Nosovka, a city (since 1960), is a district centre in the Chernihiv region of Ukraine. The population is 13,310 people, according to the 2020 census. The city stands on the Nosovochka River, which is a tributary of the Ostra.

In the 19th and early 20th centuries, there was a town of Nezhinsky district of the Chernihiv province.

I could only find very little information about the Jews of Nosovka.

Article was translated by Daniel Pesin.

542 Jews lived in Nosovka in 1910; in 1920 Jews made up 1.2% of the town’s population, in 1939, 116 Jews lived in Nosovka. In 1864, a synagogue was operating. In 1886 a Jew owned a pharmacy in Nosovka. In the 19th century the rabbi of Nosovka was Yitzchok Teleshevsky; from 1887 it was Chaim Sheyniuk (1863-?); from 1908 it was Shmuel Goldshmid (1881-?).

It is quite obvious that there was a Jewish cemetery in the shtetl. But I could not find where it was located and when it was destroyed.

Place of the synagogue in Nosovka.

In October 1905 there was a pogrom in Nosovka.

Among the few documents and memoirs about the Jews of Nosovka, I managed to establish the following surnames of the Jews who lived in Nosovka in the 20th century: Lefand, Schneerson, Rabinovich, Men’, Stomberg, Aronov, Freydinov, Pritikin, Nimkovsky, Rodnyansky, Lipkin, Shteidman.

About unofficial header in Nosovka, 1905

In 1913, Jews owned two grocery shops and the only grocery-manufacturing shops. In the shtetl there was a big factory – which produced leather – which belonged to the three Fabrikant brothers.

In 1919, a pogrom, arranged by parts of the Volunteer Army, took place in Nosovka. The exact number of deaths is unknown, but it was definitely greater than ten. Pesya-Malka Moisey-Shmerkovna Men’ (1910, Nosovka – 2001, Nezhin) remembered how an officer of Denikin lived at her home, and when the people of Denikin left Nosovka, he killed the father of the household, Moisey-Shmerko Nemkovsky (1874-1919).

In the 1920s in Nosovka there was organised a Jewish kolkhoz (collective farm) called Sverdlov. In the 1930s it was joined with other, less successful, collective farms.

In the 1920s, a Zionist organisation operated in Nosovka. Its members were arrested in 1926 and from the OGPU case we know their names: Alexander Isaevich Lefand, Iosif Shneydman, Ruvim Gershenovich, Zyama Gershenovich, Zyama Khaimovich Russ, Solomon Khaimovich Russ, Shaya Nimkovsky, Nyunya Shklyarova, Abram Moiseevich Men’, Isaac Lefand, Boris Moiseevich Nimkovsky, Samuil Zalmanovich Kinzgbursky, Khana Abramovna Beilina, Yosef Filippovsky.

Isai Lvovich Lefand (1893, Nosovka – 1937, Moscow), was arrested and killed during Stalin’s repressions

In the 1920s and 30s the majority of Jews moved from Nosovka to the big cities of the USSR.

In the 1930s the only synagogue of the shtetl was closed. In its building a club was made. I do not know when the building was destroyed. But now a shopping centre is built on that place.

After the occupation of the shtetl by German troops, the Jews of Nosovka were sent to Nezhin, where they were shot. I did not manage to find the exact dates when this happened, but it roughly happened in November-December, 1941.

The family Senik-Rodnyanko helped the partisans, and also tried to save the Jewish girl Manya Lipkina. But the whole family was arrested and shot together with Manya.

After the liberation of Nosovka by Soviet troops in 1944, several Jewish families returned to the town.

Fake document of Basia Ioffe from village Pliski, who worked in Nosovka sugar factory during Nazi occupation under the fake name and was saved

With the fall of the USSR, a Jewish community was organised in Nosovka, the chairman of which was chosen to be Isaac Men’. At that moment about ten Jews lived in Nosovka, most of whom were pensioners.

In the 2010s, Jews did not live in Nosovka.

Famous Jews from Nosovka

Menahem-Mendel Shmulevich (1879, Nosovka – 1911, Israel), an Israel journalist.

Chudnov is a city in the Zhytomyr region, located on the river Teterev.

Before the Revolution of 1917, it was a shtetl of the Zhytomyr district of the Volyn province.

Until the 20th century, there were 2 separate settlements – Novy (New) and Stary (Old) Chudnov, separated by the Teterev river. It was in Stary Chudnov that the majority of the Jewish population lived. Two settlements were merged into one in the 20th century.

I visited Chudnov during an expedition in the summer of 2020. Places connected with Jewish history were shown to me by the local historian Yuri Gaidash.

Article was translated by Daniel Pesin.

I managed to find very little information about the history of the Jews of Chudnov in the 19th and early 20th centuries.

The first reference to Jews living Chudnov dates to 1648, when they escaped from the town during the Chmelnitskiy uprising. In 1756 Chudnov residents attacked Jews who sought refuge in the town from the Haidamaks.

Map of the Chudnov, 1769

In 1897 its 4,491 local comprised 80 percent of the total population of Chudnov. On May 1, 1903 200 local Jews participated in a strike organized by the Bund. Two years later, on May 1, 1905, 200 Bund members arranged a meeting but the local police spread the rumor that the Jews intended to blow up churches in revenge for the pogroms in Kishinev and Gomel, and threatened the Jews with another pogrom in the event that they held a demonstration.

Members of Chudnov Jewish self defence who were killed in Troyanov in April, 1905:

Members of the Chudnov ‘s Bund 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)

Another photo of 23–26 April 1905 massacre (photos provided by David Sandler):

In 1910 there were a Talmud Torah school and three private vocational schools (two of them for girls) in Chudnov. During the Russian civil war the Jewish population suffered from a pogrom.

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

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

The shtetl was built along the Teterev River engulfed in greenery and surrounded by forests and meadows. Jewish livelihood was derived from skilled workmanship such as hat making, tailoring, and shoe making. There was also a spirits brewery that provided employment. There were two synagogues, a pharmacy, and a school that was built right after the Soviet revolution.

Martyrs from Chudnov who fell during the days of the pogrom in Ukraine.” Photomontage of portraits of three young men who were killed in Chudnov (now Chudniv) during pogroms that took place in Ukraine in 1919 during the Russian Civil War. Photograph by O. Tavakmalev. (YIVO)

Before the Revolution of 1917, there were 2 synagogues in the town.

Volunteer firefighter detachment in Chudnov, 1891

In the 1920s, there was a Jewish settlement council and 2 Jewish schools in Chudnov.

PreRevolution building in the center of Chudnov, 2020

Chudnover Independent Benevolent Society was founded in New York on April 1, 1923, by immigrants from Chudnov. Provided sick and death benefits. Maintained cemetery plot. Visited sick members. Covered funeral expenses. Donated $25,000 to old age home and $200 annually, to local institutions. Contributed funds to Jewish agencies, including the United Jewish Appeal and International Israel Bonds. Functioned as a burial society. Society used the Beth David Cemetery in Long Island, NY.

The trading square of the town was located on the territory of the modern park called Shevchenko.

Under the Soviets Chudnov had a Yiddish school and a Jewish council that conducted its affairs in Yiddish. In 1939 the town’s 2,506 Jews constituted 46 percent of the total population.

Holocaust

40-50% of the Jewish population managed to evacuate before the arrival of the Germans.

Abandoned soviet tank on the street of Chudnov. Two typical Jewish houses are on the opposite side of the stree. Summer 1941

Chudnov was occupied by the Germans on July 7, 1941. While the entire population was registered, separate lists were kept for the Jews. The Jews were concentrated under very harsh conditions of overcrowding in an open ghetto. The ghetto was formed in the poorest district of Chudnov on the peninsula, bounded by the Teterev River, modern Skala Street and Teterevsky Uzvoz Street.

View to ghetto from ooposite side of Teterev river

They were required to wear a yellow Star of David on their sleeves. The Jews were also made to perform forced labour and suffered from cruel abuse at the hands of their supervisors. In early September 1941 Rabbi Yosef Mosuk and two elderly Jewish women were murdered after being publicly tortured before the entire population of the town. The Jews of Chudnov, along with Jews from nearby villages, were killed in three major murder operations between September and November 1941 by the Germans and the local police in 14 pits in the local park.

On September 9, 1941, the first action was carried out. About 900 people were selected and gathered in the club (former church) and then shot in the park. Families were destroyed not entirely, but one-two members from one family.

Church (club before WWII) where Jews were kept before execution

On October 15 or 16, 1941, the second action was carried out. The actual execution of Jews was carried out by local Ukrainian policemen. One of them, Valery Bukhanov, was particularly cruel.

In November 1941 – the third action, during which Doctor Libov with his little daughter, Doctor Frenkel with his family and the most valuable specialists who had not been killed before were destroyed.

After the destruction of the Jewish population, two hundred and forty-eight houses remained, which were dismantled by the local population.

The following victims appear in the memoirs of the survivors: Eli Sherman, Nuta Zilberman, Liza Gnip, Fuka Ulman, Nusya Britan, Aron Kilup, shoemaker Lizogub, Yankel Barshtman, Arka Tutiniker, Ruzya Furman, Pupa Barshtman, Uka Gilstein.

The Red army liberated Chudnov on January 6, 1944.

Soviet document about murders of Chudnov Jews, 1945:

In the lists of executed Jews, compiled immediately after the liberation of Chudnov, there are 3866 people.
One family in Chudnov was awarded the title of Righteous of the Nations of the World for saving Jews during WWII.

Polina Pekkerman provided many details about the extermination of Chudnov’s Jews. She survived the execution and got out of the execution pit, survived the war. After the war, she married in Chudnov and had 3 sons.

Maria Sandal survived the Chudnovsky ghetto, died in the USA at the age of 96 and left behind a book of memoirs. It was thanks to her efforts that a monument was erected at the place of execution in 2001-2002. One of the last local Jews, Zilberstein, was involved in organizing the installation on site.

In 1970, a park was planted on the site of the execution of Chudnov Jews, and a stadium was built next to the execution pits.

Monuments on the pits in Chudnov park:

After the liberation of the town in 1944 the mass graves in Chudnov park were uncovered and the bodies of the Jewish victims were reburied, apparently in one place.

The first monument on the grave of the dead was erected in the 1980s thanks to the efforts of the head of the village council Fedor Timofeevich Panasyuk, Boris Cherashny and Andrey Vasilyevich Danilov. But nothing was written about the nationality of the victims on the monuments, as everywhere else in the USSR.  It says: “In this place more than 3,000 of the county’s peaceful civilians fell victim to German Fascism.” On important memorial days, such as the Victory Day, the Chudnov liberation day, and others, flowers are brought to the memorial.

Today there are several memorials dedicated to the Jewish victims of Chudnov in various parts of the park. First, at the initiative of the local council, the relevant documents were studied and testimonies were taken from local witnesses. As a result, in 1986 or 1987, an official memorial was established in the Chudnov park, at the site that the locals still call “the watering place.” The victims were apparently reburied there in 1944. The Russian inscription on this memorial does not mention the Jewish identity of the victims.

