the Kiev province “under the direct and closest supervision of the governor-general” (the volost is a small administrative rural division including several villages).

During the construction of railways (after 1860), the railway passed through Berdichev and Kazatin, but bypassing Makhnovka. This led to an even greater decline of Makhnovka.

In Makhnovka, by the end of the 19th century, only the memory and sayings remained about the Pototskys, such as “thank you to Brodsky for sugar, Pototsky for water, Vysotsky for tea.” But the memory is good – back in the 60s of the 20th century, one could hear from the old Makhnovists that Pototsky set up a pharmacy, a hospital and a school at his own expense. They also told about many other less bright but rather well-born representatives of the Polish gentry. For example, about the Mazarak family, whose descendants lived in Makhnovka until 1917. The ancestor of the Mazaraks, even before the second partition of Poland, was a county commissar in Makhnovka, they owned houses and estates. According to the charter, drawn up on June 29, 1862, in the town near Mazaraki, there were 199 peasants (56 peasant households). Men from this family, along with other Makhnovist Poles-nobles, participated in the uprising of 1831 (the Jews stubbornly called it the “Polish rebellion)”.

Of the other “rebellious” surnames, of which there was some kind of memory, Golembiovsky, Ganitsky.

A well-known Polish family in Makhnovka were the Liverskys. Before the revolution, they were known in the volost as excellent gardeners.

The last period of his life lived in Makhnovka and was buried (in 1871) Tomasz Padura, a Ukrainian-Polish poet, participant of the Decembrist movement (Southern Society) and the Polish uprisings (primarily in 1831). He said about himself: “Mickiewicz is a great poet, but who knows, but the whole of Poland and Ukraine sings me!”

Also V. Antonovitch (1834-1908), a well-known historian and ethnographer of Southwestern Russia also was born in Makhnovka. As well Padura, he was a visible figure of the Polish-Ukrainian movement “Hlopomaniy” (peasantophiles), as they said in the second half of the 19th century.

After the reform of 1961, Makhnovka again grew into a large settlement. In 1900, there were 709 households with 5,380 people living here, and had the entire set of administrative institutions befitting a volost center. Here was located a subdivision of the police of the Berdichevsky county, a volost government, a post and telegraph office with a savings bank, two doctors, a veterinarian, a forensic investigator, a parish school, a rural 2-class school.

There was a pharmacy and 2 drug stores, 29 grocery stores, two wine shops, 3 stores of timber warehouses, 2 haberdashery stores, a gramophone and records store.

In 1908-1914 in Makhnovka were 2 horse-driven cereal mills, 2 oil mills, a soap factory, and a semi-handicraft sausage factory were opened. (In the book “The entire South-West” 1913, publication of the South-Western Department of the Export Chamber Kiev).

Before the October Revolution

The first mention of Jews in Makhnovka dates back to 1611.

The next one was in 1648, both in the reports the Cossacks of Krivonos and the testimonies from the troops of Prince Vishnevetsky, which indicated that during the capture of the Makhnovist castle (fortress), Jews and Poles were killed.

More than 100 years later, in 1765, six Jewish families were registered in Makhnovka (presumably from that year’s tax census).

The vigorous economic activity of A. Pototsky required people versed in finance and trade, and he invited Jews from Berdichev to Makhnovka.

The law of 1804 prohibiting Jews from 1808 from maintaining and renting drinking establishments in the villages, as well as distilling and selling alcohol, led to the resettlement of the owners of such crafts in cities and towns. About the situation in the then Makhnovsky district, they give “1808. Census of the Jews of the Makhnovsky (Berdichevsky) district of the tenants of drinking establishments”, in “State archive of the Kiev region. Foundation 1, Inventory 336, File 882.

Old Jewish house on the Zhitomir-Vinnitsya road in Makhnovka

In the first half of the 19th century, many foreign citizens, mostly Austrians, lived in Makhnovka. Nearby was a settlement of German Mennonites and Czech colonists.

Not all Makhnovist Jews were pious enough. There is a known case when three local Jews pulled decorations out of the church ( Piatrovsky-Stein, The Golden Age Shtetl).

According to the Jewish Encyclopedia Brockhaus and Efron, according to the revision of 1847, the “Makhnov. Jewish society” consisted of 1,934 people.”

Volume 28 of the Brockhaus and Efron Encyclopedic Dictionary (1896) indicates data from the mid-80s of the 19th century: a town in the Kiev province, Berdichevsky district. Lives. 4389, yards 451; Orthodox 985, Catholics 299, Jews 3070, other confessions 35” .

According to the 1897 census, 2,435 Jews (about 45%) lived in the village of Makhnovka. out of a total population of 5343 [http://www.brocgaus.ru/text/064/100.htm]

The decrease in the number of Jews during this period is primarily due to the beginning of Jewish emigration after the pogroms of 1881 and a sharp deterioration in the position of Jews, especially the lower classes, caused by the anti-Jewish policy of Alexander III ( Visitors to the JewishGen resource usually report that their ancestors emigrated from Makhnovka in the period from the late XIX c. to 1913).

Although there was no noticeable pogrom movement in Berdichevsky district, the news of pogroms in Odessa, Elizavetgrad, Kiev, etc. had a strong effect on the Jews.

Emigration was mainly directed to America, England, Europe, and later to Argentina. I have heard about the Makhnovist Jews Guzlick (Makhnovka 1877), Goltman (Makhnovka 1858) well settled in Belgium http://www.genami.org/en/belgian-file/belgian-file-g.php ), and even about one coffee planter in Morocco.

However, speaking about the population quantity, one must understand that the majority of Jews lived in the center of the town, around the market square, and a significant part of Ukrainians lived on the outskirts, in the territory of villages that merged with the town itself as it grew, for example, the area called “Berezovka”. Therefore, in the “original” Makhnovka, Jews have always been the absolute majority.

The economic life of the Jews of Makhnovka differed little from other places in the South-West. In Makhnovka, as in any other Jewish town, there were many tailors – according to the statistics of the Kiev Province at the end of the 19th century, peasant dresses were sewn in Makhnovka for 3,000 rubles. There were many shoemakers. In total, according to the data of the Jewish Colonization Society, there were over 1,000 Jewish shoemakers and shoemakers in the Berdichev district.

Of the 29 grocers in Makhnovka in 1913, 27 were owned by Jews.

Almost all of the 30 manufactory shops belonged to Jews (the book “All the South-West” 1913, published by the South-Western Department of the Export Chamber Kiev). They owned

two liquor stores – Jews, 2 forest warehouses (out of 3) bakery, 2 haberdashery stores, the store of gramophones and records store.

There were many different contractors.

Among the administrative employees (post office, volost government, teachers of state schools, etc.), of course, there were no Jews, as prescribed by the laws of the Russian Empire.

There were no Jews among the three doctors who practiced in Makhnovka.

Among the Makhnovist wealthy Jews, the Chudnovsky clan was famous, who bought in 1870-1880 in Makhnovka several estates, for example, the estate (purchased at public auction) belonged to the Austrian citizen Ehlinger I. 1877-1880, and before the revolution they held both grocery and manufacturing trade. His grandchildren perished with their children during the German occupation.

The material situation and stratification in Makhnovka as a whole and among the Jews is evidenced by the document “Lists of persons eligible for election to the State Duma according to the 1st list of urban voters in 1912 from Makhnovka in the Berdichevsky district of the Kiev province”.

In order to get on this list, one had to have a certain property qualification (at least pay taxes as an artisan, and a tax for renting an apartment if one did not have one’s own house or part of it). This list included 63 Makhnovist Jews, 5 Russians (the concept of “Ukrainian” did not exist in Russian legislation), and 7 Poles. It is clear that many Poles belonged to the landowners, and “Russians” – to the peasants, and they went to other congresses. But out of several hundred Jewish families, only 63 had the necessary property qualification. The rest lived either in huts that did not have any significant value, or in rented housing, or had neither trade nor craft – “people of the air”.

All the Jewish boys and part of the girls studied with melameds in their private Cheders, in one of the rooms of the teacher’s apartment. The teacher, melamed, was paid by his parents. At the beginning of the 20th century, it was about 20 rubles a year – extremely small to ensure a decent life for melamed, who usually had 8-10 students. But everyone could became melameds, they had no special education (and according to the law of 1893 “On Heders and Melameds” it was not required).

For the children of the poor, whose parents were unable to pay tuition, there was a free Talmud Torah, which was supported by the Jewish community. Classes were held in the synagogue.

This synagogue looks like this today (currently there is a residential building for several families

Usually, parents brought their child to melamed at the age of 5, and sometimes even earlier – at 4 or even 3 years. In the younger group, teaching began with an introduction to the letters of the Hebrew alphabet. After that, the boy learned to read words and thus began to read prayers. However, the language of prayers (Hebrew) was not studied. Writing was not taught at all.

But all more or less wealthy Jewish families tried to give their children at least a primary secular education. It was either home schooling with some local “enlightened” Jew, or with the teachers of the two-class school located in Makhnovka (the building seems to have been preserved) with a five-year education (the so-called “ministerial school”, i.e. schools departments of the Ministry of Public Education).

After home schooling, which was necessary for a more or less fluent knowledge of the Russian language (including reading and writing), the boys could enter either the elementary school in Makhnovka (they, unlike secondary schools, did not have a “percentage norm” restriction for Jews), or they were sent to relatives in Berdichev, where they entered either the so-called. Jewish state schools (which existed until 1873, and were converted into Jewish two-year schools), or, for more rich families, in a gymnasium, a commercial school, in one of several private schools. But even in Berdichev itself, a city more prosperous than Makhnovka, according to the late 19th century. 90.6% of Jewish children remained out of school.

Poor families, after several years of study in a cheder, took their sons to teach craft or trade, so they did not really know the Russian language.

According to the 1897 census in the Berdichevsky district, literate (i.e., those who could read and write in Russian) among Jewish men were 35%, and among women – 15.5%.

Secular education was advocated by the members of the Bund (the General Jewish Workers’ Union in Russia, Poland and Lithuania), a revolutionary Marxist party that appeared at the end of the 19th century, a truly workers’ party in its composition.

In Makhnovka, the organization of the Bund arose with the help of agitators from Berdichev around 1899-1900. (“1905 in Berdichev, Notes and Memoirs”), after the Bund organizers arrived in Berdichev from Lithuania, where the Bund had existed since 1897. They helped to organize several successful strikes of Jewish fullers, tailors, shoemakers, and thereby made the Bund a popular organization both in Berdichev and in Makhnovka, whose inhabitants were closely connected with Berdichev.

During the First World War, he was mobilized into the army, then worked as a mechanic in Yuzovka, joined the Red Army against Whites and died in 1919.

The document of the police department notes that unrest among Jewish youth was observed in Makhnovka and other settlements and leaflets were distributed. The leaflets of the Bund were published in Yiddish, so that young people, whose training was limited to a few years in a cheder, also read them.

Jewish religious life in Makhnovka was largely associated with the name of the Hasidic dynasty Tversky (Makhnovker Rebbe). Their ancestor R. Menachem-Nakhum Tversky (Magid from Chernobyl) was one of the closest students and followers of the founder of Hasidism r. Israel Baal Shem Tov (Besht). The grandson of Menachem-Nochum, Yitzhak Tversky, founded the Hasidic “court” in the Ukrainian city of Skvir, and his son r. Yosef-Meir Tversky.

Mahnovker rebbes in the genealogy of Admorai Skvira

First Machnovker Rebbe:
R. Yosef Meyer Twersky Admur of Machnovka (1857, Skvira – 1917, Machnovka), son of (86.) R. Avraham Yehoshua Heschel Twersky Admur of Skvira.
Married: Basya Rivka Twersky daughter of (4.) R. Menachem Nachum Twersky Admur of Chernobyl.

Grave of R. Yosef Meyer Twersky in Makhnovka Jewish cemetery:

Grave of Basya Rivka Twersky in Makhnovka Jewish cemetery, 2020

Second Machnovker Rebbe:
R. Menachem Nachum Twersky Admur of Skvira-Machnovka (1880, Skvira – 1946, N.Y.), son of (89.) R. David Twersky Admur of Skvira.
Married: 1) Malka Twersky daughter of (90.) R. Yosef Meyer Twersky Admur of Machnovka.
2) Batsheva Sfard daughter of R. Avraham Pinchas Sfard Admur of Kinyev.

Third Machnovker Rebbe:
R. Avraham Yehoshua Heschel Twersky Admur of Machnovka (1895, Skvira – 1987, Bnei Brak), son of (90.) R. Yosef Meyer Twersky Admur of Machnovka.
Married: Chava Baszion Twersky daughter of (66.) R. David Aaron Twersky Admur of Trisk-Zorek.

Forth Machnovker Rebbe:
R. Yehoshua Rokeach Admur of Machnovka (1949, Tel Aviv), son of R. Yitzchak David Rokeach.
Born: Tel Aviv, 21 Tevet 5709-1949.
Married: Chaya Gittel Michaelowitz daughter of R. Shalom Michaclowitz Admur of Brod.
Resides: Bnei Brak, Israel.

The Rebe Tversky was an important economic “resource” of Makhnovka, since his Hasidim from the Vinnitsa and Berdichev counties – Litin, Yanov, etc. (from Berdichev too, since the Makhnovist Jews constantly migrated there) went to him, which gave money to shops, taverns, inns, for artisans.

The Rebe died in 1917 and was succeeded by his son, r. Abraham-Yeshua, becoming the head of the Makhnovist Hasidim. This name became quite loud in the 30s, as will be discussed later.

Among the Makhnovist Jews, the memory of the times of the Law on the military service of the Jews of 1827 lived for a long time, according to which, during recruitment, 12-year-old boys were taken to cantonist schools, where they were forcibly baptized, and who, after school, served as soldiers for 17 years. In fact, none of them returned to the town. They remembered one very old general who came to the shtetl in the late 90s of the XIX century, and who was one of those Jewish boys.

After the abolition of this savage law, the Jews served under the Law on universal military service. Here is a photograph of a soldier from Makhnovka, Nuta Khaytsis, who served in the Crimea in the late 1870s:

Nuta Khaytsis, who served in the Crimea in the late 1870s

Among the Jews of Makhnovka were participants in the Russo-Japanese War, including those captured in Port Arthur.

A large number of Makhnovist Jews died or went missing during the First World War. List can be found here.