In the 1990s relatives of the victims erected several smaller memorials. Most of the inscriptions contain the Star of David. Some of the memorials are located close to the official one. The Russian inscriptions on them say:
“Eternal memory to the victims of Fascism. We remember, we mourn. From their fellow townspeople”;
“Here lie the Jews of Chudnov, the first victims of the shooting, who were murdered by the German Fascists on 22.10.1941”; and
“Here rest the Jewish residents of Chudnov who were shot to death by the German Fascists on 22.10.1941. We will eternally remember. Your fellow townspeople.”

Two more memorials were erected further from the official one, in another part of the park, apparently where the shooting pits had been dug. The Russian inscriptions on them say:
“Here lie the Jews of Chudnov, the first victims of shooting (old people, women, and children), murdered by the German Fascists on 9.09.1941” and
“Unidentified remains of the Jews shot by the German Fascists on 16.10.1941.”

Holocaust mass grave in Noviy Chudnov with more than 100 victims:

Post WWII

After the end of WWII, many Jewish families returned from evacuation to Chudnov. In the 1960s, about 100 Jews lived in the town.

Religious Jews rented a (little) house on Skala Street and used it as a synagogue. Among the visitors of the synagogue were Borukh Nepevny, Avrum Zeltsev, Motya Reider, Bentsi Solodkiy, Abram Gindikin, Getsya Khait, Gersh Karpovetsky, Reisi Fishman, Borukh Fishman, Moishe Zeltser. The authorities actively interfered with religious gatherings. The unofficial rabbi was Abram Gindikin. The synagogue had a Torah scroll, which was later given to the Zhytomyr synagogue.

According to the second version, the unofficial rabbi was a Jew named Kolkin. He was summoned to the KGB many times because of his religious activities. He died in the 1980s.

Jews gathered in the unofficial synagogue until 1958-1960. By that time, most of the participants in the meetings had died.

In the 1980s, a show trial was held in Chudnov over a policeman who participated in the extermination of the Jewish population and was accidentally identified in the nearby town of Romanov. He was sentenced to a long prison term.

In 1991, the Jewish community was registered, which consisted of about 10 people. The head of the community was Jacob Mourie, who later died in a car accident.

Community members received regular help from the Joint.

But the old people died or left, and in 2021 only 1 Jew lived in Chudnov.

The building of the synagogue was located near the modern building of the city administration. It was dismantled after WWII.

Chudnov’s city administration, 2020

Famous Jews from Chudnov

Mikhail Savelievich Gorb (real name Moisei Sanelevich Rozman) (1894, Chudnov-1937b Moscow) – illegal Soviet intelligence officer.

Mikhail Savelievich Gorb

Menachem Ribolov (1895, Chudnov – 1953, New York), journalist and critic

Lev Moiseevich Krivoy (1880, Chudnov – 1938, Moscow), rabbi, perished during Stalin’s repressions.

Jewish cemetery

Miropol, a village in the Romanovsky district of the Zhytomyr region, stands on the Sluch River.

In 1957, the village of Kamenka, which stands on the left bank of the Sluch River, was annexed to Miropol, but the locals still continue to call this part of the village Kamenka.

In the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries, Miropol was the shtetl of Novograd-Volynsky uezd, Volyn province. From 1925 it was the centre of the Jewish village council of the Dzerzhinsky district of the Volyn region.

Article was translated by Daniel Pesin.

The first references to a Jewish presence in Miropol relate to the beginning of the 18th century. At the end of the 19th century there were 1,912 Jews, who comprised about 39 percent of the total population.

Miropol in 2020:

Old Jewish house in the centre of former shtetl

In the middle of the 18th century, Rabbi Pinchas from Korets, a student of the Besht (translator’s note: the Besht, also known as Rabbi Israel ben Eliezer or the Baal Shem Tov, was the founder of Hasidism; Besht is the acronym for Baal Shem Tov, which means “One with the Good Name”) lived for some time in Miropol.

The main occupations of the Jewish population of Miropol in the beginning of the 20th century were handcrafts and petty trade. In 1914, the Jews of Miropol owned 2 pharmacies, 2 kerosene warehouses, 6 timber warehouses, photography, and 30 shops (including 17 grocery stores and 10 manufactories). There was an operating Talmud Torah.

Rav Avraham Dovid Marbenu-Kaufman (?, Miropol – 1938, NY, USA), was a Miropol rabbi in the beginning of 20 century

In the lists of unreliable citizens for 1909, who were engaged in secret emigrant activities (the border with Austria was not far away), there was 1 resident of Miropol – Meer Shmulevich Bukshtein.

Center of Miropol in the beginning of 20 century: 

Miropol entrepreneurs list from Russian Empire Business Directories by 1913

On December 1, 1917 there was a pogrom in Miropol; in 1919, a pogrom in Miropol was perpetrated by detachments of the Directory.

In the end of the 1920s a mikveh operated in Miropol; cheders were closed by the authorities.

In 1925, people from Miropol founded in the Kherson region a Jewish agricultural colony called “Miropolsky grain grower” (it had 8 families and 52 people).

By 1926 the number of Jewish residents had declined to 1,189. Until 1935 there was a Yiddish school there.

7th grade of Miropol school, 1939-1940

Miropol school, 1938

Holocaust

On June 22nd, 1941, the airfield, the military town and Miropol itself were bombed by German aircraft; many were killed and wounded.

Soviet military vehicles in the center of Miropol, 1941

Only two weeks later German forces entered the shtetl. It was occupied from July 6th, 1941 to January 6th, 1944. The Wehrmacht troops were greeted by bread and salt on an embroidered towel by the local intelligentsia, headed by Gavrilyuk, the head teacher of the local school, who was an honoured teacher, having been awarded the Order of Lenin not long before the war. The editor of the newspaper gave a heartfelt speech, in which it was said: “Thank you, gentlemen, Germans, for the liberation from commissars and zhids.”

In late July or early August, all of the Jews were herded into the ghetto, which was located closer to the centre of the village. Every day, the police chased them to work. The girls were sent to work in a German hospital, where they washed floors, chopped wood in the kitchen, carried food, and cleaned up after the wounded. Men were used for earthworks. In the first pit, dug by them, were buried Red Army soldiers who were on the defensive in dugouts near the military camp.

Ruins of count’s palace in the Miropol’s park. During WWII, building was used by local police

From the 28th to the 30th of July, 1941, the first motorised infantry brigade of the SS caried out “actions” in the region of the rive Sluch, and in New Miropol. From the report of the operative team “S” of August 9th, 1941 it is known that in Miropol were shot 24 Jews, who were accused of avoiding work. In addition to this, on September 28th, 1941, in Miropol and also in the two neighbouring villages Kamenka and Pechanovka about 200 Jews were shot in total. It is known that in Miropol were shot 157 Jews, of whom 29 were men, 66 were women and 62 were children. Two days later, another Jewish family was destroyed.

In the beginning of October the Nazis and their accomplices exterminated 94 Jews. On the 13th of October, 250 Jews were shot in Miropol, and in October and November 1942, 960 were shot. On the eve of the action in Miropol, policemens came from all over the area. The Jews were told that everybody would be sent to the shtetl of Lyubar. With them they were ordered to take a change of clothes, not a lot of food, and all money and valuables. From dawn the action began. All Jews were sent to the central square. The feeble old ones and the sick were carried on doors taken off their hinges. Parents with children tried to take places in the column closest to the roadside, to run to their non-Jewish acquaintances to ask them to hide the children. So it was decided before the action. On command, men rushed at the policemen, breaking out of the cordon. The children ran after them. But not a single family hid the Jewish children.

Approximate location of mass grave. In 1983, remains of the vicitmes were reburied to the center of village. Photo by 2020

The policemen led the Jews to the old park, where earlier a huge hole had been dug. The doomed people were stripped naked, had their belongings taken away, then the column was decided into tens, was led to the hole and was shot.

Jewish artisans and their families were left alive. They escaped being shot during this action, as did those who managed to hide. But after a short time they were all destroyed.

In Miropol, the Jews of the surrounding villages were also shot. So in December 1941 in neighbouring Kolodyazhnoye, 9 Jews who were hiding there (8 adults and a child) were arrested; they were taken to Miropol, where they were shot.

The Red Army liberated Miropol on January 6, 1944.

Lyudmila Blekhman (nee Tsymrin) survived the time of the execution. She survived being shot 2 times. After the war, she got married and had 2 sons. The last time she came to Miropol was in 1987. She left details memories about the WWII. Lyudmila died in Israel in 2015.

Photos from the personal archive of Lyudmila Blekhman:

Memories of  Lyudmila Blekhman:

After WWII, about 100 Jews returned to Miropol, among them:
– the Sandler family; she worked in the library
– the Krimers; both worked in a factory
– Feferberg Semyon with family
– a family of doctors named Zubkis
– Feldelman, working in the store
– Dora Davidovna (last name unknown), teacher at school
– Viksman

Most of them lived in Kamenka (the left-bank part of Miropol).

In the 1970s, Miropol was visited by the Jew Rapport, who left his native shtetl before 1917. Such a visit during the Soviet era was a rarity. The second time he came in the 1980s, he brought a VCR and video camera as a gift to the local school, which was a rarity in those days. He also wanted to open a toilet paper production line in Miropol, but wanted a street named after him. The local authorities were not opposed, but they were forbidden to do this by someone from Kyiv.

Reburial of Holocaust victims from mass grave to park in the centre of village.

Holocaust survival Lyudmila Blekhman with the son, 1983

Mass grave in 2020’s:

Most of the local Jews emigrated to Israel in the 1990s. Only one woman came back; the climate did not suit her.

Famous Jews from Miropol

Yakov Grigorevich Mashbits (1928, Miropol – 1997, Moscow) – a Soviet and Russian economic geographer.

Yakov Mashbits

New Jewish cemetery

It locates in Kamenka (western part of the village).

There is a grave of Baal Shem Tov desciple here:

Cemetery’s guard

Old Jewish cemetery

It locates in Eastern part of Miropol:

Borodyanka is an urban-type settlement (since 1957). In the XVI-XVIII centuries. – a place in the Kyiv povet (district) and voivodeship (province) at the end of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. After the second partition of the Commonwealth (1793), the shtetl of Borodyanka was part of the Russian Empire. It was a shtetl in the Kyiv district, Kyiv province.

This article was created by Anna Ponomarenko and the full version can be found here
Anna interviewed more than 10 people and collFected all the information in the article. Below is just a small part of the collected information.

Article was translated by Daniel Pesin.

The Jewish Encyclopedia of Brockhaus and Efron says that Jews began to settle in Borodyanka in the 18th study, until 1765. Their colony was called Mariyampol.

Borodyanka on the map by 1872

About 300 Jewish families lived in Borodyanka at the beginning of the 19th century. The Jews did not run large enterprises. Mostly they were handicraftsmen and artisans.

According to archival documents (tax and real estate) in the town of Borodyanka for 1893, we learn that, except for the landowner Shembek, everyone on the list were meschans (residents of shtetls) with Jewish names. There are such surnames: Chernyakhovsky, Rapoport, Zhuk, Ovrutsky, Riznitsky, Borodyansky, Kotlyarsky, Shtykel (the second in terms of the total relative value of property after Shembek), Feldman, Khazan, Khaitin, Merzlyak, Kravets, Karchemsky, Men, Sapozhnik, Varshavsky, Levitsky, Sidelsky, Dombrovsky, Gorodetsky, Shklyarovsky.

Borodyanka entrepreneurs list from Russian Empire Business Directories by 1913

There was a synagogue in the town.

Place of the synagogue in Borodyanka, 2021

Avrom-Leib Herman (1858–?) was a rabbi in Borodyanka from 1885.

Nadezhda Pavlovna Yatsenko, in the article “We have our own home” from the newspaper “Nadezhda” dated July 2002, writes about Borodyanka at the beginning of the 20th century: “We had a single two-story house in Borodyanka, where Chaim Shtikel lived. On the first floor, he kept a hairdresser, a shoe shop, and a shop, and on the second floor he lived with his family.

Market in Borodyanka, 1905

Jews lived mainly in the centre of the town, on the modern Shevchenko street.

Photos of the center of Borodyanka, beginning of 20 century:

Torah study in Borodyanka, 1911. Nuhim German on the left

During the years of the Russian Revolution of 1917-1920, the Jews of Borodyanka suffered greatly from the pogroms.

In 1917 there were single incidents of Jews being robbed.

On February 23, 1918, a gang entered the town, killed 2 Jews and threatened with a pogrom, demanding “that the Jews give out 2 machine guns and 70 rifles hidden among them”. The Jews paid them with money.

Yosef-Ber Tsimberg (1865-1919), who lived in Borodianka, was killed by the Petliurists. He was killed and robbed while driving from the fair. He is survived by his wife, Hana-Mikhlya Tsimberg.

During one of the pogroms, the synagogue and the house of Rabbi Avraham Herman were burned down.

In 1920-1921, there were the following pogroms in Borodyanka, recorded in any historical documents:
1) from January 1 to March 15, 1920 – probably Orlik;
2) before October 1920 – probably Orlik;
3) 1921 – three pogroms: Mordalevichi in February, Orlik on February 15 and March 19.

In 1920-1921, as a result of constant terror by local gangs, most of the Jews left Borodyanka for safer places. 114 Jews lived in Borodianka in 1923

Tsimberg family: Ishika and Sonya with their daughter Polina, Borodyanka 1927

Among the birth certificates for 1926 according to Borodianka, one can find the following names and occupations of the Jews of that time:
– tailors (Khaitin, Kaganovsky, Karchemsky, Sherman, Kishkin, Lev, Gorodetsky, Radovilsky), blacksmith (Gutnik), hatmaker (Talsky), forager (Firfer), shoemakers (Gutnik, Gimpelevich, Kaganovsky, Levitsky), tanner (Kotlyarenko) ;
– the manufacturer of kvass (Kofman), the butcher (Tsimberg), the baker (Mozyrsky);
– merchants (Eisenberg, Sakhnovsky, Yaroslavsky, Zhilinsky, Vysotsky, Ovrutsky),
– watchmaker (Schwarzer);
– an employee of a glass factory (Eisenberg), an employee of the glass guta (Heifetz);
– glazier (Yuditsky), carpenter (Bilson);
– teacher (German);
– photographer (Brodsky);
– clerk (Karachunsky),
– an employee (registry office), an employee for the needs of the partnership (Tchaikovsky).

House of Korol family in Shevchenko street, 1930’s

In the 1920s, a Jewish school was established in the town, where Rabbi Nukhim Abramovich Herman worked as a teacher. The school was located on the site of the modern park, opposite the post office. The school was closed in 1933.

Nuhim German with pupils of the Borodyanka school, 1937

Teachers of Borodyanka district, 1930’s

Klara and Polina Gorodetskaya in Borodyanka before the WWII

In 1939, 284 Jews (7% of the population) lived in the town.

It is not known what part of the Jewish population managed to evacuate. I can assume that it was at least half, since the shtetl was not far from Kyiv on the important Kovel-Kyiv highway.

At the end of August 2021, the act of the special Soviet commission of November 1943 on the crimes of the Nazis in the village of Borodyanka was declassified. It talks about the arrests and detention of people in the former club, executions in the collective farm garden, at the local cemetery and on the territory of the former brick factory.

In what exact place and under what circumstances the Jewish population of Borodyanka was exterminated, I was unable to find out.

Monument to victims of German terror during 1941-1943 in the center of Borodyanka

In February 1943, the Gestapo ordered the release of one of the huts on the outskirts of Borodyanka, where the Nazis brought 24 arrested people, including several families. The house was filled with hay and burned along with the victims in it. The number of victims burned at the site of the monument varies. Whether Jews were among them is not exactly known, but it is unlikely that any of them remained alive in 1943.

Monument on the place of the burned house

List of the soldiers and officers who were killed in action during WWII on the memorial in the center of Borodyanka

After the WWII

After the war, the Korol, German, Karchemsky, Kerner, Vysotsky, Levitsky, Nudelman, Feldman and other families returned to Borodyanka.

Photos of the Borodyanka Jews, collected from different family archives by Anna Ponomarenko:

After the war, David Kravets returned to his native Polesskoe, but his house was gone, his relatives were killed, and his brother did not return from the war. And he decided to go to Borodanka to some people he knew, and he stayed there. He married and had two sons. He worked in agricultural engineering. In 1976, he was found by his brother, who survived the war. The meeting was unforgettable 30 years after the war. The brothers are buried at the Borodyanka non-Jewish cemetery.

Graves of Kravets brothers in non-Jewish Borodyanka cemetery

Isaak Brodsky was the only professional photographer in Borodyanka in the first half of the 20th century. Yakov Korol studied under him.

Isaak Brodsky on his working place, 1960’s

It was to Yakov in 1963 or 1964 that someone brought an old photographic film. Yakov developed 20 frames on it, these turned out to be photographs of Borodyanka from the beginning of the 20th century.

Ishika Tsimberg was famous for selling sparkling water in Borodyanka in the early 1950s.

Moses Tsimberg with wife Esfir and son Arnold, 1947

The Jewish community was organized in the 1990s with over 30 members.

With the beginning of the Russian-Ukrainian war in 2022, Borodyanka found itself at the epicentre of the fighting between Russian and Ukrainian troops. Many buildings were destroyed.
Most of the members of the Jewish community left through Poland for Israel.

No Jewish buildings have been preserved – only separate private houses on Shevchenko street have been which were rebuilded.

The oldest metric books of the Jews of Borodyanka in the public domain can be found for 1875.

Jewish cemetery

There are 30 tombstones at the Borodyanka Jewish cemetery, the earliest of which dates back to 1915, the latest to 1990.
The cemetery was destroyed more than once; the fence was broken.

In 1960, several tombstones were destroyed there, and in 1970 Jews began to be buried in the Orthodox Christian cemetery.

In 2020, the cemetery was fenced and cleaned at the expense of the European Union.

Pikov is a small village in the Kalynivka raion, Vinnytsia region of Ukraine. As of 2023, around 2,000 lived there.

In the 19th – beginning of 20 century, Pikov was a shtetl of Vinnitsa uezd, Podolskaya Gubernia. 

In the past, Pykiv consisted of two parts called Novy Pykiv (New Pykiv) and Stary Pykiv (Old Pykiv), which were on opposite sides of the Snyvoda River. According to historical documents, they were separate towns until they merged in 1960. Before the revolution, most of the Jewish residents lived in Novy Pykiv.

Enterence to Pikov, 2020

When I visited the former Pykiv shtetl in winter 2020, all that remained of the Jewish community were a Jewish cemetery and the ruins of a big Jewish house.

The first reference to a Jewish presence in Pikov dates back to the beginning of the eighteenth century.   

Oldest toilet in Ukraine located near the former market square in Old Pikov, 2020. Yes, it is real toilet…

During the 18th and 19th centuries, the village of Old Pykiv was home to the family estate of Count Potocki, along with a large park nearby. In 1713, Pykiv shtetl was ransacked by Cossacks, who committed heinous acts against the Jewish population, including the mutilation of women. According to the archival records, they “cut off the noses and ears of Jewish women”.

Before the Revolution, Pykiv shtetl was home to approximately 2,400 Jews, who lived in 500 houses. Most of the houses were constructed using clay and wood, with only wealthy Jewish families being able to afford brick homes. The shtetl hosted large fairs twice a year.

Pikov entrepreneurs list from Russian Empire Business Directories by 1913

The Jewish community of Pikov suffered heavy losses during World War I, including a severely deflated economy. The civil war struck another blow to the Jews of Pikov. A pogrom broke out in July 1919, and fifty Jews were murdered. 

Center of the former shtetl, 2020

In 1926, the town had a Jewish population of 1,644, accounting for half of the total population. The local Jewish council promoted a Yiddish-language Jewish education for the children and youth of Pikov. During the 1920s and ’30s, Pikov had an active Jewish school.

Two synagogues operated in the town through the beginning of the 1930s but they were closed before the WWII.

Up until the 1930s, there was no separate Jewish school in Pykiv. Instead, the village’s school was situated in the center of New Pykiv, with the majority of the Jewish children studying there. All of the teachers in the school were Jewish.

Leib Gitman on the front of the house, which was built by his workers in Pikov. In 1928, he gifted this house to his son after the marriage.

In 1924, under the Soviet regime, the Jewish “Trud” kolkhoz was established. In 1936, another Jewish kolkhoz was formed. The Jewish collective farms in the area cultivated roughly 200 hectares of land.
In the 1930s, Gitman was the director of a motor-tractor station in Pykiv. As there was no power station in the village, he used a gasoline generator to electrify part of the shtetl, including the synagogue and school. The first bicycle in Pykiv belonged to his son, Grigori Gitman.

Group of the builders in Pikov, 1926. 1 – Leib Gitman, 2 – Yankel Tsiprin, 3 – Itsik Tsiprin (was killed in Pikov during the Holocaust)

In 1939, a Jewish refugee from Poland who was a doctor arrived in Pykiv and attempted to warn the local Jewish community about the German’s atrocities against Jews. Sadly, most of the Jewish community did not believe his warnings.

Old Jewish houses in the Jewish part of Pikov, 2020:

Old Jewish house

Last PreRevolution Jewsih shop in New Pikov, 2020.

Holocaust

At the start of WWII, hardly any Jews were able to evacuate. Srul Shnaider, who managed a shop in the shtetl, was the first victim of the Nazis in Pykiv.
When German troops arrived in New Pykiv, they established a ghetto where the entire Jewish population of the town was forced to relocate. An 8-10 member Judenrat was established, with Yankel Josevich as its head.
The Ukrainian police carried out daily raids on the shtetl, plundering 1-2 houses each day. From these raids, a store was opened for Ukrainians, where the stolen goods were sold at very low prices. The policemen who carried out these raids pocketed the money they made and spent it on alcohol.