Revolution and Civil War

With the beginning of the February Revolution of 1917, changes are gradually taking place in all aspects of life in Makhnovka. First of all, the power structure is changing. In March 1917, the position of a provincial commissar appeared in Kiev, subordinate to the Ministry of Internal Affairs, and a county commissar subordinate to him in Berdichev. The position underwent some changes after the proclamation of the Second Universal of the Ukrainian Central Council, which subordinated the provincial commissars to the General Secretariat of Ukraine, and was abolished in April 1918 in connection with the establishment of the power of Hetman P. Skoropadsky.

The previously popular Bund partially lost its influence on Jewish workers and artisans, while in this environment the influence of the left-wing socialist Zionists Poalei Zion (“Workers of Zion”, created in the early 1900s) somewhat increased. This is connected both with the splits in the Bund into pro-Bolshevik and Social Democratic groups, and with the fact that after the actual collapse of the Russian Empire, the Bund’s slogans about the equality of Jewish workers in democratic (but “united and indivisible”) Russia became simply slurred. Although the Bund collaborated with the socialists in the Ukrainian Rada (Council), he was a supporter of the federation of Ukraine and Russia, which irritated the “conscious” Ukrainian peasants and rural intelligentsia. At the same time, unlike in 1905, the Bund objected to purely Jewish self-defense, considering it a manifestation of “Jewish nationalism” and spoke of interethnic armed structures, which was extremely problematic in the conditions of the Jewish pogroms that had begun. Paolei Zion, although not specifically focused on Ukrainian independence, collaborated with the Rada and the Directory, and at the same time was active in the creation of Jewish self-defense units.

Bolshevik influence among the Jewish poor was spread mainly by Jewish soldiers returning from the front.

After the October Revolution in Petrograd and the proclamation of the independent from Russia Ukrainian People’s Republic (UNR), an era of events poorly managed from the Center (be it Petrograd, Moscow or Kiev) began, which continued until 1921.

Already in January-February 1918, the Berdichev-Kazatin region, where Makhnovka also fell, became a battlefield between the troops of the adventurer and bloody fanatic Mikhail Muravyov, acting on behalf of the Bolshevik Petrograd Council of People’s Commissars, and detachments of the newly proclaimed Ukrainian People’s Republic (UNR). The drama of the events was also created by the fact that the headquarters of the Southwestern Front of the decaying Russian army was located nearby in Berdichev, and a fierce struggle unfolded for the capture of its institutions and warehouses.

February 1918 – the race between the UNR and the Bolsheviks for the capture of Berdichev before the Germans approached (who entered Ukraine according to the Brest Peace). The Ukrainian Zaporozhye brigade of a thousand fighters tried to dislodge from Berdichev a detachment of the famous Red commander Vasily Kikvidze (by the way, not a Bolshevik, but a Left Social Revolutionary), but was defeated. The Kikvidze detachment consisted of Bolshevik-supporting soldiers from the Russian Southwestern Front of the First World War. Further, the Reds fought between Berdichev and Kazatin with a detachment of the well-known UNR Colonel Bolbochan. This war ended with the approach of the Germans, since both of them did not want to face the German army.

Such a fighting neighborhood could not but affect Makhnovka. With the arrival of the Germans in Ukraine (under an agreement with the Central Rada), the administrative confusion intensified. In addition to the Germans and the commissars of the Central Rada, the former local authorities also acted. The Germans were only interested in the supply of food and raw materials (leather, wool). Engaged in this so-called. “commodity centrals”. There was such a central office in Berdichev, and it had to agree, among other things, on deliveries (through purchases) from the Makhnovskaya volost. But only peasant production was not enough, and therefore the Germans demanded to sow empty landowners’ lands, which the peasants perceived as the beginning of a return to landownership. There were plenty of weapons in the villages – the soldiers of the First World War who were leaving the front brought them, and armed clashes with the Germans and representatives of the Ukrainian authorities began, which became a source of constant danger for Makhnovka.

The Central Rada, and then the government of the UNR, established various forms of Jewish self-management: Jewish public councils, local Jewish councils, which were to be coordinated by the Jewish National Secretariat and the Ministry of Jewish Affairs in the government of the UNR. In particular, they were supposed to open Jewish schools, for which some subsidies were allocated.

According to eyewitnesses (Avraham Khazin – more will be said about him later), there was an attempt to open a school with instruction in Hebrew, organized by the Tarbut (“Culture”) society.

A pogrom wave began to approach Makhnovka after the departure of the Germans and the restoration of the power of the Ukrainian Directory of UNR.

During this period, a series of continuous changes of power begins. In February 1919, the Reds began their attack on Kiev, from which on February 14 they knocked out the government of the Petliura Directory. At the beginning of March 1919, the Soviet troops of the 1st Soviet division knocked out the troops of the Directory from Kazatin, Berdichev. Heavy fighting with the active use of artillery went around Makhnovka, and on March 14, 1919, the 9th rifle regiment of the special rifle brigade of the Red Army was located in Makhnovka. The soldiers were looting.

Further, on March 26, the Petliurists again take them to Berdichev, but on April 13, Soviet troops again knock them out of the city.

In May 1919, a new trouble appeared – an uprising in the Red troops by commandment of Grigoriev, who declared himself a free ataman and a fighter for “Soviets without Jews and Communists.” Grigorievtsy and thousands of villagers who joined them launched an offensive from the south of Ukraine to Kiev, arranging wild Jewish pogroms along the way with thousands killed, maimed, raped.

The Soviet Nezhinsky regiment in neighboring Kazatin went over to Grigoriev’s side, which shocked Makhnovka. The Bolsheviks, the Bund and Paolei Zion announced a party mobilization, and many young Jews joined the detachments that blocked the movement of the Grigorievites. One of them were the dead Loshak brothers (their whole family was subsequently killed in 1941 during the German occupation – they are present in the list of executed Jews).

But regardless of what kind of power was called, the entire period from March 1917 to the end of 1921. in the memoirs of the Makhnovites, it was simply called “anarchy”. There was no mention of Ukrainian statehood of this period – all the leaders of that time were perceived (perhaps due to temporary parallax and the background of Soviet propaganda) as “atamans” who came from nowhere, and in this sense Skoropadsky and Petliura did not differ much from some Struk, Sokolov or Maruska Nikiforova.

In total, during the civil war, power in Makhnovka, as in the entire region, changed about 14 times. Denikin’s, Reds, Petliurists, Galicians (the army of the Western Ukrainian People’s Republic (ZUNR)) visited here. But before the arrival of the Poles in 1920, somehow the town managed to avoid bloody pogroms. There were mainly attacks by small gangs from the surrounding and distant villages.

In the second half of 1919, Denikin’s men first stood in Makhnovka, who wanted to drive Petlyura out of Berdichev, which, in turn, was approached by the Reds. But at that time, the Galicians, who had previously served under Petliura, unexpectedly joined Denikin’s troops. They were stationed in Brodetsky (2 kilometers from Makhnovka), and then moved to Makhnovka. They say they didn’t particularly smash, and among them there were even Jewish officers.

However, the Galicians were ready to fight only against the Reds, and not against the Ukrainians, and when Berdichev had Petliurists against them, they left the front. The Petliurists, before leaving Berdichev, staged a wild pogrom there (according to some documents, it was December 8-10) and surrendered the city to the Reds.

In late February-early March, Kazatin literally for a day captured Ataman Struk band, one of the most vile and bloody bandits of the Civil War (according to the reviews of both White, Red, and Petliura memoirists), which breaking through from Bessarabia (where he fled from Odessa occupied by the Reds) to his Chernobyl fiefdom, so he passed a little away from Makhnovka.

April 26, 1920 Poles and Petliurists came, who were in Makhnovka until June 15, 1920. On June 15, according to the memoirs, the Poles literally fled through Makhnovka, throwing ammunition and ammunition. But before that, together with the UNR troops, they staged a pogrom with a large number of dead. Unlike hundreds of other cities and towns in Ukraine, this was the only major pogrom in Makhnovka.

In many ways, the pogroms of small gangs were prevented thanks to Jewish self-defense.

Self-defense was created by young Jews who returned from the First World War, members of the Bund and Paolei Zion, and maintained at least some order, because between the arrivals of large military formations during the hostilities, there was no power at all in the town. Self-defense had dozens of rifles at its disposal. There is a known case when a gang from the village of Plyakhova, about a dozen guys on horseback rode to Makhnovka and broke into a house on the outskirts, where two Jewish orphans girls lived. The neighbors heard a scream, ran after the self-defenders (as the old-timers called them back in the 70s of the 20th century), they surrounded the house, took away the horses, tied the guys, beat with the reins, and let them go. The horses were returned later.

Haikel Shturman, Makhnovka beginning of XX century. Photo from collection of Judaica Institute, Kiev.

Although the Polish army left in the summer of 1920, and there were no more battles of units of more or less regular armies, for the population of Makhnovka and the entire Berdichev district, the bloody nightmare of the Civil War continued for at least another year. In the county, the most terrible pogroms during this period were staged by the red units of the 6th Red Cavalry Division of the First Cavalry Army of Budeyny (Буденный), when in October 1920 it was redeployed from the Polish front (from near Rovno) to the Northern Tavria against Whites. There were brutal pogroms in the shtetls Samgorodok, Vakhnovka, Pogrebishche, and Spicheny. Many dozens of people were killed, hundreds of women, girls and even girls were raped. This is stated both in the protocols of the subsection of assistance to the pogromized Jews under the People’s Commissariat for Social Security of the Ukrainian SSR, and in the Report of the Extraordinary Investigation Commission to the Revolutionary Military Council of the 1st Cavalry Army. This disaster did not pass through Makhnovka, since only individual rear units of the Cavalry passed through it. However, until the autumn of 1921, there were attacks by small detachments, consisting of the surrounding peasants, deserters from all armies, and city punks. The local authorities, represented until the spring of 1921 by the revolutionary committee, had no units to protect the population, but could only report to the Berdichev or Kiev NKVD of the Soviet Ukraine, which sometimes sent armed detachments to round up bandits. At the same time, news constantly came of uprisings against food reconnaissance and mobilization to the Red Army from neighboring counties, which paralyzed the will of local chiefs. The protection of the inhabitants was carried out only by a self-defense detachment.

Between Wars

Compared to hundreds of other Jewish shtetls and towns in Ukraine, Makhnovka emerged from the Civil War with significantly fewer losses from pogroms and vandalism.

It is not on the lists of Evobshchestkom (Jewish Public Committee for Assistance to Victims of Pogroms) and EVPO (Jewish Society for Assistance to Victims of Pogroms and War) as a settlement whose population needs emergency assistance.

However, due to the severe economic disruption, the outflow of the Jewish population continued, since trade was almost completely stopped, the number of customers for manufacturers, tailors, and shoemakers is falling sharply – the population walks in altered uniforms and overcoats from the warehouses of the tsarist army, from English cloth of the so-called Volunteer Army of the Whites (“Denikin’s”)”, Polish overcoats abandoned during the flight. A significant number of intermediaries remain without income, who had no profession other than information of sellers and buyers, for the most part it does not matter what.

Joiners, locksmiths, blacksmiths, chariot workers, coopers have some orders. those who can work with local raw materials or work on existing metal. There were a little more than 50 such people in Makhnovka in the mid-twenties. Cattle slaughterers (slaughterers), brewers could have some income. Someone made soap.

Part of the artisans (tailors, carpenters, etc.) began to go to work in the villages, despite the danger of stumbling into small bands that kill Jews.

In the early 1920s, there was still the opportunity to go abroad, mostly through the nearby Polish (in Volyn) or Romanian (in Bessarabia) borders with the help of smugglers. Some left legally, but for this it was necessary to go to Kiev or Moscow for documents, which required a certain income. A family is known that left Makhnovka for Mexico in 1922 (a certain Beyla with her husband and children). But the main flow of migrants rushed to Kiev and Moscow, where they could more easily find a job. Emigration to America became almost impossible in 1924 when the Reed-Johnson Act was passed to restrict emigration to America. Some left for Palestine. Some left for the Crimean Jewish collective far ms.

As a result, by 1925, 1,575 Jews remained in Makhnovka. I must say that a certain part of the Poles also left for Poland (for example, the Liversky family).

An important condition for the survival of the Jews was the help of foreign Jewish public organizations, as well as parcels and money transfers from relatives from abroad, mainly from the United States.

Traditional Jewish life continued in the early 1920s, children in most families (except for families of ideological Bolsheviks, Bundists and Socialist Zionists (Paolei Zion)) were given to heder. The court of the Makhnovist Rebbe continued to function, and Hasidim traveled to him from all over the Berdichev district and neighbouring districts.

After the final establishment of Soviet power, the Hebrew school was closed, which had existed for less than a year under the “Ukrainian State” and the “UNR”, but around 1921 a Jewish school was opened with teaching in Yiddish, the so-called “evtrudshkola”. A seven-year Ukrainian school opened in Makhnovka in 1920, but only 48 children studied in it (by 1923 there were already 128 of them).

Naum Abramovich Belsky with his wife and kids. Makhnovka 1920’s-1930’s

In Makhnovka, as in dozens of other places in Ukraine, in addition to the volost (and then district) Council of Deputies, a Jewish village council was created, where office work was carried out in Yiddish .. All this was carried out under the guidance of the so-called Jewish Sections of communist party committees created in 1921 , including the Communist Party of Ukraine (“Evsections”). The goal was to spread the official party ideology among the Jewish lower classes, who had little command of Russian or Ukrainian.

Evsections were also supposed to be some kind of gateway for members of the Jewish socialist parties (Bund, the left faction of Poalei Zion), not yet officially banned by the Soviet authorities, to join the ranks of the main composition of the Communist Party. And indeed, according to the memoirs in Makhnovka, the Evsections activists were mainly “left” Bundists (called KomFarband – “Communist Bund”).

The Jewish sections actually supervised the work of both the Jewish school and the village council. Accordingly, they fought fiercely against the Zionists, whom the Bund had regarded as the main ideological enemies since the rise of the Zionist movement, and against Judaism, and eradicated Hebrew from schools and cultural life. For example, Evsection was against the creation of an agricultural commune on a part of the empty land of one of the Polish landowners by the Zionist organization “Hehalutz” (The Pioneer). For some time Evsection managed to do this. Evsection sought the liquidation of the Poalei Zion organization (which became known as the Jewish Communist Party (EKP) ), despite the fact that officially the Zionist-Socialists legally operated until about 1926, although they were persecuted at the local level (mass arrests in Berdichev in 1922). Old Makhnowits Jews remembered that the confrontation between “Soviet[”, “Zionist” and “clerical” sentiments took place in the Jewish environment itself, between different groups of the population. For example, it was said that a draper from the “Zionist Party” never recommended a small-town tailor whose son was an active member of the Komsomol to a buyer from the village, and similar conflicts.