In March 1942, all the young people from the ghetto were taken to the German aerodrome construction site at Kalynivka. Ganya Shnaider, Manya Yukhman, and Anya Gitman were among those sent to a German brothel for pilots and later executed.
The day before the execution, the Germans ordered local peasants to dig a grave measuring 50 by 10 meters in the Jewish cemetery.
On May 29th, 1942, the ghetto residents were ordered to paint their houses, and all Jews hastened to comply. The following day, the Hungarians surrounded the ghetto and forced all the Jews to gather in the shtetl’s square, before herding them to the stable of the Jewish collective farm, not far from the Jewish cemetery. The Jews were then taken out of the stable and shot.
The shooting site was surrounded by local police and peasants armed with pitchforks and axes. The Jews were threatened that, in the event of any attempts to resist, the children would be buried alive.

Fanya Gitman (1904 Pikov- 1984, Vinnitsya), survived during the Holocaust in Pikov.

Prior to the destruction of the Pykiv ghetto, a Jewish Red Army officer who had previously been held in the Khmelnik ghetto arrived and attempted to gather the Jewish youth to take them to the forest to join the partisans. However, he was apprehended and taken to the execution pit with other Jews. During the undressing process, the officer drew his concealed firearm and fired at a German soldier. This caused confusion and enabled a group of Jews to escape. Sadly, the officer was injured during his attempt to escape and drowned in the nearby pond.
Before the execution, the former head of the Jewish school delivered a speech to the doomed Jews, although the content of his speech is not known.

Mass grave in Pikov Jewish cemetery, 2020:

 Thirty three Jewish men who were selected due to their profession were released.
According to the surviving locals, the earth on the grave moved for three days following the execution, as if it were trying to give voice to the tragedy that had taken place.
The execution was carried out in groups of ten, with the men being killed first. Despite this, a few Jews were able to escape.

List of Holocaust victims in Pikov:

In addition to the Jews who were killed in the common grave, there were others who managed to survive the initial execution but were later found and killed near the same location. Their identities are unknown, but the burial sites are marked by small mounds of earth.
In a nearby village, local police discovered a 10-year-old Jewish girl who had been hidden by some of the villagers. She was taken to the common grave and killed.
Despite the threat of execution for harboring Jews, a local woman named Nizvetskaya hid a Jewish woman and her two children. They were able to survive and eventually moved to Saint Petersburg after the war.

One individual, named Dashkovich, managed to escape the pit and survive the execution. Following the war, he resided in Saint Petersburg.
Semyon Gershkovich was another survivor of the execution. He too lived in Saint Petersburg after the war and gave a detailed 1.5 hour interview to the Shoah Foundation in 1995, describing how he managed to survive the war.

Semion Gershkovich during the interview

Other sources suggest that a total of 1800 Jews were executed in Pykiv, with 300 of them coming from Ivaniv and being brought to Pykiv before the execution. The same German executioner who killed the Pykiv Jews later slaughtered the Ulaniv Jews.

After the liberation of New Pykiv shtetl, a special commission was established to document the number of victims and the methods of execution used in the mass killing.
The Pykiv Jewish cemetery became the final resting place for the remains of Jews who were killed in other locations.

On May 30, 1946, a memorial was erected in Pikov at the site where most of the Jews of the area were murdered on May 30, 1942. The site is fenced off and contains a monument crowned by the Soviet star. An inscription on the monument reads: “Brutally killed by German-Fascist barbarians on May 30, 1942”. An additional monument bears the inscription: “In memory of those killed at the hands of the German-Fascist occupiers during the years of the Great Patriotic War, 1941-1944.”

Mass grave of Pikov’s Jewish, 1940’s-1950’s. Photo from Yad Vashem archive.

Every year at the end of May, Jews from different locations come to Pikov to commemorate their loved ones. The monument at the murder site was rebuilt in 2008.

After the WWII

Following the destruction of the Jewish population in New Pykiv, Ukrainian locals looted the abandoned homes in search of valuables, including gold, and used the wood as fuel. After the war, the area was rebuilt by the locals.

Surviving Jews were advised not to return to the shtetl for several months after its liberation, as the former policemen and their families may have sought to eliminate witnesses to their crimes.
During 1944-1945, Jews who were drafted into the army returned to the shtetl, but left after ensuring that all their relatives had perished.
A Jewish pilot, who lost his leg during the war and became disabled, also visited the shtetl but did not stay since his wife, two children, and siblings had all perished in the Pykiv ghetto.
Every year on May 30th, Pykiv Jews from across the USSR gather to visit the grave of the executed and pay respects to their deceased loved ones.

After the war, approximately 30 Jews who had evacuated or were drafted into the Soviet Army returned to the shtetl, and locals recall that around 10 Jewish families lived there during that time.
I was able to gather some incomplete information about the Jews of Pykiv, including:
– Izko and Molko, who were old-clothes sellers
– Gusya Press, who worked at a shop and had two sons, Roma and Vilya, and a daughter Emma
– Pesya (last name unknown) and her son Avrum, who returned from the war without a leg
– Godel’
– Gizkoh, who traveled around local villages in a horse-drawn carriage and bought skins from locals
– the large Zyprin family, consisting of seven members

Many Jews left Pykiv and resettled in Vinnytsia.

During the construction of a shop in the Jewish neighbourhood of Novy Pykiv in the 1960s-1970s, a buried treasure of gold coins was discovered, likely hidden by one of the executed Jews. The Ukrainian who found the treasure sold the coins for 25 rubles each.

The synagogue building in Pykiv was a one-story brick building located on the river, with beautiful colourful leadlights. It was destroyed after the execution of Jews and was fully demolished later after the war.

There was a synagogue in Pikov…

In the 1990s, Valery Bilun, the son of a Jewish village dentist, moved to Germany and was believed to be the last Jew in Pykiv.

Old Pre-Revolution paved road in the Jewish part of Pikov:

This article was translated by Asya Samsonova.

Jewish cemetery

After the war, local Jews named Geler, Fishman, and Soyfer were buried in the Jewish cemetery.

• Post WWII part of the cemetery

• Pre WWII part of the cemetery

Brusilov is an urban-type settlement and the district centre in the Zhytomyr region.

This article was translated by Daniel Pesin.

In 1793, after the second partition of Poland, Brusilov became part of the Russian Empire.
In the 19th – early 20th centuries it was a shtetl in the Radomysl district of the Kyiv province.

When the Jews appeared in Brusilov is not exactly known. The first documented mention of Jews in Brusilov dates back to 1609, when Polish documents mention the Pavolotsky Jew Michal, who kept Old and New Brusilov in rent. In 1611, Stary (Old) Brusilov was rented from the Jews Yakush and Mishka Kholoevsky. Brusilov received Magdeburg rights in 1585.

Center of Brusilov, 2021:

During the uprising of Bogdan Khmelnytsky, the Jews of Brusilov were forced to flee to Volhynia. After the conclusion of the Andrusovo peace between Poland and Russia in 1667, Poles and Jews began to return to the town.

In the first half of the 18th century, Brusilov became a kahal (Jewish community council) town. 36 villages belonged to the kahal.The census of 1787 was signed by the Brusilov rabbi Leiba Mendeleevich, the quarterly (urban ward overseer) Moisha Evshievich and Shmul’ Leibovich Shkolnik.
In 1787, 403 Jews lived here in 107 houses.

According to archive documents this building was called as “Jewish school Psalms of David”. It could be a Jewish school, synagogue or Talmud Torah. It is a last Jewish building in Brusilov.

The archive preserved a report on the vaccination against smallpox, which was made by the doctor Lahman Berkov to 250 peasants and all children in the shtetl.

In 1849 there were 170 Jewish houses in the town.
In 1852, Jews owned 12 inns and 53 shops.

In the 1850s, Jews were forbidden to make vodka, and its production in Brusilov fell sharply, since it was the Jews who rented the vodka factory from the Poles of Chatsky.
At the end of the 19th century, the leather factory in Brusilov belonged to the Jew Levotes.
In 1850, a new synagogue was built in the town, which was located on Synagogue Street.

In the 19th century, Brusilov suffered from severe fires 3 times, in 1836, 1859 and 1887. The third fire began in the house of M. Weisburd, as a result of which the trading part of the town was damaged, and the main synagogue burned down. 31 houses burned down.
In 1900, 6,337 Jews (24% of the total population) lived in the Brusilov volost (district). Most of them lived in the towns of Brusilov, Rozhev and 2 Jewish colonies.

At the beginning of the 20th century, about 300 Jews from Brusilov left for the United States in search of a better life.
Jews made up half of the artisans of the town – 101 out of 200.

Market square in Brusilov, 2021

The centre of Brusilov was densely built up with tall wooden Jewish houses, which were used both as a shop and as a dwelling house.
One of the members of Brusilov’s burgher council, in the last years of its existence in the 1910s, was Mordko-Ruvin Gershkovich Kaplun.

There are practically no buildings of the late 19th – early 20th century left in Brusilov. In the park on Lermontov Street, several buildings from the estate of the Sinelnikovs have been preserved.

The archives preserved the appeal of the headman of the Brusilov synagogue “Craft Kloiz” Berko Knizhnik to the governor with a request to allow the money from the bark collection to be used for the repair of the synagogue.

In the shtetl on the river Zdvizh there were 2 water mills. In 1898, one of them was on loan from Meyer Moshkovich Pokras. In 1913, the windmill was rented by Srul’ Yosipovich Talalaevsky.
Most of the Jewish shops and stores were on the area of the old market square. Now at this place there is a memorial to the fellow villagers who died during the Second World War.

From the end of the 19th century, a private Jewish hospital functioned in Brusilov, which was located at the beginning of the modern Karl Marx Street. In 1898, Peisakh Zhuk worked as a doctor in it, and in the early 1900s – Yosif Yakovich Fridman, in 1909-1911 – Simon Eliezer Izekilievich Fainzinger.

PreRevolution building of Brusilov hospital

In 1912, 2 doctors worked in the Jewish hospital – Zisya Abramovich Nudelman and Itsyk Meyerovich Finkelshtein, two dentists – Mark Yegudovich Melamed and Abram Mirovich Messonzhnik and two midwives – R.A. Lipovskaya and H.O. Rakhmalskaya.

The first pharmacy was opened in 1840 by the Polish pharmacist Marcinchik. In 1907-1911, the pharmacy belonged to Abram Berkov Goldman, and Khuna Shimonovna Binzeig worked there as a pharmacist. At the end of 1911, Isaac Ginzburg became the owner of the pharmacy. In 1915, there were 2 pharmacies in the town, and both belonged to Jews – Tsiva Maze and Lazar Berkhin.
In 1900, there were 3 synagogues in the town: the first was located not far from the Jewish cemetery on the modern Taras Shevchenko Street, the second presumably on the site of the modern village administration, and the third on the territory of the modern Brusilov school number 1.

The rabbis in Brusilov were:
– since 1873 – Yehuda-Leib Vetshtein
– since 1893 – Shmuel Yitzchok Perluk
– since 1899 – Yosef Kaznachey
– since 1905 – Yosef Friedman
– since 1908 – Shimon-Leizor Khaskilev Feinzinger
– in 1912-1915 – Yitzchok Meerovich Finkelstein

In the 1910s, a cell of the Jewish party Bund operated in the town.
In 1908-1909 the Jewish school “David’s Psalms” was built for the money of box collection (shechita tax). Most likely it was used as a synagogue. The building has survived and belongs to the village administration.