From the protocols of the meetings of the “Evburo of the Makhnovsky District Party Committee” (PartArkhiv of the Zhytomyr Regional Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine (CP(b)U)) preserved in the Zhytomyr Regional archive, it can be seen how the topics of closing Cheders (1924) were actively discussed, the organization of the so-called. “Red Saturdays” instead of traditional Jewish Shabbat (“shobes” in the local dialect of Yiddish), associations of Jewish artisans-individuals (“handicraftsmen)” in an artel (in total, 75 Jewish handicraftsmen remained in Makhnovka at that time). There were many meetings to distribute the party press in Yiddish (Berdichev’s “Der Arbeiter”, Moscow’s “Der Emes” (“Pravda”, in translation from Yiddish)).

In the fight against Judaism, the Makhnov Rebbe was, of course, an important object of the Evsection efforts. He was expelled from his home, his “school”, the so-called. Besmedresh” (Beit Midrash in the “correct” Hebrew), located near his house and the synagogue, was closed. However, until about 1929-1930, when the persecution of the fight against religion became official policy in the Soviet Union, he was perhaps the only Hasidic preacher (“Admor”) in the USSR (after Lubavicher Rebbe Shneerson was arrested) who was openly engaged in his activities. In 1932, fearing arrest, he left for Moscow, where he settled in Cherkizovo and, working as a tailor, performed rabbinic functions for hundreds of believers. After World War II, he was invited by the Soviet authorities to the post of Chief Rabbi of the Soviet Union. His refusal to accept this post led to him being exiled to Siberia. In 1965 he received permission to leave the Soviet Union and emigrated to Bnei Brak, Israel.

Rabbi Avraham Yehoshua Heschel Twersky 3d Admur of Machnovka (1895, Skvira – 1987, Bnei Brak)

The synagogue was closed, but there was a prayer house (and some melameds kept their cheders semi-underground.

Evsections were liquidated (1930), as having fulfilled their functions, and punitive bodies were engaged in repressions against all those who did not fit into political and cultural life on a professional basis (Most of the activists of Evsektsii perished during the Great Terror in 1937-1939).

The Jewish school (“7-year- school”) and the Jewish village council were liquidated in the 1936.

By the mid-1920s, with the development of the NEP (“New Economical Politics ” of Bolsheviks), life was gradually getting better.

In 1922, 5 privately owned horse-driven groats, 3 oil mills and 4 mechanical mills were put into operation again in Makhnovka. At the same time, state agricultural enterprises were also created. On the former landlords’ lands, 2 state farms arose – a grain farm and a fruit nursery. Many Jews also worked on state farms. In 1934, a 10-year secondary Ukrainian school was opened.

However, the collapse of the NEP in 1928-1929 ruined a significant part of the merchants and artisans, and these people, who were also deprived of most of their social rights as “elements alien to the proletariat” (“disenfranchised”), left from Makhnovka to the large cities. The youth from poor families also went to study in the large cities .

Tefillin of Naum Abramovich Belsky. In 1990’s, owned by his daughter Polina

Makhnovka, like the whole of Ukraine, was affected by the terrible famine of the early thirties. Many local Jews also died of starvation, who did not have a permanent income in various structures associated with the state (state farms, the Machine and Tractor Station (MTS), schools, a district hospital, all sorts of district administrative and party structures). Avrum M. Khazin, drafted into the Red Army in 1932, ecalled that his father, a handicraft tailor, died of starvation. When Avrum arrived at the funeral from Kiev, he walked from Kazatin, wolves howled around, which had never happened before – all living creatures in the surrounding sparse forests was destroyed by starving people.

In 1937, the repressions affected many Makhnovist Poles, in particular teachers, former employees, and people from the nobility. Religious Jews rendered all possible assistance to their families.

In 1935, Makhnovka was renamed into the village of Komsomolskoye, and was the regional center of the Komsomolsk region of the Ukrainian SSR.

Holocaust

By 1939, 843 Jews remained in Makhnovka.

The Germans occupied Makhnovka on July 14, 1941.

According to various sources, no more than three Jewish families of local chiefs were evacuated, and several dozen people did military service or were drafted into the army after the start of the war. Attempts at unauthorized evacuation were actively hindered by the Soviet authorities, threatening with accusations of “sowing panic” (It is interesting that, at the same time, in post-war reports it is emphasized that “about 1500 heads of cattle, several hundred horses, the most valuable equipment were evacuated.!”

After the occupation, the commandant’s office and the German gendarmerie were organized (chief Kubitz, assistants Schneider and Kriste) and the local auxiliary police, where more than 40 local Ukrainians and Poles (chief Zhelekhovsky) entered to serve.

Jewish houses in Mahnovka. Photo of unknown German soldier, 1942

Lists of Jews immediately began to be drawn up, both according to the documents left in Soviet institutions, and according to the “tips” of some local residents. The Jews were forced to sew yellow pieces of cloth on their shoulders and chests, and were constantly sent to forced labor. for the most part completely meaningless, for example, they harnessed instead horses to carts with barrels of water. According to one of the surviving Jews, Motl Faer, in early September, a large German detachment arrived in the village of Brodetskoye, about 2 km from Makhnovka (more than 100 soldiers, they also talked about three hundred soldiers). A few days later they moved to Makhnovka and the beatings and bullying began. There were cases of rape.

Approximately on September 8-9, all Jews were ordered to pack valuable things, materials, tools for the “resettlement” scheduled for September 10. Early in the morning of September 10, the whole place was cordoned off by soldiers, the police and the Germans began to walk around the houses indicated in the lists, ordered them to leave the houses with packed things and go to the building of the former butter factory. Trucks drove around the town, into which things taken from the Jews were thrown. At the oil refinery, men were separated from children and women, women were ordered to remove and hand over all jewelry, otherwise they would be shot. Trucks were brought to the butter plant to load people, but just before leaving the commandant’s office, a police officer Pavlivsky came and said to leave 12 specialists – a cooper (Motl Faer), a glazier, two blacksmiths, and a carpenter (Naum Belsky), etc., and more 5 women for chores. They were taken to a makeshift camp set up in the house of a former Jewish school.

Jewish houses in Mahnovka. Photo of unknown German soldier, 1942

One woman with a three-year-old son was also released. It happened like this. The boy suddenly asked loudly in Ukrainian where we were going. This was heard by one of the policemen, who did not know this woman (she was a teacher Maria Milman, recently sent to work in a local school) and asked what they were doing here among the Jews. She replied that apparently they were here by mistake, and the policeman ordered them to leave immediately. She and her son went to a local resident, Pavlina Moiseevna Stolyarchuk, and then managed to escape.

The rest of the men and women were loaded into cars. In the forest, 5 km from Komsomolskoye, near the village of Zhezhelevo, 3 large pits were dug. The Germans shot, and the police stood in a continuous cordon around the execution pits. After the execution, their task was to fill in the holes. The total number of those shot that day is not known exactly, but no less than 800 people.

The remaining 17 people, with about 80 more Jews and half-Jews from the surrounding villages, were placed in the building of the former Jewish school, fenced with barbed wire. Also in this mini-camp was a girl, Polina Faer (by her husband Belskaya), the daughter of one of the abandoned artisans, the cooper Motl Faer, who got out of the execution pit, was seen by a policeman from the cordon, and taken to her father in the camp. Jews went to work without guards, with yellow strips sewn on their chests and shoulders, but in the evening they had to be inspected. They were forbidden to buy anything in the town. It was impossible to escape, since everyone was warned that in this case all the other prisoners would be shot. Polina Faer was not registered and lived in the camp illegally (in a pit in the yard).

This group of Jews, except for 12 artisans and a woman (Frida Mezheritcher), as well Polina Faer-Belskaya, who, without being registered, was able to escape, was shot on August 8, 1942 in a pit near the field of the “Peremoga” collective farm.

The rest were supposed to be shot on December 13, 1942, but they were warned about the impending execution by one of the policemen named Melnik and tried to escape. At the same time, three people were able to escape – Motl Fire, Naum Belsky and Frida Mezhericher. The rest were caught and after terrible bullying were killed.

Makhnovka was liberated by units of the Soviet Army on January 7, 1944.

In total, 7 Jews were saved in Makhnovka. One of the rescuers, Alexandra Zavalnaya, who saved Frida Mezhericher, was awarded the title of Righteous Among the Nations by Yad Vashem.

Currently, Yad Vashem is considering the issue of conferring the title of Righteous Pavlina Moiseevna Stolyarchuk, who hid a woman with a 3-year-old son for more than a month, who issued false documents to them, and when it became known about a denunciation by one of the residents of the town to the local police, she was able to help them escape from Makhnovra. Maria, overcoming incredible difficulties and dangers, managed to get with her child to the Romanian zone of occupation, and settle for two and half years in the village of Pirogovo, Vinnitsa region, where she was able to survive with her son thanks to her skills in knitting and sewing, which was very much in demand among local peasants.

Naum Belsky (right) with his savior from village Glinske (left) where he hide after 3d shooting of Makhnovka Jews, 1946.

Polina Belskaya told about Ostap Ivanovich Golub, the chairman of the Local Economical Union (“RaiSouz”), who helped some Jews with food, and gave her the birth certificate of his wife’s younger sister. However, according to her testimonies, during her wanderings in the villages of the Zhytomyr region, no one ever asked her for any documents.

Among those who actively extradited Jews, they named the former director of the mill and some other petty Soviet bosses.

Lists of 252 Makhnovist Jews whose death was documented. The dates of birth of many of those killed are especially shocking.

Testimony of the village council of the village of Komsomolskoye on the impossibility of documenting the names of all the executed Jews due to the lack of household books.

After the WWII

Immediately after his release, Naum Abramovich Belsky was appointed head of the Komsomolskoe regional police department. Together with his wife, Polina Faer, he did a lot to find and punish the policemen and those who actively extradited Jews to the Germans, which caused an extremely negative reaction from a certain part of the population. According to local residents, this was the reason for his dismissal. After that, he continued to work at the Brodetsky sugar factory until his retirement. Judging by the fact that he was not a soldier in the active army during the war, he was awarded the Order of the Patriotic War on the 40th anniversary of the Victory in 1985 (the website “Память Народа” (Memory of the People)), after his escaping he most likely fought in one of the partisan detachments in the neighboring Zhytomyr region.

After the war, one of the few surviving Jews, cooper Motl Fire (1880-1976), whose memory is still alive in the village, lived there with his new wife.

In total, after the war, in the late forties and fifties, about 20-25 Jews lived in Komsomolskoye (together with the adjoining village of Brodetskoye), including five children who had been born by that time to the survivors, several people who had returned from evacuation and from the front, and several sent to the work of teachers. Most of the Jews who remained alive by the end of the war did not return to the town, but settled in Vinnitsa, Berdichev, and Moscow. Among the secondary school teachers after the war there were 4 Jews (I. Kutisman, S. Schwarzburd, S. Gitman, M. Milman).

In 1962, with great difficulty, a monument was erected in the Zhezhelevsky forest, while the authorities put forward a mandatory condition that the inscription would not speak about Jews, but about “Soviet people”.

(Testimony of Polina Belskaya-Faer about the struggle for the erection of the monument:

Money for the monument was collected mainly among the Jews in Kiev, Berdichev, Zhytomyr. At the same time, the reburial of the remains of Holocaust victims from other places was carried out to a large grave in the Zhezhelevsky forest. Full records of the Polina Belskaya-Faer interview to Shoa Foundation can be found here (part 1) and here (part 2).

Opening of the monument in the forest near Zhezhelevo. Polina Belskaya-Faer is sitting on the left in a white cloak and headscarf. Far left is Naum Belsky, followed by Motl Faer.

the reburial of the remains of Holocaust victims to a large grave in the Zhezhelevsky forest

Elderly Jews, especially Motl Faer, somehow maintained the Rebbe’s grave in an abandoned Jewish cemetery, and even paid a man who was supposed to stop cattle from grazing on the graves. Some money was transferred by Makhnovist Jews from other cities. It was said that Bnei Brak periodically managed to send photographs of the condition of the Rebbe’s grave. No fence was allowed.

In December 2019, a monument was solemnly opened near the Jewish cemetery at the site of the Second Execution.

At the same time, at the Jewish cemetery, there is a monument erected in the 1940s to the victims of the execution in 1942, although with a poorly preserved inscription.

Of the Jewish buildings in Makhnovka, the building of the synagogue remained, which was turned into a residential building and a house that housed the Talmud Torah.

Of the surviving old Jewish residential buildings, one can point out a stone house belonging to the aforementioned Noble School (“Polish School”), and not completely burned out in the fire of 1841, which was sold to the local Jew Haytsis, who brewed beer and kvass with the whole family, and in deep stone cellars of this house arranged a glacier. This house, built of local stone, mined near the village of Zhezhelevo (5 km from Makhnovka), still stands on the square near the monument to Soviet soldiers. 

In recent years, an old Jewish cemetery has been fenced and protected from vandalism, where there is an ohel of the Makhnovist Rebbe Yosef Meir Tversky.

Now the outer perimeter of the cemetery looks like this:

The surviving matzeivas:

Since the beginning of the nineties, there have been no Jews in Makhnovka.

Thus ended almost 400 years of Jewish history of Makhnovka.

Famous Jews from Makhnovka

Boris (Baruch) Brandt (1860-1907), a prominent Russian economist and later Zionist figure, was born in Makhnovka. Although he learned Russian only as an adult, he graduated with honors from the law faculty of Kiev University.
He wrote several works on the organization of taxation, and when the Minister of Finance Sergey Vitte began financial and tax reforms, was invited to work in the Ministry of Finance, which was an extraordinary event, since Jews *who were not baptized in any of the recognized Christian rites) were not allowed into the civil service. In 1897 he was appointed adviser to S. Vitte.

Illegally (and incognito) participated in the First Zionist Congress in Basel as a delegate from the Jewish proto-Zionist organization “Hovevei Zion” (Lovers of Zion).

Khazin Avrum (“Bazya”) Motelevich (1910 – ?)
Son of the tailor Motel Khazin. A participant in the battles against Japanese Army on Lake Khasan (Mongolia) in 1938, where he was among the first servicemen to receive the newly approved medal “For Courage”. Guard Lieutenant Colonel. Commanded a battalion

Khazin Avrum (“Bazya”) Motelevich

Archive records regarding Jews of Mahnovka
Surnames from the 1897 census lists stored in the State Archive of the Kiev Region (fund 384, inventory 4):

Eisenbarg—Eisenberg—Akselrud—Amdur
Barabash—Barenstein—Baron—Begelfer—Bezimensky—Bezman—Bezpechansky—Belopolsky—Bidny—Bilyk—Birman—Bisk—Blaz—Bleherman—Blidshtein—Bondarsky—Boyarsky—Broverman—Brodetsky—Bronshtein—Bydar—Byziy—
Weiner—Weinstein—Weiss—Vilsker—Wiener—Volodarsky—Wolfman—Voskoboinik
Geilerman—Gelman—Gerzon—Glikonkop—Deaf—Golub—Goldfeld—Gorne—Grinbarg—Grinberg—Grinblat—Guzman—Guralnik
Davidson—Diament—Diener—Dovgopolichensky—Draliner—Dralinin—Oak—Dubovis—Dulman—Duc
Zhytomyr-Zagika—Zaycheveer—Silbirstein
Kagan—Kalisher—Kaminer—Kantorovich—Kapkivsky—Kaplun—Kaplunovich—Kats—Kachur—Kin—Kitainik—Kleiman—Kneler—Kozorovitsky—Kominyar—Korbutov—Korentsvit—Korin—Kudla—Kundel—Kutsyn—Kusher—Kushnir
Lasernik—Lande—Lantsman—Leenzon—Leibenzon—Leiderman—Lecker—Lerner—Lernor—Lisyansky—Litvak—Lutsky—Lyubchik
Magazannik—Maison—Mandelman—Markovetsky—Markus—Melzer—Mendelsohn—Mereminskiy—Mermeshtel—Morgulis—Morochnik—Murovan
Naida—Naifeld—Naula—Nahlas—Nemirovsky—Nepomniachtchi—Novakovsky—Nudel—Nudelman
Orel—Ostrovsky—Okhtenberg

Pantofelman—Paskovaty—Pekarsky—Peliper—Binder—Pereshtein—Peskin—Pinkin—Polyak—Tailor—Preis—Presman—Pustelnik—Pyatetsky
Rabinovich—Rabinsky—Rabich—Raigorodetsky—Revich—Reznik—Rekhter—Rozval—Rosenfeld—Royzenberg—Roizenfeld—Royzman—Roin—Rubinsky—Ruvinets—Ruzman
Samgorodetskaya—Sigal—Sidelman—Skulsky—Slesinger—Smolyar—Falcon—Solomyak—Sotnik—Spector—Spivak—Stolyar
Tarsis—Tartakovsky—Temper—Tislyar—Tolchinsky—Trachtenberg—Trachtman—Trigub—Troyanovsky
Feishtein-Fanyuk-Finger-Fingerov-Fishman-Voigel-Formansky-Frenkel-Friedman-Fuchs-Furman
Khazin—Haytsis—Handros—Hinkis—Khiter—Khmurov—Holberg—Khrushch
Zveer—Tsidulka—Tsipis—Chernitsky—Chernyakhovsky—Chudnovsky
Shayevich—Shine—Shames—Shapira—Schwartzman—Schwarztukh—Shelkov—Shekhet—Schoolboy—Shor—Syringe—Steibarg—Steinschneider—Shumsky—Shurman—Shucherman
Epel—Estis
Junger—Yabloko—Yampolsky—Yanovsky

Makhnovka Jewish cemetery

Ushomir is a village in Korosten district, Zhytomir region. The village’s population is 1323 (as of 2019). Ushomir is located on the Uzh River, a tributary of the Pripyat.

In the late XIX – early XX century, Ushomir was a shtetl in Zhitomir district, Volin guberniya.

In 2017, local teacher Nikolay Palamarchuk was our guild in the village. He provided a detailed map of Jewish places of former shtetl which you can see below.

Beginning

The first mention of Jewish families in Ushomir date back to the XVII century.

Market square of former shtetl…

For 20 years (between 1870 and 1890) there were breweries, two leather factories, three tar factories, and glass factories functioning in Ushomir. A brick factory and a pottery shop had been expanded. Almost all enterprises employed Jews – from masters to workers. Some of the industrial enterprises also belonged to the Jews.

Ushomir entrepreneurs list from Russian Empire Business Directories by 1913

In 1847, 1,080 Jews lived there. Then, half a century later, in 1897, there were 1,754 Jews out of 2,381 inhabitants of the town.

There were three synagogues in the shtetl.

Most of the population were artisans, tailors, shoemakers, potters, saddlers and many others. Jews were prohibited to be engaged in farming. Most of the population of the town was poor.

The photo of the Klezmers from Ushomir was printed in the article of Menakhem Kipnis in one of the Jewish magazines. Meyer Kagan is with the violin on the right, the other man with the violin is his brother Borukh

Pogroms

In the summer of 1919, peasants from the neighboring villages occupied Ushomir and forced all local Jews between the ages of 16 and 40 years old, to pay 10 rubles.

Site of the synagogue. It was burnt during WWII

On October 9, 1920, a detachment of Polish troops plundered the shtetl and killed four Jews. I could not find more mentions of any anti-Semitic incidents during the Russian Civil War.

If we take into consideration the Jewish population in the 1920’s, we can conclude that the Jewish community was not badly affected during the pogroms of the Civil War because the number of Jews did not decrease at this time, as it did elsewhere.

Between the Wars

In the 1920’s, a Jewish village council was formed in the shtetl. Also in the 1920’s, the entire center of Ushomir was occupied by Jewish business including blacksmiths, taverns, and stalls.

In 1926, 1,749 Jews lived in Ushomir. It was 69.29 % of the whole population.

I. Nudelman and Mendel Bresker represent Ushomir in Korosten Rabbi’s conference. Guess, both of them were local rabbis.
Father of rabbi Mendel Bresker, Yankel-Rafuil Bresker was a rabbi in Ushomir before Revolution.
In 1941, Mendel Bresker with wife and daughter Yenta was killed in Babiy Yar This information was provided by Alla Shnirel in 2020.

Son of Ushomir’s rabbi Yankel-Rafuil Bresker – Reuven (1890, Ushomir – 1968, Korosten) with wife Hanna-Rivka Vainerman. Photo provided by Alla Shnirel in 2020.

In Ushomir, until about 1938, there was a Jewish school apart from the Polish and Ukrainian ones. 13 students finished grade 7 of the school: ten girls and three boys. Those included Yasha Golubchik (he lived in Kievskaya street and after the war he worked on a mill in Kiev); Abram Fleyshman (born in 1924 to the carpenter Eyna; lived in the center; his house is still there. He was a tankman during the WWII. A captain. He used to live in Ushomir and worked as a military training teacher at school. His son Isaak was born in 1960. He was a military pilot, an Afganistan. Now he is a pensioner, a businessman, and lives in Kherson.); Buzia Vaysband.

Former Jewish school. It locates in the territory of modern school, 2018

Moisey Vainshtein (1921, Volochisk – 2003, Vinnitsya), was a teacher of Ushomir Jewish school in 1939. Photo provided by Tova Weinstein

There was a Jewish collective farm in Ushomir by 1936-37. The farm’s office was situated in the building where a new wing of a school was built in the 60’s.

On Zalman Shkliar’s site there are several stories of pre-war Ushomir. The names and surnames of Jews who lived in the shtetl before the war are mentioned in those stories: Isburg, Adelia Latman, Mania Kipnis, Feldman.

Locals remaine a Jew Gogerman who was a seller in a local shop before the WWII.

In the 1930’s, a synagogue was ruined and a courthouse was built in its place.

In 1931, 1,593 Jews were registered in Ushomir.

Buildinf of Jewish council in 1920’s, 2018

Holocaust

The shtetl was occupied from August 6, 1941 until December 30, 1944.

In September 1941 an SS detachment destroyed all Jewish men. There is an assumption that it happened in August 10, 1941 and that the action of destruction was committed by 10th infantry regiment of SS. According to other information, during the first days of the occupation of Ushomir 58 civilians and 283 prisoners of war were shot. In September 1941, remaining Jewish women and children were shot.

“Grandpa Koshil” (his surname is unknown) with the wife saved a Jewish girl. They hid her in the basement and were hiding her there up to the end of war. After the war Lena Lubimova (saved girl) was a barber in Ushomir.

Mansion of “Grandpa Koshil”, 2018

According to the data of Korosten historical museum, 59 Jews were shot near the river Uzh (now it is not far from the post office) in Ushomir in August 1941. The place had been “breathing” and “moaning” for two days.

From the memories of Vasiliy Seghiyovich Turovskyi (born in 1933) which were written down in 2017. A group of about ten Jews had been hiding in the basement of gasoline warehouse by December 1941. Some locals revealed them and the Jews were shot on the bank of the river Uzh. The shooting was committed by three German soldiers.

In 1965, their remains were reburied at the local cemetery in Korosten. While the remains were being dug up, two golden things were found. They supposedly had been swallowed.

In 2017, we were told a story of a local policeman who was driving a Jewish boy to the place of shooting. But they hadn’t reached it as the policeman hit him to death. The boy was buried between two Jewish houses in the village.

“El Maleh Rahamim” near unmarked grave of unknown Jewish boy who was killed in 1941

Local inhabitants said that one local police officer was an accomplice in searching the Jews. It is unknown whether he was sentenced but he died after the war. He gagged on his own vomit masses.

After the WWII

After the war very few Jews came back and stayed in Ushomir because their houses were captured by the local Ukrainians.

To village returned next Jewish families lived in Ushomir: Landman, Yosia and Buzia Trosman, Mayzenberg, Fridman, Eyna Fleyshman, Vayman. Old Jew Shivka sold pharmaceutical goods. Bella Mironovna Zilberbandt worked as a gynecologist. Yeva Kogan organized and led a village choir.

Former Jewish houses in Ushomir, 2018:

The last Jews of the village were the Landmans. They left in the 1990’s.

In the 1960-1970’s, a small dam was made on the river Uzh. Later a road was laid upon it. This dam is situated very close to the former Jewish street of Ushomir. During the excavations the locals discovered jewelry which had been buried by the Jews. The whereabouts of those jewelries is unknown.

A lot of Jewish houses are still preserved in Ushomir. They are located mainly around the center though the center has suffered a lot from the fire during the war.

Collection of the teacher of local school Konstantin Palamarchuk who lived in the blacksmith’s neighborhood ( Kusnezhnaya Str.) and found all these metal manufactures in the ground

Famous Jews from Ushomir

Levin Kipnis (1894, Ushomir – 1990, Tel-Aviv) was an Israeli children’s author. He mainly wrote in Hebrew. His first poem was published in 1910. In 1913 he immigrated to Erets-Israel. He wrote approximately 800 stories, 600 poems, and 100 books. His works were translated into Yiddish, English, French, German, Russian, and Arabian languages.

Levin Kipnis

Menakhem Kipnis (1878, Ushomir –1942, Warsaw), singer and folklorist.

Shloime Rabinovich (1903, Ushomir  – 1971, Moscow), soviet journalist.

Ushomir Jewish cemetery

Makhnovka is a village in the Kazatinsky district of the Vinnitsa region, 12 kilometers from the Kazatin railway station. The population at the 2001 census was 3,467. A rather picturesque river Gnilopyat flows near the village. Before Revolution, Makhnovka was a shtetl of Berdichev uezd, Kiev gubernia.

From 1935 to 2016 – the village was called Komsomolskoye. In 2016, the historical name of Makhnovka was returned to the village.

Sergei Frenkel – author of major part of this article

Beginning

Documentary references to Makhnovka have been known at least since the first half of the 17th century (according to some sources, even from 1611).

The town was the private property of the Tyshkevich magnates, whose ancestors received these lands in 1430 from the Lithuanian prince Svidrigailo, who owned this part of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. Together with Berdichev and other estates, it was inherited by the princes Radzivils. Anthony Pototsky took possession of part of Makhnovka at the beginning of the 17th century, and the other part was owned by the princes Radziwill. During this period, a stone castle and a Bernardine church were built.

Then Makhnovka completely passed to the Pototskys. (There is a lot of information about Makhnovka’s history in the Polish Slownik geograficzny tom 875).

During the uprising of Bogdan Khmelnitsky of 1648-1654, a battle took place near Makhnovka in 1648 to seize its castle, during which the Cossacks of Maxim Krivonos defeated the detachment of Prince (originally Russian Orthodox) Yarema (Jeremiah) Vishnevetsky.

In 1767, Pyotr Potocki made it his residence, built a palace, brick buildings, and a Catholic church.

Anthony Protasy (Count Prot) Potocki (Antoni Protazy Potocki,) founded in Makhnovka “large cloth factories, factories of blankets, hats, stockings, ribbons, furniture, etc., started a printing house.” For frequent fairs, it was called “little Warsaw” and “stone Makhnovka”, since Count Prot built it up with stone buildings. Pototsky settled Dutch colonists between Makhnovka and Samgorodok, brought there cattle, Spanish sheep, etc.”

Following the results of the second partition of Poland (1793), Makhnovka, in the status of a county town, became part of the Bratslav province (from 1795 – Kiev province). She was given a coat of arms.

A printing house was founded in 1793. This printing house has its own interesting history. Suffice it to say that the famous Russian writer of the 19th century, Russian nationalist and fighter against the Old Believers (staroobryadtcy, i.e. supporters of the so-called “old” version of Russian Orthodoxy) Pavel Melnikov-Pechersk wrote in his “Essays on priesthood”. It was in connection with the Old Believers that he became interested in Makhnovka. The fact is that after the third partition of Poland, the Makhnov estates of Count Potocki, incl. printing house were confiscated. The printing house was under a contract in May 1801 leased to the Moscow merchant Seleznev. He gave a subscription not to print in it the forbidden St. Synod of “seductive books for the Old Believers”, but did not fulfill the promise and printed Old Believer publications in them. The all-powerful Count A.A. Arakcheev, who was in charge of the Ministry of Police, the St. Petersburg military governor-general Count S.K. Vyazmitinov, and many others were also involved in the investigation of the activities of the Makhnovist printing house.

Makhnovka entrepreneurs list from Russian Empire Business Directories by 1913

The Kiev civil governor reported on this case to the Minister of Police of the year. Thus, the small Polish-Jewish Makhnovka became the subject of the big politics of the Russian Empire!