In 1905, a pogrom took place in the shtetl, but I could not find any information about the victims or the damage done.

There were two Jewish colonies on the territory of the Brusilov Volost:

– Rozhevskaya
In 1900, there were 41 households in the colony, where 727 inhabitants were sold. There was a synagogue in the colony and there were 5 leather factories. In 1907, there were 67 households in the colony. Now the territory of the colony is part of the village of Rozhkov (current Shevchenko Street).

– Sitnyakovskaya
In 1900, there were 40 households in the colony, where 672 inhabitants were sold. There was a synagogue in the colony. In 1910, there were 53 households in the colony.
Now the territory of the colony is part of the village of Sytnyaki.

In 1909, the newspaper Kievskiye Vesti wrote about a robbery attack on a group of Jews from Radomyshl, who were being taken to a fair in Brusilov by a balagul David Kozhukhovsky. During the attack, Shulim Khandros, David Zhitnik, Aron Baranovsky, David Khandros were killed and Sholom Kridentser was wounded.

PreRevolution building in the center of Brusilov

In 1899-1911, the state rabbi of the Radomysl district was Sender Yakovich Grinshpun, and in 1912-1915 – Aron Mendel Schneersohn.
In 1900-1915 Usher Genzel-Leibovich Yampolsky was the official rabbi of the Skvirsky district.
In 1912-1915, two Jews from Khodorov, Srul Ovseevich Rabinovich and Yosif Ovseevich Shaiman, were members of the Skvir district council.

Civil War

With the beginning of the Russian Revolution of 1917, Brusilov’s Jews were subjected to constant pogroms.

Since the only force that did not carry out pogroms were the communists, many Jewish young men joined the Red Army. Brothers Baruch and Boris Levin left Brusilov for the Red Army.

Baruch in the future became the Soviet film director Benedikt Nord.

After the February Revolution of 1917, a legal Bolshevik organization was created in Brusilov. Local Jews Moses Tokarsky and Adel Moiseevna Rudenko were elected to the organizing committee.

On June 1, 1919, a pogrom took place in the town, organized by detachments of atamans Sokolovsky and Ogorodnik. As a result of which up to 300 Jews were killed and the town was almost completely burned down. The surviving Jews buried their brothers and left en masse for Kyiv. Many Jews fled to the nearby town of Kornin.

More information about pogroms in Brusilov can be find netormoz.wordpress.com

Ruins of old PreRevolution house in the center of Brusilov, 2021

Between the WWI and WWII

As a result of the pogroms, the Jewish population of the town became several times smaller.

In 1923, only 379 Jews lived here.
In the 1920s, with the start of the New Economic Policy, Jews again began to open shops and small industries.

In 1928, 5 collective farms were created in the town, one of them was Jewish, which was called “General Labor”.

But due to collectivization and difficult living conditions in the former shtetl, Jews moved to other cities, especially Kyiv and Zhytomyr.

Abraham Maisenberg was the only photographer in the town in the 1930s. He arrived in the 1920s from Zhytomyr, but left to live in Kyiv in the late 1930s.

In the 1990s, his daughter, already in the USA, gave an interview to the Shoa Foundaition and provided family photos with Brusilov:

In 1929 a new school building was built. Shtilerman was its director.

In 1931, a Jewish labor school operated in Brusilov. Its premises were located on the face of Rozhavskaya. When it was closed I did not manage to find out.

In 1937 Grinberg was in charge of the village shop.

By 1939, only 171 people remained in the Jewish population. That is, the vast majority of Jews left Brusilov.

Holocaust

I managed to find fragmentary information about the Holocaust in Brusilov.

According to the local historian Svyatnenko, in 1941 the Germans rounded up all the remaining Jews and shot them in the Jewish cemetery. Then 58 people were killed. Jews in hiding and betrayed by their neighbors or captured policemen, as well as Jews from neighboring villages, were already shot together with the non-Jewish population near the school. A memorial has now been erected at this site.

Mass grave near Brusilov school, 2021

According to other sources, the execution took place in three stages: 10 Oct. 1941 25 Jews were shot, 15 Oct. — 12, 20 Oct. 1941 – 10 Jews.

After the WWII

After the war, several Jewish families returned to the town. But I did not manage to find out the full list of surnames. One of them is the Zavadskys, they lived at the end of Frank Street. The locals also remember baba Kilya, who was a dressmaker.

But in the 1980s, only a few Jewish pensioners lived in Brusilov, and their children lived in Zhitomir and Kyiv.

Also, several Jews were sent to work in Brusilov from other places.

In the 1960s-1970s, the entire centre of the town was built up with old Jewish pre-revolutionary houses. Some of them stood until the end of the 1990s.

After the Chernobyl disaster, several thousand people from the Chernobyl region were resettled in Brusilov. Among them were several Jewish families. One of those who arrived, Tatyana Shilman, worked on the radio.

The last Jews died or left Brusilov in the 1990s…

Famous Jews from Brusilov

David Ignatov (real name Ignatovsky) (1885, Brusilov – 1954, New York), prose writer, wrote in Yiddish.

Benedikt Naumovich Nord (real name Levin) (1901, Brusilov – 1965, Moscow), Soviet director. Born in Brusilov in the family of a merchant.

Jewish cemetery

There were 2 Jewish cemeteries in Brusilov. The exact location of the oldest of them is not known.

The Jewish cemetery known to us was located on the eastern outskirts of Brusilov. It was quite large and was located on both sides of the road that leads to the village of Khomutets.
It was here that in 1941 the Germans shot the Jews of Brusilov, who could not evacuate.

It is unknown when it was destroyed. But I can assume that it happened in the 1940s-1950s. After the war, sand was taken from the territory of the Jewish cemetery for construction, and according to the recollections of old-timers, bones and skulls were often found in the sand.

In 2021, during our visit, the territory of the cemetery was planted with an artificial pine forest. There was no trace of graves here.

Site of Brusilov Jewish cemetery

Site of Brusilov Jewish cemetery

Site of Brusilov Jewish cemetery

Volodarka, an urban settlement, district capital in the Kyiv region.   

In 1793, after the second division of Poland, Volodarka became part of the Russian Empire.

In the 19th and early 20th century, Volodarka was a shtetl in Skvirsky county, Kyiv province.

Jews lived in Volodarka from the 17th century. In 1750 the Jewish community was destroyed by the Haidamaks, and in 1768 the Jewish population was again plundered by the Haidamaks.

In 1841 L. Abramovich founded a cloth factory. In 1863 there was a synagogue. In 1912 there was a Jewish savings and loan partnership.

Old Pre-Revolution house in the centre of Volodarka, 2022

At the beginning of WWI, about 2,000 Jews and 5,000 Christians lived in the town. There were about 400 Jewish houses and 200 shops, five industrial enterprises owned by Jews, and several synagogues.

Volodarka ceased to exist as a Jewish town during the Civil War of 1917-1920, when, as a result of numerous pogroms, Jews were forced to flee to other places.

The town was destroyed in 1919-1920 as a result of four pogroms:

The first was arranged by the Tyutyunik gang before Pesach 1919; as a result, 20 Jews were killed, 3 wounded, 10 raped, and all property was looted.

Old Pre-Revolution house in the centre of Volodarka, 2022

The second was arranged by the Sokolov gang — 15 Jews were killed, 10 seriously wounded and 50 raped.

The third was arranged by the Sokolov gang on July 9, 1919; as a result, the town was burned down and only those who could escape were saved. 73 people were killed – elderly people, women and children.

An unknown gang entered the town on May 8, 1920 and killed everyone in the local hospital. 40 people died.

In the remaining houses, peasants broke down the windows and doors, removed the tin from the roofs, and took it all home.

Out of 400 Jewish houses, only twenty-nine remained relatively intact.

Report about pogroms in Volodarka, 1921-1922

Over 1500 Jews of Volodarka escaped to Bila Tserkva. Though not a district capital, it became a hub for Jews fleeing pogroms in smaller towns and villages. People fled there from Stavishch, Tetiev, Volodarka, and other towns and villages. As a result, the Jewish population of Bila Tserkva nearly doubled in size. Meanwhile, the number of houses remained the same. As a result, almost all the refugees from Volodarka died in a typhoid epidemic that arose as a consequence of overcrowding and unsanitary conditions.

More information about pogroms in Volodarka can be found here.

After the Soviet Union was established, the Jews of Volodarka started leaving en masse. In 1926, thirty-six of them organized a kolhoz in the Kherson district.

On July 14, 1941, ten Jews were shot in Volodarka, followed by two more on July 16. Jews were brought to Volodarka for execution from other towns. Altogether, around 200 people were killed. The exact location of the mass murder is unknown, but we can presume that it was the same place where the Nazis shot communists and partisans. Now there’s a memorial in that spot, but no mention of Jews.

Memorial in the center of Volodarka:

I wasn’t able to find any information about Jews living in Volodarka post-WWII. I visited the town in 2022, searching for some trace of the presence of Jews. There were no old buildings still standing; neither was I able to locate the Jewish cemetery.

Sometime in the 2000s, the local authorities allowed a memorial to Volodarka’s Jews to be erected in the non-Jewish cemetery. This memorial is the only sign that Jews ever lived in Volodarka.

Old Jewish cemetery

The cemetery was demolished in the 1920s during Soviet collectivization and the site was overbuilt.

Old Jewish cemetery in Volodarka. Photo from the Surveys of Jewish cemeteries by ESJF

New Jewish cemetery

The cemetery was demolished in the 1950s and a brick factory was built on its site.

New Jewish cemetery in Volodarka. Photo from the Surveys of Jewish cemeteries by ESJF

The city of Pervomaysk is situated where the Siniukha River flows into the Southern Buh. It is 180 km away from Nikolayev, with a population of 82,000.

Pervomaysk is an amalgamation of three earlier settlements: Olviopol, Holta and Pervomaysk.

During the 18th century, the Olviopol settlement belonged to the Russian Empire, Holta belonged to Turkey, and Bogopol belonged to Poland. In 1919, these settlements were merged into a single city, thereafter called Pervomaysk.

Olviopol, Holta and Bogopol on the Shubert’s map, enf of 19 century. Photo was taken from myshtetl.org

Olviopol

In 1676, on the left bank of the Siniukha River near the Polish-Turkish borders, Cossacks built a fortress. Shaped like an octagon, it was called Orlik. This territory was sparsely inhabited and frequented by Crimean Tatars. It was a wild territory, near the deserted steppes of the Black Sea coastal region.

In 1743, the Russian government rebuilt the Orlik castle, preserving its original name. In the 18th century, the representatives of three powers — the Russian Empire, Turkey, and Poland — would meet there to solve important state problems.
In 1770, Russia renamed Orlik as Yekaterininshanets. In 1791, this was changed to Olviopol.

When the Crimean Khanate ended, the first Jewish settlement appeared on these lands.