In Makhnovka in the 20s of the XIX century. a noble district school was opened, and in 1830 a one-class parish school was opened. The Noble District School in 1835 was reorganized into the Noble Povitov (local ) School, and since the majority of the Makhnovist nobles were Poles, it was popularly called the “Polish School”.

In 1841, a huge fire broke out in Makhnovka, as a result of which most of the buildings in, only a few stone buildings remained, including the school. In 1845 Berdichev became the center of the county. Makhnovka lost its city status and became the volost center of the Makhnovskaya volost of the Berdichevsky district of the Kiev province “under the direct and closest supervision of the governor-general” (the volost is a small administrative rural division including several villages).

During the construction of railways (after 1860), the railway passed through Berdichev and Kazatin, but bypassing Makhnovka. This led to an even greater decline of Makhnovka.

In Makhnovka, by the end of the 19th century, only the memory and sayings remained about the Pototskys, such as “thank you to Brodsky for sugar, Pototsky for water, Vysotsky for tea.” But the memory is good – back in the 60s of the 20th century, one could hear from the old Makhnovists that Pototsky set up a pharmacy, a hospital and a school at his own expense. They also told about many other less bright but rather well-born representatives of the Polish gentry. For example, about the Mazarak family, whose descendants lived in Makhnovka until 1917. The ancestor of the Mazaraks, even before the second partition of Poland, was a county commissar in Makhnovka, they owned houses and estates. According to the charter, drawn up on June 29, 1862, in the town near Mazaraki, there were 199 peasants (56 peasant households). Men from this family, along with other Makhnovist Poles-nobles, participated in the uprising of 1831 (the Jews stubbornly called it the “Polish rebellion)”.

Of the other “rebellious” surnames, of which there was some kind of memory, Golembiovsky, Ganitsky.

A well-known Polish family in Makhnovka were the Liverskys. Before the revolution, they were known in the volost as excellent gardeners.

The last period of his life lived in Makhnovka and was buried (in 1871) Tomasz Padura, a Ukrainian-Polish poet, participant of the Decembrist movement (Southern Society) and the Polish uprisings (primarily in 1831). He said about himself: “Mickiewicz is a great poet, but who knows, but the whole of Poland and Ukraine sings me!”

Also V. Antonovitch (1834-1908), a well-known historian and ethnographer of Southwestern Russia also was born in Makhnovka. As well Padura, he was a visible figure of the Polish-Ukrainian movement “Hlopomaniy” (peasantophiles), as they said in the second half of the 19th century.

After the reform of 1961, Makhnovka again grew into a large settlement. In 1900, there were 709 households with 5,380 people living here, and had the entire set of administrative institutions befitting a volost center. Here was located a subdivision of the police of the Berdichevsky county, a volost government, a post and telegraph office with a savings bank, two doctors, a veterinarian, a forensic investigator, a parish school, a rural 2-class school.

There was a pharmacy and 2 drug stores, 29 grocery stores, two wine shops, 3 stores of timber warehouses, 2 haberdashery stores, a gramophone and records store.

In 1908-1914 in Makhnovka were 2 horse-driven cereal mills, 2 oil mills, a soap factory, and a semi-handicraft sausage factory were opened. (In the book “The entire South-West” 1913, publication of the South-Western Department of the Export Chamber Kiev).

Before the October Revolution

The first mention of Jews in Makhnovka dates back to 1611.

The next one was in 1648, both in the reports the Cossacks of Krivonos and the testimonies from the troops of Prince Vishnevetsky, which indicated that during the capture of the Makhnovist castle (fortress), Jews and Poles were killed.

More than 100 years later, in 1765, six Jewish families were registered in Makhnovka (presumably from that year’s tax census).

The vigorous economic activity of A. Pototsky required people versed in finance and trade, and he invited Jews from Berdichev to Makhnovka.

The law of 1804 prohibiting Jews from 1808 from maintaining and renting drinking establishments in the villages, as well as distilling and selling alcohol, led to the resettlement of the owners of such crafts in cities and towns. About the situation in the then Makhnovsky district, they give “1808. Census of the Jews of the Makhnovsky (Berdichevsky) district of the tenants of drinking establishments”, in “State archive of the Kiev region. Foundation 1, Inventory 336, File 882.

Old Jewish house on the Zhitomir-Vinnitsya road in Makhnovka

In the first half of the 19th century, many foreign citizens, mostly Austrians, lived in Makhnovka. Nearby was a settlement of German Mennonites and Czech colonists.

Not all Makhnovist Jews were pious enough. There is a known case when three local Jews pulled decorations out of the church ( Piatrovsky-Stein, The Golden Age Shtetl).

According to the Jewish Encyclopedia Brockhaus and Efron, according to the revision of 1847, the “Makhnov. Jewish society” consisted of 1,934 people.”

Volume 28 of the Brockhaus and Efron Encyclopedic Dictionary (1896) indicates data from the mid-80s of the 19th century: a town in the Kiev province, Berdichevsky district. Lives. 4389, yards 451; Orthodox 985, Catholics 299, Jews 3070, other confessions 35” .

According to the 1897 census, 2,435 Jews (about 45%) lived in the village of Makhnovka. out of a total population of 5343 [http://www.brocgaus.ru/text/064/100.htm]

The decrease in the number of Jews during this period is primarily due to the beginning of Jewish emigration after the pogroms of 1881 and a sharp deterioration in the position of Jews, especially the lower classes, caused by the anti-Jewish policy of Alexander III ( Visitors to the JewishGen resource usually report that their ancestors emigrated from Makhnovka in the period from the late XIX c. to 1913).

Although there was no noticeable pogrom movement in Berdichevsky district, the news of pogroms in Odessa, Elizavetgrad, Kiev, etc. had a strong effect on the Jews.

Emigration was mainly directed to America, England, Europe, and later to Argentina. I have heard about the Makhnovist Jews Guzlick (Makhnovka 1877), Goltman (Makhnovka 1858) well settled in Belgium http://www.genami.org/en/belgian-file/belgian-file-g.php ), and even about one coffee planter in Morocco.

However, speaking about the population quantity, one must understand that the majority of Jews lived in the center of the town, around the market square, and a significant part of Ukrainians lived on the outskirts, in the territory of villages that merged with the town itself as it grew, for example, the area called “Berezovka”. Therefore, in the “original” Makhnovka, Jews have always been the absolute majority.

The economic life of the Jews of Makhnovka differed little from other places in the South-West. In Makhnovka, as in any other Jewish town, there were many tailors – according to the statistics of the Kiev Province at the end of the 19th century, peasant dresses were sewn in Makhnovka for 3,000 rubles. There were many shoemakers. In total, according to the data of the Jewish Colonization Society, there were over 1,000 Jewish shoemakers and shoemakers in the Berdichev district.

Of the 29 grocers in Makhnovka in 1913, 27 were owned by Jews.

Almost all of the 30 manufactory shops belonged to Jews (the book “All the South-West” 1913, published by the South-Western Department of the Export Chamber Kiev). They owned

two liquor stores – Jews, 2 forest warehouses (out of 3) bakery, 2 haberdashery stores, the store of gramophones and records store.

There were many different contractors.

Among the administrative employees (post office, volost government, teachers of state schools, etc.), of course, there were no Jews, as prescribed by the laws of the Russian Empire.

There were no Jews among the three doctors who practiced in Makhnovka.

Among the Makhnovist wealthy Jews, the Chudnovsky clan was famous, who bought in 1870-1880 in Makhnovka several estates, for example, the estate (purchased at public auction) belonged to the Austrian citizen Ehlinger I. 1877-1880, and before the revolution they held both grocery and manufacturing trade. His grandchildren perished with their children during the German occupation.

The material situation and stratification in Makhnovka as a whole and among the Jews is evidenced by the document “Lists of persons eligible for election to the State Duma according to the 1st list of urban voters in 1912 from Makhnovka in the Berdichevsky district of the Kiev province”.

In order to get on this list, one had to have a certain property qualification (at least pay taxes as an artisan, and a tax for renting an apartment if one did not have one’s own house or part of it). This list included 63 Makhnovist Jews, 5 Russians (the concept of “Ukrainian” did not exist in Russian legislation), and 7 Poles. It is clear that many Poles belonged to the landowners, and “Russians” – to the peasants, and they went to other congresses. But out of several hundred Jewish families, only 63 had the necessary property qualification. The rest lived either in huts that did not have any significant value, or in rented housing, or had neither trade nor craft – “people of the air”.

All the Jewish boys and part of the girls studied with melameds in their private Cheders, in one of the rooms of the teacher’s apartment. The teacher, melamed, was paid by his parents. At the beginning of the 20th century, it was about 20 rubles a year – extremely small to ensure a decent life for melamed, who usually had 8-10 students. But everyone could became melameds, they had no special education (and according to the law of 1893 “On Heders and Melameds” it was not required).

For the children of the poor, whose parents were unable to pay tuition, there was a free Talmud Torah, which was supported by the Jewish community. Classes were held in the synagogue.

This synagogue looks like this today (currently there is a residential building for several families

Usually, parents brought their child to melamed at the age of 5, and sometimes even earlier – at 4 or even 3 years. In the younger group, teaching began with an introduction to the letters of the Hebrew alphabet. After that, the boy learned to read words and thus began to read prayers. However, the language of prayers (Hebrew) was not studied. Writing was not taught at all.

But all more or less wealthy Jewish families tried to give their children at least a primary secular education. It was either home schooling with some local “enlightened” Jew, or with the teachers of the two-class school located in Makhnovka (the building seems to have been preserved) with a five-year education (the so-called “ministerial school”, i.e. schools departments of the Ministry of Public Education).

After home schooling, which was necessary for a more or less fluent knowledge of the Russian language (including reading and writing), the boys could enter either the elementary school in Makhnovka (they, unlike secondary schools, did not have a “percentage norm” restriction for Jews), or they were sent to relatives in Berdichev, where they entered either the so-called. Jewish state schools (which existed until 1873, and were converted into Jewish two-year schools), or, for more rich families, in a gymnasium, a commercial school, in one of several private schools. But even in Berdichev itself, a city more prosperous than Makhnovka, according to the late 19th century. 90.6% of Jewish children remained out of school.

Poor families, after several years of study in a cheder, took their sons to teach craft or trade, so they did not really know the Russian language.

According to the 1897 census in the Berdichevsky district, literate (i.e., those who could read and write in Russian) among Jewish men were 35%, and among women – 15.5%.

Secular education was advocated by the members of the Bund (the General Jewish Workers’ Union in Russia, Poland and Lithuania), a revolutionary Marxist party that appeared at the end of the 19th century, a truly workers’ party in its composition.

In Makhnovka, the organization of the Bund arose with the help of agitators from Berdichev around 1899-1900. (“1905 in Berdichev, Notes and Memoirs”), after the Bund organizers arrived in Berdichev from Lithuania, where the Bund had existed since 1897. They helped to organize several successful strikes of Jewish fullers, tailors, shoemakers, and thereby made the Bund a popular organization both in Berdichev and in Makhnovka, whose inhabitants were closely connected with Berdichev.

During the First World War, he was mobilized into the army, then worked as a mechanic in Yuzovka, joined the Red Army against Whites and died in 1919.

The document of the police department notes that unrest among Jewish youth was observed in Makhnovka and other settlements and leaflets were distributed. The leaflets of the Bund were published in Yiddish, so that young people, whose training was limited to a few years in a cheder, also read them.

Jewish religious life in Makhnovka was largely associated with the name of the Hasidic dynasty Tversky (Makhnovker Rebbe). Their ancestor R. Menachem-Nakhum Tversky (Magid from Chernobyl) was one of the closest students and followers of the founder of Hasidism r. Israel Baal Shem Tov (Besht). The grandson of Menachem-Nochum, Yitzhak Tversky, founded the Hasidic “court” in the Ukrainian city of Skvir, and his son r. Yosef-Meir Tversky.

Mahnovker rebbes in the genealogy of Admorai Skvira

First Machnovker Rebbe:
R. Yosef Meyer Twersky Admur of Machnovka (1857, Skvira – 1917, Machnovka), son of (86.) R. Avraham Yehoshua Heschel Twersky Admur of Skvira.
Married: Basya Rivka Twersky daughter of (4.) R. Menachem Nachum Twersky Admur of Chernobyl.

Grave of R. Yosef Meyer Twersky in Makhnovka Jewish cemetery:

Grave of Basya Rivka Twersky in Makhnovka Jewish cemetery, 2020

Second Machnovker Rebbe:
R. Menachem Nachum Twersky Admur of Skvira-Machnovka (1880, Skvira – 1946, N.Y.), son of (89.) R. David Twersky Admur of Skvira.
Married: 1) Malka Twersky daughter of (90.) R. Yosef Meyer Twersky Admur of Machnovka.
2) Batsheva Sfard daughter of R. Avraham Pinchas Sfard Admur of Kinyev.

Third Machnovker Rebbe:
R. Avraham Yehoshua Heschel Twersky Admur of Machnovka (1895, Skvira – 1987, Bnei Brak), son of (90.) R. Yosef Meyer Twersky Admur of Machnovka.
Married: Chava Baszion Twersky daughter of (66.) R. David Aaron Twersky Admur of Trisk-Zorek.

Forth Machnovker Rebbe:
R. Yehoshua Rokeach Admur of Machnovka (1949, Tel Aviv), son of R. Yitzchak David Rokeach.
Born: Tel Aviv, 21 Tevet 5709-1949.
Married: Chaya Gittel Michaelowitz daughter of R. Shalom Michaclowitz Admur of Brod.
Resides: Bnei Brak, Israel.

The Rebe Tversky was an important economic “resource” of Makhnovka, since his Hasidim from the Vinnitsa and Berdichev counties – Litin, Yanov, etc. (from Berdichev too, since the Makhnovist Jews constantly migrated there) went to him, which gave money to shops, taverns, inns, for artisans.

The Rebe died in 1917 and was succeeded by his son, r. Abraham-Yeshua, becoming the head of the Makhnovist Hasidim. This name became quite loud in the 30s, as will be discussed later.

Among the Makhnovist Jews, the memory of the times of the Law on the military service of the Jews of 1827 lived for a long time, according to which, during recruitment, 12-year-old boys were taken to cantonist schools, where they were forcibly baptized, and who, after school, served as soldiers for 17 years. In fact, none of them returned to the town. They remembered one very old general who came to the shtetl in the late 90s of the XIX century, and who was one of those Jewish boys.

After the abolition of this savage law, the Jews served under the Law on universal military service. Here is a photograph of a soldier from Makhnovka, Nuta Khaytsis, who served in the Crimea in the late 1870s:

Nuta Khaytsis, who served in the Crimea in the late 1870s

Among the Jews of Makhnovka were participants in the Russo-Japanese War, including those captured in Port Arthur.