In 1773, Olviopol came to be known as Yelisavetgradsky Uyezd, as part of the Kherson Gubernia.
In 1828, Olviopol was transferred to the jurisdiction of the military settlements department. The rights of Jews within the settlement were limited. In 1865, a synagogue was in operation. In 1887 Naftula Kanterman (1851 – ?) was a rabbi within the settlement. In 1905, a pogrom took place. In 1910, there were four synagogues and a Jewish cemetery. In 1911, two cheders (elementary schools for Jewish children) were operating in the town, with 30 students between them. In 1913, Jews owned the town’s only hotel, in addition to a barbershop, a photo house, and 12 stalls in Olviopol including all three groceries and two butchers. In 1915, there were five synagogues altogether.

Holta

A short history of Holta: in 1762, cossacks and Ukrainian peasants formed the sloboda (free) Holta on the left bank of the South Bug River. Holta was part of Turkey until 1791, at which time the Treaty of Jassy was signed and the settlement was incorporated into Russia.

In 1810, Holta became the site of a shtetl within the uyezd (district town) of Ananyev, Kherson Gubernia.

In the late 19th century, Naftole Rapoport (1849 – ?) was a rabbi in Holta. In 1905, a pogrom took place in the shtetl.

What follow are the Jewish names from the lists of Holta businessmen in 1913:
Beytman, Bronshteyn, Vseliubsky, Gakman, Genel, Gerenshteyn, Gerikh, Grinshpun, Gutliansky, Drubich, Zborovsky, Kremenetsky, Litvak, Melamud Menaker, Odessky, Perelmuter Podlubny, Rakhman Rogulberg, Sigal Spivak, Tala, Umansky, Filshteyn, Tsvelikhovsky, Chertkova, Shembel Shildkrot, Yankelevich.
What follows are the names of dwelling-house owners:
Beytman, Virnik Vseliubsky, Geyman, Gringayt, Zborovsky, Kats, Kofman, Menaker Motelsky, Nemirovsky, Obodovsky, Poliansky, Portigal, Roytman, Sapozhnikov, Sigal, Tala-Mirochnik, Yankelevich.

One of the most interesting historic buildings of Holta is the Teresa Marholis school for poor Jewish girls. Teresa was a dentist. Having gone to the United States to secure funds for the school, building began in 1998. It took ten years to complete construction. During the Soviet era, the building was the site of a “Pioneer House.”. Today, the building is abandoned. Teresa Marholis was perished during the Holocaust together with majority of local Jews…

In Holta, a Jewish neighbourhood existed on the site of present-day Engels Street, near the river. In the area was a famous synagogue, decorated with a pair of lions, a sight depicted on many pre-revolutionary postcards of Holta. We do not know when the synagogue was destroyed, but it may have been during either the 1930’s or during the occupation.

Bogopol

In 1750, Polish magnate Pototsky built Bogopol fortress on the left bank of the South Bug River, near Siniukha, at the border of Turkey and the Zaporozhian Sich. After the right bank of Ukraine had been merged with Russia in 1793, Bogopol was incorporated into Russia.

Bogopol on the postcard, beginning of 20 century

In the 19th to early20th centuries, Bogopol was a shtetl of the Balta Uyezd, Podolia Gubernia.
In the early 20thcentury, there was a synagogue (built in the mid 19th century) as well as six prayer houses (including craftsmens’ prayer houses for tailors’, blacksmiths’ and others; Hasids primarily followers of the Talnovsky Tsadik, used to pray in the “Talnovsky School”).
There was also a cemetery, a chevra kadisha (in operation since the 1850s), a Jewish hospital (since 1899), a Talmud Torah (since 1901), a private men’s college, and a cheder (since 1916).

The oldest grave in the cemetery dates back to the early 19th century. A local Tsadik was buried there in 1842. Rabbi Motel, a son of Talnovsky Tsaddik David Tverskoy, was buried there in the 1870’s.

A pogrom took place from 21-23 of October, 1905. Many Jewish shops were ransacked and burnt down, and nine Jews were wounded.

A few buildings still preserved in Bogopol are possibly the sites of the old Jewish prayer houses. However, our information at this time is imprecise, and we haven’t as yet found any evidence in the archives.

Birth certificate with sign of Bogopol official rabbi, 1918

There is a preserved building of Talmud Torah in Bogopol. According to locals, a very famous rabbi lived there before the revolution. Interestingly, itsentrance is situated at the back of the building, rather than the street side.

Fromer Talmur Torah in Bogopol

Old Jewish houses in Bogopol:

When the railway appeared in Golta, the town’s economy began to develop, helping to revive the region overall rapidly. In 1865, the railway connected Odessa to Balta. In 1867, connections were established from Balta to Olviopol, and all the way to Yelizavetgrad.

Former Jewish hospital in Bogopol. It was opened in 1899

After the reform of 1861, industrial enterprises began to develop in the three settlements. This, along with the railway development mentioned above, contributed to the ongoing regional economic boom. Among the businesses that sprang up in Holta was a brewery, a tannery, a thresher repair workshop plant, tobacco and soap-making factories, and a printing house. In the shtetl, there were distilleries, potteries, as well as a photo studio. In the second part of the 19th century, gymnasiums for boys were founded in both Holta and Olviopol.

Center of Pervomaisk

In 1880, a hospital with 20 beds was opened in Holta, employing three doctors and four paramedics.

Bieley family in the fron of their shop in Bogopol. end of 19th century – beginning of 20 century. Photo provided by Rick Luftglass

Until the second half of the 19th century, Olviopol played a more significant role in trade and economy than either Bogopol or Holta. It was in Olviopol that mills and creameries were first established, as well as blacksmiths and potteries. Twice a year, people from nearby towns and villages came to take part in Olviopol trade fairs.

Destroyed old Jewish house in Bogopol and “replacement”

Pervomaysk

On the 1st of May, 1919, there was a general meeting of Olviopol, Bogopol, and Holta residents. At that time, the settlements were jointly renamed Pervomaysk, in honor of International Workers’ Day.

Shamis and Sindler families, Pervomaisk 1925

In 1919, pogroms in all three shtetls, perpetrated by members of the Volunteer Army. I couldn’t find the exact number of Jews killed, but they numbered in the dozens..
I could find very little information about the Jews of Pervomaysk during the interwar period.
In 1924, about 10,000 Jews lived in the city.
In the early 1920’s, local authorities built a new administrative building in the center of the town, shaped like a hammer and sickle. It was built using money taken from local businesspeople. Today, that building is the site of a library.
In the 1930’s, a Jewish district within Pervomaysk suffered after the flooding of the South Bug River.
The town of Pervomaysk is a town, district center of Odessa region in the USSR (now the Nikolayev region, in the Republic of Ukraine).

In 1939, 6,087 Jews lived there, representing 18.46% of the population.

Holocaust

On the 2nd of August 1941, the occupation began. From August through November 1941, a military commandant’s office ruled the town. First, it was ruled by the commandant’s office 676. Later, from October 1941, it was under the jurisdiction of the North commandant’s office. In December 1941, it came under the control of the German Civil Administration.
The left bank of Pervomaysk (Olviopol and Bogopol) became an administrative centre of the Pervomaysk gebiet (area), within the Nikolayev district of the Reichskommissariat Ukraine.
The right bank of Pervomaysk (Holta) came under Romanian jurisdiction starting on October 28, 1941. It became an administrative center of the Golta uyezd (administrative subdivision) in Transnistria.
Some two thousand of Jews were unable to escape the town. Hundreds of Jews were killed during the first days of the occupation. Military authorities established a Judenrat. In August 1941, theJews who had survived were relocated to a separate part of the town. They were forced to perform hard labour.
On November 13, 1941, under the pretext of fighting typhoid, prisoners were shot by SD command with the help of the local police. The head of the operation was Geytel, an ethnic German. About 30 families managed to survive; these were the families of specialists, including doctors. Many of them were subsequently killed during January 1942. In 1943, 72 more prisoners were killed.
At the end of 1941 through the beginning of 1942, Jews from the Kirovograd region were brought to the town to be shot there. 120 people from Yosipovka were killed in the shtetl. That winter, about 500 Jews from Bessarabia, Bukovina, and Vinnitsa regions were deported there. They were placed into two ghettos and one camp. As of February 20, 1942, 125 people lived in ghetto #1. The head of this ghetto was David Gays. 67 people lived in ghetto #2. Four prisoners escaped this ghetto, and two prisoners died. In 1943, 303 people lived in ghetto #3. 280 of these prisoners had been deported from Romania, 251 from Bucharest, and the rest of the Jews were from Bessarabia.

On April 29, 1943, under the order of local authorities, the prisoners were made to wear a white star of David (measuring 5 cm) on their backs and chests.
On February 20, 1943, only 202 prisoners out of 488 were considered fit to work. 104 of them had specialized jobs. The occupiers determined that they spent 250-300 occupation reichsmarks (about 0.6 marks) a day for 1 person. At the same time, for their work, Jews were given food coupons; these were valued at two reichsmarks for skilled workers and one reichsmark for unskilled ones. On the basis of this analysis, authorities decided to transfer the prisoners to Akmechetka where they were supposed to “feed themselves on their own”. They transferred 81 people in total: 60 prisoners from the working camp and 21 from both ghettos. Starting on March 7, 1943, the occupiers distributed ration coupons only to those prisoners who considered fit to work. The rest had to “feed themselves on their own”.

In April 1943, there were only 162 Jews remaining in both ghettos: 126 men, 30 women, and 6 children. 133 of these were sent to the camp at Akmechetka. In May of that year, prisoners deemed fit to work received food coupons as before, but starting in August they would only receive 75% of the previous sum.

On October 20, 1943, Romanian authorities inspected the ghetto. They remarked that most of the houses didn’t have window frames, that prisoners were sleeping in their everyday clothes, and that they were dirty because they didn’t have water. In ghetto #1 there were 97 people left. Working prisoner got 2-4 marks and were suffering from starvation. In the smaller ghetto #3, the conditions were found to be a little better with 25 people living in four little rooms. In the camp there were 140 prisoners remaining, who were deported from Bessarabia and Vapniarka camp.
From the spring untilDecember, 1943, the Organisation Todt had been building a bridge to connect Southern Transnistria and the German occupation zone. As a result, the majority of the prisoners were moved to the camps between Trikhaty and Ochakov.

In the late summer 1943, Jews tried to escape from Holta, with some of them forging documents. On October 28, 1943, the authorities of Transnistria deported back 43 Jews who had tried to run away from Holta. They began to control the prisoners more thoroughly. The chief of the police forbade leaving the ghetto after 7 p.m. Each working day lasted from 6 a.m. till 2 p.m., without breakfast. Prisoners came back from their work at 3 p.m. and were not allowed to leave the ghetto. They were forbidden to spend the night outside the ghetto.
On September 30, 1943, the first nine Jews from Chernovtsy were legally returned from Holta to their native town. In January 31, 1943, more Jews were “evacuated”. On January 20, 1944, the only remaining ghetto of Holta was in the center of the town, under the control of local authorities. Due to German troops entering the town, Jews were moved to the working camp, under Romanian guard. Although some prisoners died of starvation and illness, most of the prisoners managed to survive.