A large number of Makhnovist Jews died or went missing during the First World War. List can be found here.

Revolution and Civil War

With the beginning of the February Revolution of 1917, changes are gradually taking place in all aspects of life in Makhnovka. First of all, the power structure is changing. In March 1917, the position of a provincial commissar appeared in Kiev, subordinate to the Ministry of Internal Affairs, and a county commissar subordinate to him in Berdichev. The position underwent some changes after the proclamation of the Second Universal of the Ukrainian Central Council, which subordinated the provincial commissars to the General Secretariat of Ukraine, and was abolished in April 1918 in connection with the establishment of the power of Hetman P. Skoropadsky.

The previously popular Bund partially lost its influence on Jewish workers and artisans, while in this environment the influence of the left-wing socialist Zionists Poalei Zion (“Workers of Zion”, created in the early 1900s) somewhat increased. This is connected both with the splits in the Bund into pro-Bolshevik and Social Democratic groups, and with the fact that after the actual collapse of the Russian Empire, the Bund’s slogans about the equality of Jewish workers in democratic (but “united and indivisible”) Russia became simply slurred. Although the Bund collaborated with the socialists in the Ukrainian Rada (Council), he was a supporter of the federation of Ukraine and Russia, which irritated the “conscious” Ukrainian peasants and rural intelligentsia. At the same time, unlike in 1905, the Bund objected to purely Jewish self-defense, considering it a manifestation of “Jewish nationalism” and spoke of interethnic armed structures, which was extremely problematic in the conditions of the Jewish pogroms that had begun. Paolei Zion, although not specifically focused on Ukrainian independence, collaborated with the Rada and the Directory, and at the same time was active in the creation of Jewish self-defense units.

Bolshevik influence among the Jewish poor was spread mainly by Jewish soldiers returning from the front.

After the October Revolution in Petrograd and the proclamation of the independent from Russia Ukrainian People’s Republic (UNR), an era of events poorly managed from the Center (be it Petrograd, Moscow or Kiev) began, which continued until 1921.

Already in January-February 1918, the Berdichev-Kazatin region, where Makhnovka also fell, became a battlefield between the troops of the adventurer and bloody fanatic Mikhail Muravyov, acting on behalf of the Bolshevik Petrograd Council of People’s Commissars, and detachments of the newly proclaimed Ukrainian People’s Republic (UNR). The drama of the events was also created by the fact that the headquarters of the Southwestern Front of the decaying Russian army was located nearby in Berdichev, and a fierce struggle unfolded for the capture of its institutions and warehouses.

February 1918 – the race between the UNR and the Bolsheviks for the capture of Berdichev before the Germans approached (who entered Ukraine according to the Brest Peace). The Ukrainian Zaporozhye brigade of a thousand fighters tried to dislodge from Berdichev a detachment of the famous Red commander Vasily Kikvidze (by the way, not a Bolshevik, but a Left Social Revolutionary), but was defeated. The Kikvidze detachment consisted of Bolshevik-supporting soldiers from the Russian Southwestern Front of the First World War. Further, the Reds fought between Berdichev and Kazatin with a detachment of the well-known UNR Colonel Bolbochan. This war ended with the approach of the Germans, since both of them did not want to face the German army.

Such a fighting neighborhood could not but affect Makhnovka. With the arrival of the Germans in Ukraine (under an agreement with the Central Rada), the administrative confusion intensified. In addition to the Germans and the commissars of the Central Rada, the former local authorities also acted. The Germans were only interested in the supply of food and raw materials (leather, wool). Engaged in this so-called. “commodity centrals”. There was such a central office in Berdichev, and it had to agree, among other things, on deliveries (through purchases) from the Makhnovskaya volost. But only peasant production was not enough, and therefore the Germans demanded to sow empty landowners’ lands, which the peasants perceived as the beginning of a return to landownership. There were plenty of weapons in the villages – the soldiers of the First World War who were leaving the front brought them, and armed clashes with the Germans and representatives of the Ukrainian authorities began, which became a source of constant danger for Makhnovka.

The Central Rada, and then the government of the UNR, established various forms of Jewish self-management: Jewish public councils, local Jewish councils, which were to be coordinated by the Jewish National Secretariat and the Ministry of Jewish Affairs in the government of the UNR. In particular, they were supposed to open Jewish schools, for which some subsidies were allocated.

According to eyewitnesses (Avraham Khazin – more will be said about him later), there was an attempt to open a school with instruction in Hebrew, organized by the Tarbut (“Culture”) society.

A pogrom wave began to approach Makhnovka after the departure of the Germans and the restoration of the power of the Ukrainian Directory of UNR.

During this period, a series of continuous changes of power begins. In February 1919, the Reds began their attack on Kiev, from which on February 14 they knocked out the government of the Petliura Directory. At the beginning of March 1919, the Soviet troops of the 1st Soviet division knocked out the troops of the Directory from Kazatin, Berdichev. Heavy fighting with the active use of artillery went around Makhnovka, and on March 14, 1919, the 9th rifle regiment of the special rifle brigade of the Red Army was located in Makhnovka. The soldiers were looting.

Further, on March 26, the Petliurists again take them to Berdichev, but on April 13, Soviet troops again knock them out of the city.

In May 1919, a new trouble appeared – an uprising in the Red troops by commandment of Grigoriev, who declared himself a free ataman and a fighter for “Soviets without Jews and Communists.” Grigorievtsy and thousands of villagers who joined them launched an offensive from the south of Ukraine to Kiev, arranging wild Jewish pogroms along the way with thousands killed, maimed, raped.

The Soviet Nezhinsky regiment in neighboring Kazatin went over to Grigoriev’s side, which shocked Makhnovka. The Bolsheviks, the Bund and Paolei Zion announced a party mobilization, and many young Jews joined the detachments that blocked the movement of the Grigorievites. One of them were the dead Loshak brothers (their whole family was subsequently killed in 1941 during the German occupation – they are present in the list of executed Jews).

But regardless of what kind of power was called, the entire period from March 1917 to the end of 1921. in the memoirs of the Makhnovites, it was simply called “anarchy”. There was no mention of Ukrainian statehood of this period – all the leaders of that time were perceived (perhaps due to temporary parallax and the background of Soviet propaganda) as “atamans” who came from nowhere, and in this sense Skoropadsky and Petliura did not differ much from some Struk, Sokolov or Maruska Nikiforova.

In total, during the civil war, power in Makhnovka, as in the entire region, changed about 14 times. Denikin’s, Reds, Petliurists, Galicians (the army of the Western Ukrainian People’s Republic (ZUNR)) visited here. But before the arrival of the Poles in 1920, somehow the town managed to avoid bloody pogroms. There were mainly attacks by small gangs from the surrounding and distant villages.

In the second half of 1919, Denikin’s men first stood in Makhnovka, who wanted to drive Petlyura out of Berdichev, which, in turn, was approached by the Reds. But at that time, the Galicians, who had previously served under Petliura, unexpectedly joined Denikin’s troops. They were stationed in Brodetsky (2 kilometers from Makhnovka), and then moved to Makhnovka. They say they didn’t particularly smash, and among them there were even Jewish officers.

However, the Galicians were ready to fight only against the Reds, and not against the Ukrainians, and when Berdichev had Petliurists against them, they left the front. The Petliurists, before leaving Berdichev, staged a wild pogrom there (according to some documents, it was December 8-10) and surrendered the city to the Reds.

In late February-early March, Kazatin literally for a day captured Ataman Struk band, one of the most vile and bloody bandits of the Civil War (according to the reviews of both White, Red, and Petliura memoirists), which breaking through from Bessarabia (where he fled from Odessa occupied by the Reds) to his Chernobyl fiefdom, so he passed a little away from Makhnovka.

April 26, 1920 Poles and Petliurists came, who were in Makhnovka until June 15, 1920. On June 15, according to the memoirs, the Poles literally fled through Makhnovka, throwing ammunition and ammunition. But before that, together with the UNR troops, they staged a pogrom with a large number of dead. Unlike hundreds of other cities and towns in Ukraine, this was the only major pogrom in Makhnovka.

In many ways, the pogroms of small gangs were prevented thanks to Jewish self-defense.

Self-defense was created by young Jews who returned from the First World War, members of the Bund and Paolei Zion, and maintained at least some order, because between the arrivals of large military formations during the hostilities, there was no power at all in the town. Self-defense had dozens of rifles at its disposal. There is a known case when a gang from the village of Plyakhova, about a dozen guys on horseback rode to Makhnovka and broke into a house on the outskirts, where two Jewish orphans girls lived. The neighbors heard a scream, ran after the self-defenders (as the old-timers called them back in the 70s of the 20th century), they surrounded the house, took away the horses, tied the guys, beat with the reins, and let them go. The horses were returned later.

Haikel Shturman, Makhnovka beginning of XX century. Photo from collection of Judaica Institute, Kiev.

Although the Polish army left in the summer of 1920, and there were no more battles of units of more or less regular armies, for the population of Makhnovka and the entire Berdichev district, the bloody nightmare of the Civil War continued for at least another year. In the county, the most terrible pogroms during this period were staged by the red units of the 6th Red Cavalry Division of the First Cavalry Army of Budeyny (Буденный), when in October 1920 it was redeployed from the Polish front (from near Rovno) to the Northern Tavria against Whites. There were brutal pogroms in the shtetls Samgorodok, Vakhnovka, Pogrebishche, and Spicheny. Many dozens of people were killed, hundreds of women, girls and even girls were raped. This is stated both in the protocols of the subsection of assistance to the pogromized Jews under the People’s Commissariat for Social Security of the Ukrainian SSR, and in the Report of the Extraordinary Investigation Commission to the Revolutionary Military Council of the 1st Cavalry Army. This disaster did not pass through Makhnovka, since only individual rear units of the Cavalry passed through it. However, until the autumn of 1921, there were attacks by small detachments, consisting of the surrounding peasants, deserters from all armies, and city punks. The local authorities, represented until the spring of 1921 by the revolutionary committee, had no units to protect the population, but could only report to the Berdichev or Kiev NKVD of the Soviet Ukraine, which sometimes sent armed detachments to round up bandits. At the same time, news constantly came of uprisings against food reconnaissance and mobilization to the Red Army from neighboring counties, which paralyzed the will of local chiefs. The protection of the inhabitants was carried out only by a self-defense detachment.

Between Wars

Compared to hundreds of other Jewish shtetls and towns in Ukraine, Makhnovka emerged from the Civil War with significantly fewer losses from pogroms and vandalism.

It is not on the lists of Evobshchestkom (Jewish Public Committee for Assistance to Victims of Pogroms) and EVPO (Jewish Society for Assistance to Victims of Pogroms and War) as a settlement whose population needs emergency assistance.

However, due to the severe economic disruption, the outflow of the Jewish population continued, since trade was almost completely stopped, the number of customers for manufacturers, tailors, and shoemakers is falling sharply – the population walks in altered uniforms and overcoats from the warehouses of the tsarist army, from English cloth of the so-called Volunteer Army of the Whites (“Denikin’s”)”, Polish overcoats abandoned during the flight. A significant number of intermediaries remain without income, who had no profession other than information of sellers and buyers, for the most part it does not matter what.

Joiners, locksmiths, blacksmiths, chariot workers, coopers have some orders. those who can work with local raw materials or work on existing metal. There were a little more than 50 such people in Makhnovka in the mid-twenties. Cattle slaughterers (slaughterers), brewers could have some income. Someone made soap.

Part of the artisans (tailors, carpenters, etc.) began to go to work in the villages, despite the danger of stumbling into small bands that kill Jews.

In the early 1920s, there was still the opportunity to go abroad, mostly through the nearby Polish (in Volyn) or Romanian (in Bessarabia) borders with the help of smugglers. Some left legally, but for this it was necessary to go to Kiev or Moscow for documents, which required a certain income. A family is known that left Makhnovka for Mexico in 1922 (a certain Beyla with her husband and children). But the main flow of migrants rushed to Kiev and Moscow, where they could more easily find a job. Emigration to America became almost impossible in 1924 when the Reed-Johnson Act was passed to restrict emigration to America. Some left for Palestine. Some left for the Crimean Jewish collective far ms.

As a result, by 1925, 1,575 Jews remained in Makhnovka. I must say that a certain part of the Poles also left for Poland (for example, the Liversky family).

An important condition for the survival of the Jews was the help of foreign Jewish public organizations, as well as parcels and money transfers from relatives from abroad, mainly from the United States.

Traditional Jewish life continued in the early 1920s, children in most families (except for families of ideological Bolsheviks, Bundists and Socialist Zionists (Paolei Zion)) were given to heder. The court of the Makhnovist Rebbe continued to function, and Hasidim traveled to him from all over the Berdichev district and neighbouring districts.

After the final establishment of Soviet power, the Hebrew school was closed, which had existed for less than a year under the “Ukrainian State” and the “UNR”, but around 1921 a Jewish school was opened with teaching in Yiddish, the so-called “evtrudshkola”. A seven-year Ukrainian school opened in Makhnovka in 1920, but only 48 children studied in it (by 1923 there were already 128 of them).

Motl Faer family with Makhnovka 1920’s-1930’s. Kids are Leva, Usher, Dudi and Avrum.

In Makhnovka, as in dozens of other places in Ukraine, in addition to the volost (and then district) Council of Deputies, a Jewish village council was created, where office work was carried out in Yiddish .. All this was carried out under the guidance of the so-called Jewish Sections of communist party committees created in 1921 , including the Communist Party of Ukraine (“Evsections”). The goal was to spread the official party ideology among the Jewish lower classes, who had little command of Russian or Ukrainian.

Evsections were also supposed to be some kind of gateway for members of the Jewish socialist parties (Bund, the left faction of Poalei Zion), not yet officially banned by the Soviet authorities, to join the ranks of the main composition of the Communist Party. And indeed, according to the memoirs in Makhnovka, the Evsections activists were mainly “left” Bundists (called KomFarband – “Communist Bund”).