According to the documents of the Extraordinary State Commission, 120 Jews were shot in Pervomaysk during November, 3,600 during December, and 1,600 from February to March 1942. These numbers are exaggerated. Pervomaysk was liberated on March 22, 1944. A monument to Holocaust victims was subequently established there.
According to eyewitnesses, the ghetto in Holta was situated in the triangle formed by Grushevsky, Engels and Tolstoy streets.

In the 1960s, a monument was established at the site of the shooting at Kozorezyev Yar. The monument did not identify the nationality of those who had been murdered. A menorah was set upon that monument in the 2000s by the Rozenfeld, Borik, and Shenkin families. Local Ukrainian blacksmiths had made that menorah for free, but it didn’t last long; the menorah was stolen and sold as scrap. A new menorah was established, funded by local authorities. Students from school #17 regularly come to tidy the grave.

In 2010’s, a place where Jews from Moldova were shot was found by teacher Anna Sizova and her students from school #15. A monument was established there:

Holocaust memorial erected by members of Grosfirer family in 2020’s:

After the WWII

After the war, up to 2000 Jews came back to Pervomaysk.
Old Nakhman (surname unknown) was an unofficial rabbi there. He had a Torah, and old men would gather at his place to pray.
Until recently there were even Jewish blocks in Pervomaysk. Old-timers remember untouched streets with Jewish houses, that had been preserved up to the 1970s.
Since the late 1890s, Jews have started to emigrate to Israel, the USA, and Germany in great numbers. An official Jewish community was formed by Gennadiy Shenkin in 1997. At that time, more than 1,000 Jews lived in the town. A branch of the Sokhnut (Jewish Agency) organization was opened in the town. For five years it assisted the majority of local Jews in immigrating to Israel.
A local Khesed organization helped Jewish elders. At that time, many Jews joined the community.
In the 1990s to 2000s, a Jewish Klezmer Band was active in the local Jewish community.

Head of local Chabad Synagogue in Pervomaisk, 2020

Famous Jews from Bogopol/Holta/Olviopol/Pervomaysk

Ishayagu Rafalovich (1870, Bogopol – 1956), was a rabbi, photographer and Doctor of Philosophy. Since 1882, he lived in Israel and studied in Yeshiva Ets-Khaim. From 1898-1902 he was a rabbi in Manchester, and from 1909-1924 – in Liverpool. Since 1924, he was a chief rabbi in Brazil.

Grigoriy Fingerman (Bogopol, 1890 – ?), was a psychologist. Since 1891, he lived in Argentina. He had been active in the Jewish youth movement.
There was a Jewish cemetery in each of three shtetls.

Zelig Brodetsky (1888, Olviopol – 1954, London) was a mathematician and Zionist activist. He immigrated to England with his parents at a young age and studied mathematics and mathematical astronomy at Cambridge and Leipzig. From 1920 to 1949, he was a professor at Leeds University, where he taught mathematics. Brodetsky was a convinced Zionist from an early age. In 1928, he became a member of the Executive Committee of the Zionist Organization of England. He joined the Board of Directors of the Jewish Agency, heading its political department in London. He ended his career in 1948 when he succeeded Chaim Weizmann as President of the British Zionist Federation. From 1949 to 1952, he served as President of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem.

Zelig Brodetsky

Jewish cemeteries

A cemetery in Olviopol was functioning in the late 1940s, but it was closed in the 1950s. Relatives were allowed to rebury the bodies at other cemeteries, after which that land was given to different private needs of the citizens.

Pervomaysk (Bogopol) Jewish cemetery

Khodorkov a village in the Zhytomyr district,  Zhytomyr region. According to the 2001 census, the village had a population of 1,371.

In 1793, after second partition of Poland, Khodorkov became part of the Russian Empire.
In the 19th and early 20th centuries, it was a shtetl in the Skvira district, Kyiv province.

In 1787, 349 Jews were living in the shtetl.

Center of Khodorkov, 2021

In 1864, 1,421 Jews were living in the shtetl, comprising 43% of the population.
In 1900, 3,299 Jews lived in the Khodorkov volost (district), 15% of the population. Most of them lived in the shtetl of Khodorkov.

Administrative building of sugar factory, 2021

In 1887, a felt production facility in Khodorkov was owned by Gersh Simkovich Heylomsky.

At the beginning of the 20th century, there were about 100 shops in the shtetl.

Pond on the river Irpen in the center of Khodorkov

One of the central enterprises in the shtetl was a sugar factory, which employed up to 900 people, many of whom were Jewish. From 1909 to 1915, the director and distributor of the factory was M.B. Galperin.

Khodorkov entrepreneurs list from Russian Empire Business Directories by 1913:

In 1910, there was a Talmud Torah and three private Jewish schools (for boys and girls) in the shtetl.
At the beginning of World War I, there were eight synagogues, a Jewish hospital, a gymnasium, and a Jewish home for the elderly in the shtetl.
By the beginning of 1917, about 5,000 people were living in Khodorkov, with more than half being Jews. In addition, there were 200 shops, over a thousand Jewish homes in the shtetl, and six synagogues.

Pogroms

During the Civil War (1917-1920), Khodorkov ceased to exist as a Jewish shtetl due to numerous pogroms that forced Jews to flee to other places. 
With the onset of the Revolution, chaos and anarchy reigned in the shtetl.
The Kovalyovskiy gang carried out the first pogrom in the shtetl in the winter of 1919. They engaged in looting only, and there were no human casualties. Then, in the spring of 1919, the Ogorodnikov gang appeared, which killed 17 people and looted the entire shtetl.

Plan of the shtetl from archive documents:

At the beginning of the power vacuum in the town, a Jewish self-defence force of 200 people was organized. It was armed with three machine guns and 200 rifles. For a long time, it successfully resisted local gangs. Finally, however, the Ukrainian Galician Army disarmed the self-defence force and it could no longer prevent the town’s destruction by local Ukrainian bands.

Center of the shtetl, 2021:

In 1919, Ukrainian rebel detachments committed three bloody Jewish pogroms in Khodorkov on June 15, August, and October.

In the fall of 1919, the town was under the control of the Denikin army for six weeks. During this time, 150 Jews were killed, 40 Jewish women were raped, and several houses were burned down. In addition, the Denikin troops tortured Jews, demanding more and more ransom money. Many Jews were injured as Denikin’s soldiers mass slaughtered people with swords.

The bands of Mordalevich and Kovalevsky carried out the two most extensive pogroms on May and April 24, 1920. During one of them, the town centre was burned down, and Jews were driven into a local pond and shot. As a result of the fire, the town was utterly destroyed. The surviving Jewish population fled to Kyiv and Zhytomyr.

A Bolshevik partisan detachment operated in Khodorkov, commanded by Shamis, most likely a Jew.

More information about pogroms in Khodorkov can be found netormoz.wordpress.com and jewishvirtuallibrary.org

Results of pogroms in Khodorkov…

In 1922, a clinic was opened in the town, headed by Dr Eisenstadt.
In 1923, 3,838 people lived here, but the share of the Jewish population has yet to be discovered.

I could not find information about Jews in the town in the 1930s.

Pre-Revolution of the building of the school in Khodorkov:

In the fall of 1941, the Nazis shot 22 people. The rest of the Jews were taken to the district centre and killed.

After the war, three Jewish families returned to the village. Some of their descendants live in Zhytomyr.

No Jews were living in the village in the 1990s.

During my visit to the town in the spring of 2021, I found a small monument in the deserted town centre, erected in memory of the destroyed Jewish community of Khodorkov. A QR code on the memorial led to a website that no longer existed. So I can assume that person who installed it has already died…

Famous Jews from Khodorkov

Naum Yevseyevich Oyslander (1893, Khodorkov – 1962, Moscow) was a Jewish poet, writer, critic, and literary scholar who wrote in Yiddish.

Mikhail Davidovich Baron (1894, Khodorkov – ?) was an anarchist who later became a Bolshevik and commander of Ukrainian communist insurgent formations. He was one of the founders of the Ukrainian Red Cossacks.

Genealogy

Online archive documents can be found here.

Jewish cemetery

According to residents’ memories, in the 1970s, Jews from Kyiv came and reburied the bodies of the Holocaust victims in the Jewish cemetery. Also, in the 1970s, people were hired, and they renewed the ditch around the Jewish cemetery.

Two mass graves of victims of the fascists and “White Guard bands” are located here.

Kornyn is a village in Zhytomyr district, Zhytomyr region. According to the 2014 census, the village had a population of 2283 people.

After the second partition of Poland in 1793, Kornyn became part of the Russian Empire.
In the 19th and early 20th centuries, it was a shtetl in the Radomyshl district of Kyiv province.

In the summer of 2022, I visited the town in search of any traces of the Jewish population, but I could not find anything. The only remaining old building in the village is the ruins of an old mill, which is the only witness to the existence of a Jewish community here.

Kornyn belonged to the Brusilov kagal. According to the 1765 census, 7 Jews were living here. However, in 1787, no Jews were recorded in the settlement.
In 1900, there were 418 Jews (3% of the total population) living in the Kornyn area. One of the central enterprises in the town was a sugar factory, which employed several hundred people, many of whom were Jewish.

Kornyn entrepreneurs list from Russian Empire Business Directories by 1913:

Monument to the truck in Kornyn, 2021:

In 1904, the only pharmacy in the town belonged to Sh. Altman, and the pharmacist working there was A.-M. Yakhman-Ikhelzon.

At the beginning of World War I, about 800 Jews were living in Kornyn. The town had 200 Jewish houses, 25 shops, four large enterprises, and five religious institutions (synagogues, cheders, and Talmud Torahs).

Kornyn, 2021:

Kornyn ceased to exist as a Jewish shtetl during the Civil War of 1917-1920 when Jews were forced to flee to other places due to numerous pogroms.
The town experienced five pogroms:
– In December 1918, shooting and looting of Jewish property took place during a fair, but there were no human casualties.
– In March 1919, a gang led by Svyatnenko organized a pogrom in the town, resulting in the death of 4 Jews.
– In April 1919, a rebel detachment captured Kornyn and killed 16 Jews.
– In May 1919, an unknown gang broke into the town and killed 8 Jews.
– A week after the fourth pogrom, Sokolov’s gang broke into the town, killing 8 Jews and maiming many others. Many Jewish women were raped.

List of pogrom victims:

Bandits killed one Ukrainian family for hiding a Jewish boy.

On June 26, 1919, a rebel detachment captured Kornin and began to loot and commit violence against the Jewish population. Many Jews fled to Fastov and Kyiv, and local peasants looted their property. Most refugees from Kornin became victims of a typhus epidemic, with a mortality rate of up to 90%.|

Result of pogroms in Kornyn…

Jewish houses and shops were looted and destroyed by local peasants.

I could not find any information about the residence of Jews in the village after 1920.

Genealogy

Some documents related to Jews of Kornyn can be found here.

Jewish cemetery

I didn’t find remains of the Jewish cemetery in Kornyn. In Wikimapia, somebody mark a small plot of the land as Destroyed Jewish cemetery. I make a shot from this place to opposite side of Irpen river:

Bazar is a village in the Korosten district of the Zhytomyr region. In the early 1980s, about 2,500 people lived here, but most of the population left after the Chornobyl disaster. As of 2019, 573 people lived in Bazar.