The Jewish sections actually supervised the work of both the Jewish school and the village council. Accordingly, they fought fiercely against the Zionists, whom the Bund had regarded as the main ideological enemies since the rise of the Zionist movement, and against Judaism, and eradicated Hebrew from schools and cultural life. For example, Evsection was against the creation of an agricultural commune on a part of the empty land of one of the Polish landowners by the Zionist organization “Hehalutz” (The Pioneer). For some time Evsection managed to do this. Evsection sought the liquidation of the Poalei Zion organization (which became known as the Jewish Communist Party (EKP) ), despite the fact that officially the Zionist-Socialists legally operated until about 1926, although they were persecuted at the local level (mass arrests in Berdichev in 1922). Old Makhnowits Jews remembered that the confrontation between “Soviet[”, “Zionist” and “clerical” sentiments took place in the Jewish environment itself, between different groups of the population. For example, it was said that a draper from the “Zionist Party” never recommended a small-town tailor whose son was an active member of the Komsomol to a buyer from the village, and similar conflicts.

From the protocols of the meetings of the “Evburo of the Makhnovsky District Party Committee” (PartArkhiv of the Zhytomyr Regional Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine (CP(b)U)) preserved in the Zhytomyr Regional archive, it can be seen how the topics of closing Cheders (1924) were actively discussed, the organization of the so-called. “Red Saturdays” instead of traditional Jewish Shabbat (“shobes” in the local dialect of Yiddish), associations of Jewish artisans-individuals (“handicraftsmen)” in an artel (in total, 75 Jewish handicraftsmen remained in Makhnovka at that time). There were many meetings to distribute the party press in Yiddish (Berdichev’s “Der Arbeiter”, Moscow’s “Der Emes” (“Pravda”, in translation from Yiddish)).

In the fight against Judaism, the Makhnov Rebbe was, of course, an important object of the Evsection efforts. He was expelled from his home, his “school”, the so-called. Besmedresh” (Beit Midrash in the “correct” Hebrew), located near his house and the synagogue, was closed. However, until about 1929-1930, when the persecution of the fight against religion became official policy in the Soviet Union, he was perhaps the only Hasidic preacher (“Admor”) in the USSR (after Lubavicher Rebbe Shneerson was arrested) who was openly engaged in his activities. In 1932, fearing arrest, he left for Moscow, where he settled in Cherkizovo and, working as a tailor, performed rabbinic functions for hundreds of believers. After World War II, he was invited by the Soviet authorities to the post of Chief Rabbi of the Soviet Union. His refusal to accept this post led to him being exiled to Siberia. In 1965 he received permission to leave the Soviet Union and emigrated to Bnei Brak, Israel.

Rabbi Avraham Yehoshua Heschel Twersky 3d Admur of Machnovka (1895, Skvira – 1987, Bnei Brak)

The synagogue was closed, but there was a prayer house (and some melameds kept their cheders semi-underground.

Evsections were liquidated (1930), as having fulfilled their functions, and punitive bodies were engaged in repressions against all those who did not fit into political and cultural life on a professional basis (Most of the activists of Evsektsii perished during the Great Terror in 1937-1939).

The Jewish school (“7-year- school”) and the Jewish village council were liquidated in the 1936.

By the mid-1920s, with the development of the NEP (“New Economical Politics ” of Bolsheviks), life was gradually getting better.

In 1922, 5 privately owned horse-driven groats, 3 oil mills and 4 mechanical mills were put into operation again in Makhnovka. At the same time, state agricultural enterprises were also created. On the former landlords’ lands, 2 state farms arose – a grain farm and a fruit nursery. Many Jews also worked on state farms. In 1934, a 10-year secondary Ukrainian school was opened.

However, the collapse of the NEP in 1928-1929 ruined a significant part of the merchants and artisans, and these people, who were also deprived of most of their social rights as “elements alien to the proletariat” (“disenfranchised”), left from Makhnovka to the large cities. The youth from poor families also went to study in the large cities .

Tefillin of Naum Abramovich Belsky. In 1990’s, owned by his daughter Polina

Makhnovka, like the whole of Ukraine, was affected by the terrible famine of the early thirties. Many local Jews also died of starvation, who did not have a permanent income in various structures associated with the state (state farms, the Machine and Tractor Station (MTS), schools, a district hospital, all sorts of district administrative and party structures). Avrum M. Khazin, drafted into the Red Army in 1932, ecalled that his father, a handicraft tailor, died of starvation. When Avrum arrived at the funeral from Kiev, he walked from Kazatin, wolves howled around, which had never happened before – all living creatures in the surrounding sparse forests was destroyed by starving people.

In 1937, the repressions affected many Makhnovist Poles, in particular teachers, former employees, and people from the nobility. Religious Jews rendered all possible assistance to their families.

In 1935, Makhnovka was renamed into the village of Komsomolskoye, and was the regional center of the Komsomolsk region of the Ukrainian SSR.

Holocaust

By 1939, 843 Jews remained in Makhnovka.

The Germans occupied Makhnovka on July 14, 1941.

According to various sources, no more than three Jewish families of local chiefs were evacuated, and several dozen people did military service or were drafted into the army after the start of the war. Attempts at unauthorized evacuation were actively hindered by the Soviet authorities, threatening with accusations of “sowing panic” (It is interesting that, at the same time, in post-war reports it is emphasized that “about 1500 heads of cattle, several hundred horses, the most valuable equipment were evacuated.!”

After the occupation, the commandant’s office and the German gendarmerie were organized (chief Kubitz, assistants Schneider and Kriste) and the local auxiliary police, where more than 40 local Ukrainians and Poles (chief Zhelekhovsky) entered to serve.

Jewish houses in Mahnovka. Photo of unknown German soldier, 1942

Lists of Jews immediately began to be drawn up, both according to the documents left in Soviet institutions, and according to the “tips” of some local residents. The Jews were forced to sew yellow pieces of cloth on their shoulders and chests, and were constantly sent to forced labor. for the most part completely meaningless, for example, they harnessed instead horses to carts with barrels of water. According to one of the surviving Jews, Motl Faer, in early September, a large German detachment arrived in the village of Brodetskoye, about 2 km from Makhnovka (more than 100 soldiers, they also talked about three hundred soldiers). A few days later they moved to Makhnovka and the beatings and bullying began. There were cases of rape.

Approximately on September 8-9, all Jews were ordered to pack valuable things, materials, tools for the “resettlement” scheduled for September 10. Early in the morning of September 10, the whole place was cordoned off by soldiers, the police and the Germans began to walk around the houses indicated in the lists, ordered them to leave the houses with packed things and go to the building of the former butter factory. Trucks drove around the town, into which things taken from the Jews were thrown. At the oil refinery, men were separated from children and women, women were ordered to remove and hand over all jewelry, otherwise they would be shot. Trucks were brought to the butter plant to load people, but just before leaving the commandant’s office, a police officer Pavlivsky came and said to leave 12 specialists – a cooper (Motl Faer), a glazier, two blacksmiths, and a carpenter (Naum Belsky), etc., and more 5 women for chores. They were taken to a makeshift camp set up in the house of a former Jewish school.

Jewish houses in Mahnovka. Photo of unknown German soldier, 1942

One woman with a three-year-old son was also released. It happened like this. The boy suddenly asked loudly in Ukrainian where we were going. This was heard by one of the policemen, who did not know this woman (she was a teacher Maria Milman, recently sent to work in a local school) and asked what they were doing here among the Jews. She replied that apparently they were here by mistake, and the policeman ordered them to leave immediately. She and her son went to a local resident, Pavlina Moiseevna Stolyarchuk, and then managed to escape.

The rest of the men and women were loaded into cars. In the forest, 5 km from Komsomolskoye, near the village of Zhezhelevo, 3 large pits were dug. The Germans shot, and the police stood in a continuous cordon around the execution pits. After the execution, their task was to fill in the holes. The total number of those shot that day is not known exactly, but no less than 800 people.

The remaining 17 people, with about 80 more Jews and half-Jews from the surrounding villages, were placed in the building of the former Jewish school, fenced with barbed wire. Also in this mini-camp was a girl, Polina Faer (by her husband Belskaya), the daughter of one of the abandoned artisans, the cooper Motl Faer, who got out of the execution pit, was seen by a policeman from the cordon, and taken to her father in the camp. Jews went to work without guards, with yellow strips sewn on their chests and shoulders, but in the evening they had to be inspected. They were forbidden to buy anything in the town. It was impossible to escape, since everyone was warned that in this case all the other prisoners would be shot. Polina Faer was not registered and lived in the camp illegally (in a pit in the yard).

This group of Jews, except for 12 artisans and a woman (Frida Mezheritcher), as well Polina Faer-Belskaya, who, without being registered, was able to escape, was shot on August 8, 1942 in a pit near the field of the “Peremoga” collective farm.

The rest were supposed to be shot on December 13, 1942, but they were warned about the impending execution by one of the policemen named Melnik and tried to escape. At the same time, three people were able to escape – Motl Fire, Naum Belsky and Frida Mezhericher. The rest were caught and after terrible bullying were killed. These victims were reburied to Jewish cemetery in 1950’s. There were 14-15 victims who were reburied in 10 coffins. 

Makhnovka was liberated by units of the Soviet Army on January 7, 1944.

In total, 7 Jews were saved in Makhnovka. One of the rescuers, Alexandra Zavalnaya, who saved Frida Mezhericher, was awarded the title of Righteous Among the Nations by Yad Vashem.

Currently, Yad Vashem is considering the issue of conferring the title of Righteous Pavlina Moiseevna Stolyarchuk, who hid a woman with a 3-year-old son for more than a month, who issued false documents to them, and when it became known about a denunciation by one of the residents of the town to the local police, she was able to help them escape from Makhnovra. Maria, overcoming incredible difficulties and dangers, managed to get with her child to the Romanian zone of occupation, and settle for two and half years in the village of Pirogovo, Vinnitsa region, where she was able to survive with her son thanks to her skills in knitting and sewing, which was very much in demand among local peasants.

Motl Faer (right) with his savior from village Glinske (left) where he hide after 3d shooting of Makhnovka Jews, 1946.

Polina Belskaya told about Ostap Ivanovich Golub, the chairman of the Local Economical Union (“RaiSouz”), who helped some Jews with food, and gave her the birth certificate of his wife’s younger sister. However, according to her testimonies, during her wanderings in the villages of the Zhytomyr region, no one ever asked her for any documents.

Among those who actively extradited Jews, they named the former director of the mill and some other petty Soviet bosses.

Lists of 252 Makhnovist Jews whose death was documented. The dates of birth of many of those killed are especially shocking.

Testimony of the village council of the village of Komsomolskoye on the impossibility of documenting the names of all the executed Jews due to the lack of household books.

After the WWII

Immediately after his release, Naum Abramovich Belsky was appointed head of the Komsomolskoe regional police department. Together with his wife, Polina Faer, he did a lot to find and punish the policemen and those who actively extradited Jews to the Germans, which caused an extremely negative reaction from a certain part of the population. According to local residents, this was the reason for his dismissal. After that, he continued to work at the Brodetsky sugar factory until his retirement. Judging by the fact that he was not a soldier in the active army during the war, he was awarded the Order of the Patriotic War on the 40th anniversary of the Victory in 1985 (the website “Память Народа” (Memory of the People)), after his escaping he most likely fought in one of the partisan detachments in the neighboring Zhytomyr region.

After the war, one of the few surviving Jews, cooper Motl Fire (1880-1976), whose memory is still alive in the village, lived there with his new wife.

In total, after the war, in the late forties and fifties, about 20-25 Jews lived in Komsomolskoye (together with the adjoining village of Brodetskoye), including five children who had been born by that time to the survivors, several people who had returned from evacuation and from the front, and several sent to the work of teachers. Most of the Jews who remained alive by the end of the war did not return to the town, but settled in Vinnitsa, Berdichev, and Moscow. Among the secondary school teachers after the war there were 4 Jews (I. Kutisman, S. Schwarzburd, S. Gitman, M. Milman).

In 1962, with great difficulty, a monument was erected in the Zhezhelevsky forest, while the authorities put forward a mandatory condition that the inscription would not speak about Jews, but about “Soviet people”.

Testimony of Polina Belskaya-Faer about the struggle for the erection of the monument:

Money for the monument was collected mainly among the Jews in Kiev, Berdichev, Zhytomyr. At the same time, the reburial of the remains of Holocaust victims from other places was carried out to a large grave in the Zhezhelevsky forest. Full records of the Polina Belskaya-Faer interview to Shoa Foundation can be found here (part 1) and here (part 2).

Opening of the monument in the forest near Zhezhelevo. Polina Belskaya-Faer is sitting on the left in a white cloak and headscarf. Far left is Naum Belsky, followed by Motl Faer.

Polina Belskaya-Faer with father Motl Faer on the day of the opening of the monument in Zhezhelevskiy forest. Photographer Podobinskiy. Photo provided by Polina Belskaya-Faer to Yad-Vashem in 1995

Elderly Jews, especially Motl Faer, somehow maintained the Rebbe’s grave in an abandoned Jewish cemetery, and even paid a man who was supposed to stop cattle from grazing on the graves. Some money was transferred by Makhnovist Jews from other cities. It was said that Bnei Brak periodically managed to send photographs of the condition of the Rebbe’s grave. No fence was allowed.

In December 2019, a monument was solemnly opened near the Jewish cemetery at the site of the Second Execution.

At the same time, at the Jewish cemetery, there is a monument erected in the 1940s to the victims of the execution in 1942, although with a poorly preserved inscription.

Of the Jewish buildings in Makhnovka, the building of the synagogue remained, which was turned into a residential building and a house that housed the Talmud Torah.

Of the surviving old Jewish residential buildings, one can point out a stone house belonging to the aforementioned Noble School (“Polish School”), and not completely burned out in the fire of 1841, which was sold to the local Jew Haytsis, who brewed beer and kvass with the whole family, and in deep stone cellars of this house arranged a glacier. This house, built of local stone, mined near the village of Zhezhelevo (5 km from Makhnovka), still stands on the square near the monument to Soviet soldiers. 

Mahnovka Jewish cemetery: Polina Belskaya-Faer with brother David Faer before emmigration to Israel. During the month they cleaned Jewish cemetery. As Polina said: “We couldn’t say goodbye to alive so said goodbye to dead”. Photo provided by Polina Belskaya-Faer to Yad-Vashem in 1995

In recent years, an old Jewish cemetery has been fenced and protected from vandalism, where there is an ohel of the Makhnovist Rebbe Yosef Meir Tversky.

Since the beginning of the nineties, there have been no Jews in Makhnovka.

Thus ended almost 400 years of Jewish history of Makhnovka.

Famous Jews from Makhnovka

Boris (Baruch) Brandt (1860-1907), a prominent Russian economist and later Zionist figure, was born in Makhnovka. Although he learned Russian only as an adult, he graduated with honors from the law faculty of Kiev University.
He wrote several works on the organization of taxation, and when the Minister of Finance Sergey Vitte began financial and tax reforms, was invited to work in the Ministry of Finance, which was an extraordinary event, since Jews *who were not baptized in any of the recognized Christian rites) were not allowed into the civil service. In 1897 he was appointed adviser to S. Vitte.

Illegally (and incognito) participated in the First Zionist Congress in Basel as a delegate from the Jewish proto-Zionist organization “Hovevei Zion” (Lovers of Zion).

Khazin Avrum (“Bazya”) Motelevich (1910 – ?)
Son of the tailor Motel Khazin. A participant in the battles against Japanese Army on Lake Khasan (Mongolia) in 1938, where he was among the first servicemen to receive the newly approved medal “For Courage”. Guard Lieutenant Colonel. Commanded a battalion

Khazin Avrum (“Bazya”) Motelevich

Archive records regarding Jews of Mahnovka
Surnames from the 1897 census lists stored in the State Archive of the Kiev Region (fund 384, inventory 4):

Eisenbarg—Eisenberg—Akselrud—Amdur
Barabash—Barenstein—Baron—Begelfer—Bezimensky—Bezman—Bezpechansky—Belopolsky—Bidny—Bilyk—Birman—Bisk—Blaz—Bleherman—Blidshtein—Bondarsky—Boyarsky—Broverman—Brodetsky—Bronshtein—Bydar—Byziy—
Weiner—Weinstein—Weiss—Vilsker—Wiener—Volodarsky—Wolfman—Voskoboinik
Geilerman—Gelman—Gerzon—Glikonkop—Deaf—Golub—Goldfeld—Gorne—Grinbarg—Grinberg—Grinblat—Guzman—Guralnik
Davidson—Diament—Diener—Dovgopolichensky—Draliner—Dralinin—Oak—Dubovis—Dulman—Duc
Zhytomyr-Zagika—Zaycheveer—Silbirstein
Kagan—Kalisher—Kaminer—Kantorovich—Kapkivsky—Kaplun—Kaplunovich—Kats—Kachur—Kin—Kitainik—Kleiman—Kneler—Kozorovitsky—Kominyar—Korbutov—Korentsvit—Korin—Kudla—Kundel—Kutsyn—Kusher—Kushnir
Lasernik—Lande—Lantsman—Leenzon—Leibenzon—Leiderman—Lecker—Lerner—Lernor—Lisyansky—Litvak—Lutsky—Lyubchik
Magazannik—Maison—Mandelman—Markovetsky—Markus—Melzer—Mendelsohn—Mereminskiy—Mermeshtel—Morgulis—Morochnik—Murovan
Naida—Naifeld—Naula—Nahlas—Nemirovsky—Nepomniachtchi—Novakovsky—Nudel—Nudelman
Orel—Ostrovsky—Okhtenberg

Pantofelman—Paskovaty—Pekarsky—Peliper—Binder—Pereshtein—Peskin—Pinkin—Polyak—Tailor—Preis—Presman—Pustelnik—Pyatetsky
Rabinovich—Rabinsky—Rabich—Raigorodetsky—Revich—Reznik—Rekhter—Rozval—Rosenfeld—Royzenberg—Roizenfeld—Royzman—Roin—Rubinsky—Ruvinets—Ruzman
Samgorodetskaya—Sigal—Sidelman—Skulsky—Slesinger—Smolyar—Falcon—Solomyak—Sotnik—Spector—Spivak—Stolyar
Tarsis—Tartakovsky—Temper—Tislyar—Tolchinsky—Trachtenberg—Trachtman—Trigub—Troyanovsky
Feishtein-Fanyuk-Finger-Fingerov-Fishman-Voigel-Formansky-Frenkel-Friedman-Fuchs-Furman
Khazin—Haytsis—Handros—Hinkis—Khiter—Khmurov—Holberg—Khrushch
Zveer—Tsidulka—Tsipis—Chernitsky—Chernyakhovsky—Chudnovsky
Shayevich—Shine—Shames—Shapira—Schwartzman—Schwarztukh—Shelkov—Shekhet—Schoolboy—Shor—Syringe—Steibarg—Steinschneider—Shumsky—Shurman—Shucherman
Epel—Estis
Junger—Yabloko—Yampolsky—Yanovsky

Makhnovka Jewish cemetery

Gornostaypol is a village in Ivankov district of Kiev region.  The population of Gornostaypol was 1061 people in 2001.

The shtetl has been known since the year 1493. It became part of the Russian Empire in 1793. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, the shtetl was part of the Radomysl district, Kyiv province.

I visited the former shtetl in 2018; I managed to interview the local resident Olena Dimitrovna Ovsyanik, who was born in 1938. She told me some facts about the post-war Jews of Gornostaypol (or Gornostaipol).

In 1863, the shtetl had a synagogue. From 1898, the rabbi was Chaim Men.

In the second half of 19 century, Rav Mordechai Dov (son of Meshulam Zusya Itshak) settled in Gornostaypol and start his Hassidic dynasty. His sons escaped from Gornostaypol during the 1919-1920 pogroms.

Rabbi Mordechai Dov Twerskiy (1839 – 1903), founder of Gornostaipol Hasidic dynasty

There are 2 assumptive burial places in the destroyed Jewish cemetery, which locates in ~50 meters from each other.

First place:

Second place:

In 1913 a Jewish Savings and Loan Association operated in Gornostaypol.

Gornostaypol entrepreneurs list from Russian Empire Business Directories by 1913

At the time of the Revolution (1917-1920) the Jewish population suffered greatly from constant looting from members of Struk’s gang, which operated in this region.

The Jews of Gornostaypol were subject to constant indemnities (ransoms?) of thousands and thousands of rubles.

For example, in 1918 bandits arrested Issakhar Spektor, and also I. Geridman, H. Gorohovskiy, Z. Epshteyn and M. Kaplan, and let them go after having received 10,000 rubles in ransoms.

Ataman Struk looted the shtetl multiple times. One day, before they (Struk and his gang) left the town, they plundered and destroyed leather workshops, some textile shops and the home of Shmuel Roitman.

In 1919 theatrical props were found in the home of the Jew Peretz Borodyanskiy, including clothes which looked like priests’ clothes. Borodyanskiy was dressed up in these clothes and told to sing prayers while the gang brutally beat him. After this he was put in prison, and on the third day was released on bail of 10,000 rubles. The local priest testified that the clothes were not church clothes, but only theatrical props.

One night the 16-year-old girl Rosa Byelorusskaya was shot to death. The Cossack who shot her was arrested, but freed on the same day.

On the 8th of May, 1919, the chiefs (police/government officials?) allowed the gangs to do whatever they wanted with the Jews for six hours. At 10 in the morning, each gang spread out around the city, and began to beat the Jews and loot their homes. The pogrom continued until five in the afternoon. The thugs ran around the streets like wild animals, brutally beating the Jews who fell into their hands, forcing them to take off their boots, their outer clothes and even their trousers, leaving them only in their undershirts. Yitzchak Slutskiy and Levi-Yitzchak Shlomovich Shapira were killed.

In September 1919 there was a pogrom, arranged by parts of the (White) Volunteer Army.

At the end of the 1920s the mikvah was closed. In 1930 the synagogue followed suit. A significant part of the Jewish population left for Kyiv and other big cities in the 1920s and 1930s.

In the 1930s, there were three collective farms in the village, one of which was led by the Jew Vilitskiy.

The shtetl was occupied by German in September 1941.

Around 150 Jews did not manage to evacuate or flee. Jews from the surrounding villages were driven here (to Gornostaypol). On the 6th of November, 1941, a unit of the German gendarmerie – around one hundred servicemen – arrived in the village. On the 7th of November, 1941, the act of extermination began. It was led by three SS men, one of whom later fulfilled the duty of executioner. Local policemen also took part in the act.

Through local policemen, representatives of the arriving punitive team announced the start of the “evacuation”, ordering all of the Jews to gather. They were to have warm clothes and valuable items with them. As not all of the Jews had gathered, they began to look for them and take them under escort to the market square. The Ukrainian population were ordered to enter their homes and not to go outside.

Having gathered the Jews of Gornostaypol in the market square, the chasteners ordered them to put together all of their things and valuables. Leaving one policeman to guard the property, the Germans and policemen escorted the people to the territory of the collective farm called Petrovsky. Behind the garden of the collective farm they were shot. As the local residents remembered, some of the Jews went barefoot in the snow.

In the morning of the same day, a team of ten people – with a policeman as a guide – was sent to the neighbouring village Loputka, where, according to the Nazis, 10 hiding Jews were found. But the punitive team, having arrived in the village, did not find the Jews. Warned by the local residents, they fled to and hid in the forest.

In total, on the 7th of November, 1941, 280 Jews were shot, according to data from the ChGK; according to German data, 385 were shot, the majority of whom were driven from nearby villages. The things of the people who had been shot were taken by the policemen and the representatives of the punitive team, who immediately exchanged them for food. Not a single Jew in the village survived the occupation.

Monument locates not exactly on the killing site:

Mass killing site locates somewhere in this field…

After the war the dead were reburied in the Jewish cemetery in Ivankov. In 1988, a monument was put up, not far from the place of the shooting, but the shootings took place further from the road.

After the war the family Velitskiy returned to the village – the head of the family had been at the front, and the family was in evacuation, which is why it survived. It consisted of the patriarch, his wife Meira and their three daughters Nina, Klava and Pronya. In 1945-46, the family left the village for Kyiv.

Meira Velitskaya returned to the village for the last time in the 1970s before her immigration to the USA. She took some earth in the village, for memory…

After the war only these people lived in the village: Leika, an lonely old Jewish woman, whose niece took her to Kyiv, and the tailors Slava and Srul’, who sewed clothes for people in Gornosatpol and the neighbouring villages – they did this in the 1950s.

In the 1970s Jews did not live in the village anymore…

At the start of the 1990s, the remains of a foundation of a destroyed ohel on the territory of the graveyard were found. The ohel was restored by representatives from a Jewish organisation.

Only one old building is left in the village; it belonged to a Jewish family until 1917, which reminds one of the Jewish history of the shtetl – here was the post office, the village council, the school.

The synagogue was located on the territory of the current Tsibel household.

Famous Jews from Gornostaypol

Yaakov Yisrael Kanievsky (1899, Tashan, Borispol region, Ukraine – 1985, Bnei Brak, Israel), known as The Steipler or The Steipler Gaon. 

Staipler’s father, reb Chaim Peretz, who was the father of three daughters.  His first wife died and Chaim Peretz was already 60.  He visited his Rebbe (assumably somebody from Cherkassy branch of Chernobyl dynasty) and asked whether he should remarry.  The reply was that he should marry a young woman and he would be blessed with sons.  So he did and had three sons, the oldest was named Yaakov Yisrael. Reb Chaim died and his second wife moved to her hometown Gonostaypol. At the age of 11, Yaakov Yisrael was recruited from Gonostaypol for the Novorodock yeshiva.

In 1937, his mother died in Gonostaypol. Grave was destroyed after the WWII.

Jewish cemetery

Destroyed Jewish cemetery in Gornostaypol. Photo from the Surveys of Jewish cemeteries by ECJF

Raygorodok is a viallge in Berdichev district, Zhernigov region.

In 19th -20th century, it was a shtetl of Berdichev uezd, Kiev gubernia.

Raygorodok, Zhitomir region, should not be confused with the village of Raygorod in Vinnitsa region. Both the settlements were shtetls with big Jewish communities.

Note: I have found almost no information on the Raigorod Jewish community.

According to the 1897 census, 2058 residents lived in Raygorodok where 946 Jews constited 45% of the total population.

In the southern outskirts of the village a market square and a synagogue used to make the center of the Jewish shtetl. Nowadays this territory remains almost undeveloped. It is right opposite the village council – a large vacant lot, which is crossed by the Berdichev-Vinnitsa highway.

Former center of the shtetl

Former center of the shtetl

In 1926, 665 Jews lived in Raygorodok (28% of the total population)

I did not find information about the Jewish community of Raygorod between WWI and WWII, but can assume that about 200 Jews lived in the village before German invasion.

Raygorodok entrepreneurs list from Russian Empire Business Directories by 1913

Holocaust

On July 7, 1941, German troops invaded Raigorodok. From the first days of the occupation, the Jews were ordered to be forced to hard labor and wear a yellow star on the left side of the breast.
On July 15, 1941, a ghetto was established in a few dilapidated houses. Local Ukrainian policemen systematically raped young Jewish women.
On August, 15 Jews were executed.

At 6 AM September 10, 1941, most of the ghetto inmates were forced to walk into Raygorod forest and killed. In the same place, an unknown number of Berdicthev Jews were also killed. Only a few specialists with families were left alive. According to some sources, 140 Jews were killed on that day.
On July 25, 1942, 47 Yanushpol’s Jews were brought to Raygorod ghetto. On the next day they were executed in the Jewish cemetery together with local Jews.
In 1942, a local Jew B.Gleizer happened to escape from the massacre site together with his daughter.

In January 1944, the former shtetl was liberated by the Soviet Army.

Site of former synagogue – veterinary clinic was built in this place

According to the files of the State Comission, about 110-125 local Jews were executed during the Holocaust. After the liberation, 3 mass graves were found – one in Raygorod forest (57 victims) and two the local Jewish cemetery (59 and 4 victims).

After the WWII

After the war, several Jewish families returned to the village, but I could not find their last names, since the Ukrainian locals could remember only their first names and occupations:
– David with his daughter Tsilya. He worked as the head of a livestock farm;
– a chemistry teacher Alla with her husband;
– a school headmaster Kim Musievich with his wife, who worked as a nurse
It is unknonw whether they had lived in Raigorod before WWII or had been sent from other places to work in the vilalge .
In the summer of 2020, I was unable to find out who were the last Jews in the village.

Jewish cemetery

According to the Lo-Tishkah organization, there were 2 Jewish cemeteries in the town, but they are located close to each other, so I assume that nowadays there is one cemetery which has been badly destroyed by the local Ukrainian population.

Memorial plate on the Raygorodok Jewish cemetery, installed by United Jewish Community of Ukraine in 2021:

A part of the cemetery is used for grazing cows, with the gravestones having been removed and dumped in a heap. What is more, a local resident Vasily Bazilinsky has built his house on a part of the cemetery.

One part of the cemetery (just 4-5 gravestones removed from original place to the row):
 

Second (bigger part of the cemetery):