In the 19th and early 20th centuries, Bazar was a town in the Ovruch district of the Volyn province.

During the Soviet period, Bazar was a district centre until 1956. From 1956, it was a village in the Malyn district, then in the Narodychi district.

I visited the village during my expedition in the summer of 2019. At that time, I could talk to the head of the town, who provided information about the Jews who lived in the village after World War II.

I took many facts for this article from the book by Aaron Shinderman (1877-1968), “From the Pale of Settlement to Kotel”.

Bazar mentioned it for the first time in Polish documents in 1613. Jews began to settle in Bazar in the late 18th century. Their number grew and peaked before World War I when about 200 Jewish families lived in the town.

Ruins of old Pre-WWII houses  in Bazar:

At the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, most Jews in the town were craftsmen and lived in extreme poverty. Only three wealthy families owned the majority of the shops and houses in the shtetls. They all demanded a place of honour in the Synagogue, which led to constant quarrels. As a result, second and third synagogues were built. Therefore, on Rosh Hashanah, the rabbi was forced to lead the prayer in one and blow the shofar in the second and third synagogues.

The village was essentially divided into two social classes – the property owners and the ordinary “working” people. Non-property owners did not have the right to vote on any community matters. Most villagers lived in poverty and subsisted very meagerly from their gardens.

In 1890, Cantor Itschok-Isaac Lerman worked as a cantor in the Synagogue and was also a melamed, teaching the best students in the village.

In 1890, the village rabbi passed away, and the Jews invited Nahum-Ber Shinderman, who lived in the neighbouring village of Sukharevka, to take the position. At that time, he already had six children. He held this position until he died in 1911. His son Shmaryahu succeeded him as a rabbi.

Center of the village, 2019:

Aaron Shinderman mentions the following villagers from the late 19th to early 20th century in his book:
– cantor Itschok-Isaac Lerman, who was also a melamed and taught the best students in the village, including Leybl Kipnis, Pin Rozman, and Shmuel Samulinski.
– 3 brothers shoemakers , the Chitryns.
– the Mayman family – one of the three wealthy families in the village, including Yakov Mayman, a lumber trader.

Old PreRevolution building in Bazar, 2019:

Shmaryahu Shinderman (1895-1981, Israel) was the rabbi of Bazar until the Soviet authorities closed the synagogues in the 1920s. In 1926, he participated in a congress of rabbis in Korosten. He is present in a group photo taken at the congress, but it is unknown where he is in the picture. In 1920s, he moved to Israel.

In the magazine “Yalkut Volyne”, Shmaryahu Shinderman wrote two short articles about Bazar.

Former Jewish neighbourhood in Bazar, 2019

In November 1921, 359 soldiers of the Ukrainian National Republic army who participated in the Second Winter Campaign and were taken prisoner by the Bolsheviks were executed in the village.

In 1926-27, the Big Synagogue and the Chornobyl Synagogue were active in Bazar. Big Synagogue was closed in 1930, and the building has not been preserved.

According to the historian Kruglov, in Bazar in September 1941, 140 Jews were shot, on November 21, 1941, 29 Jews were shot. And on November 26, 1941, 7 Jews were shot.

The majority of Jews were taken for execution to the village of Ksaverov. In the 1990s, a local resident Sergey Matviychuk mentioned that around 50 Jews were shot in a field to the northwest of the town, and their remains were reburied in the Jewish cemetery (the exact location is unknown).

I can assume that during the second and third shootings, specialists who were left alive after the first shooting were killed.

Yad Vashem has another information about Holocaust in Bazar.

In the centre of the town, there is a mass grave of Soviet soldiers who died while liberating the Bazar from the Germans. Soviet soldiers who later died of wounds at the local military hospital were buried here too.

Even before World War II, the entire Pokrovskaya street was inhabited by Jews. There are ruins of a synagogue located on the street. After the war, the building was used as a pharmacy. It was closed in 2010s, and a fire occurred in the building. I can assume that it was the Chernobyl synagogue, which was mentioned by Rosa Chernaya in her memoirs.

Ruins of synagogue in Bazar, 2019:

In 1996, a historian Leonid Kogan from Zvyagil, visited the village. He managed to talk to the last Jew in the village, Rosa Efimovna Chernaya, born in 1919 and originally from Chornobyl. According to her, in the 1950s, up to 50 Jews lived in Bazar.

During my visit in 2019, local residents remembered some of them:
Beba Naumovna Golubovskaya
Rosa Yukhimovna (surname unknown), who worked in the library
Tsiyal Grigoryevna (surname unknown), who was the director of a kindergarten
When the Bazar district was disbanded due to administrative reform, many people from the village left.

Jewish cemetery

At the end of the 19th century, there was no Jewish cemetery in Bazar, and Jews buried their dead in the village of Ksaverov. Although now there are remnants of the local Jewish cemetery on the outskirts of Bazar. It began to be used in the early 20th century.

Road to Jewish cemetery:

The remains of the Jewish cemetery locates in a birch grove about 1.5 km west of the village, with an approximate size of 110×80 meters. It is overgrown with vegetation, and before the war, it was fenced. Old believers from the village of Brodnik dug a ditch around the cemetery. There are still about 8 gravestones. One of them belongs to Zavalkovskaya R.Y. (1903-1945). The other one has the year 675 /1914-1915/. The gravestones are from brick and cement.

The last burials were around 1955 (an old man and an old woman were buried), but their graves are not marked. In the beginning of 1990s, the sister of Rosa Chernaya was buried in the Christian cemetery. In the 1980s, the head of the pharmacy, Polina Isakovna Morgulis, died and was buried in Kyiv.

In 2015, Jews from Zhytomyr came to the village and cleared the remaining Jewish cemetery from overgrowth.

Ulanov is a village in the Khmelnitsky district of the Vinnitsa region. According to the 2001 census, the population of Ulanov was 3,038.

From the 19th – early 20th centuries, Ulanov was a shtetl in the Litinsky district of the Podolsk province.

I visited Ulanov in 2020, I managed to talk with Yadviga Stepanovna Mikolyuk, born in 1928, who lived all her life near Jews and remembered a lot. I did not manage to find any local historian who could tell me about the Jews of Ulanov.

Yadviga Stepanovna Mikolyuk

A lot of information about the Jews of Ulanov was provided by Anatoly Kerzhner, a descendant of the last Jews of Ulanov.

Anatoly Kerzhner

Only the old Jewish cemetery, several Jewish buildings and the mass grave of the Jews of Ulanov, Salnitsa and the surrounding villages, who were killed by the Nazis and their henchmen during the Great Patriotic War, remain in the town.

The first mention of the Jewish community of Ulanov dates back to 1765. According to the data for 1784, there were 201 Jews here. And already according to the 1897 census, there were 2000 Jews in Ulanov out of 2047 inhabitants.

The shtetl is also famous for the fact that the grandson of the founder of Hasidism (the Baal Shem Tov), Rabbi Dov-Ber from Ulanov, lived and was buried here. Very little is known about him – there are several Hasidic stories where he appears. It is said that he was so similar to his grandfather that the Hasidim, remembering the Baal Shem Tov, specially came to him to look at him, to remember the face of their Teacher himself.

Centre of Ulanov:

Former Jewish meighborhood and shtetls centre in Ulanov

At the end of the 19th century, the city had 283 houses, 2497 inhabitants, a church, a Catholic church, a synagogue, 2 Jewish prayer houses, a town hall, 2 mills, 22 shops, 79 artisans, a sugar factory (founded in 1864, which employed 200 people), a pharmacy, a school with 2 teachers and 66 students. There were 10 fairs a year.

At the beginning of the twentieth century in Ulanov there was a private male one-class Jewish school of the 3rd category, a synagogue and 2 Jewish prayer houses.

During the years of the Revolution of 1917-1920, the Jewish population of the town suffered from pogroms of many gangs, like the entire Jewish population of the Podolsk province, but I could not find any exact data on the pogroms and the number of victims.

Center of Ulanov, 2020:

In the 1920s, a Jewish collective farm and Jewish artels (cooperative associations) were organized in the town.

A 7-year-old Jewish school, which was closed in the 1930s, was also established in the town.

In the late 1920s many Jews who worked in trade were forced to look for work in crafts or in agriculture (some Jewish families created the “Dairy Farm” cooperative). The Jewish settlement council worked in the shtetl in the 1920s and 1930s.

In 1926, Jews accounted for 82% of the total population of Ulanov, and in 1939 1,188 Jews lived in Ulanov, which accounted for 70.5% of the total population.

In the 1930s, the authorities closed both synagogues in the shtetl. The wooden synagogue was dismantled, and a cinema and a club were made in the second one. There is now a school on the site of the wooden synagogue. The building of the second synagogue has been preserved.

Synagogue in Ulanov, 2020:

Market square in Ulanov, 2020:

Holocaust

German troops entered the shtetl on July 15, 1941, and the persecution of the Jews immediately began: they could become a target for mockery or even murder for fun, their property was looted, many were forcibly involved in forced labour. The Germans forced the local population to draw crosses on their houses and thus identify Jewish houses.

After 1 month of occupation, the first in the town to be shot were 40 people of the Komsomol and communists; all of them were Ukrainians.

The Germans concentrated the Jewish population in a ghetto consisting of 3-4 streets surrounded by a barbed wire fence. Before the war, these streets were mostly inhabited by Jews. On one side, the ghetto was surrounded by a small river, and on the other side it ran into Lenin Street – the main street of the town.

A local Jew called Moshko Mogailo was appointed head of the ghetto by the Germans.

The ghetto was guarded by local policemen, one of them, nicknamed Pockmarked, was especially cruel to Jews.

Contributions were regularly imposed on the ghetto, and until it was paid, Jews were taken hostage, and threatened with execution.

Streets of former ghetto in Ulanov, 2020:

Soldiers who had left the encirclement and were drafted into the Red Army before the arrival of the Germans returned to the ghetto – Srul’ Korman and Khil and Efraim Morozovsky, Arbisman. Only Ephraim Morozovsky managed to survive the war.

Several hundred young people from the ghetto were sent to build a German bunker in Kalinovka. After the work was completed, they were all shot.

As of August 1941, there were approx. 1000 people. In December 1941, about 300-400 Jews from the neighboring village of Salnitsa were deported to the Ulanov ghetto. In the spring of 1942, another 150 Jews were deported there, as well as other Jews who were caught in the area over the following months.

On the night of June 10, 1942, the Germans prepared a pit 36 by 4 meters between the Polish and Ukrainian cemetery. At 8 o’clock in the morning, the entire Jewish population was expelled from the ghetto to the market square. According to the list, specialists and their families were called from the crowd of people and closed in the school building. The rest of the Jews were driven to the grave that was dug in advance.

People were forced to undress, go to the grave and lie down in a row of 10 people face down. A German from a machine gun shot people in the back of the head, when the row was full, they ordered the second row to lie down. The local policemen stood in a cordon, but several of them wanted to participate directly in the execution, and the Germans gave them such an opportunity. The shooting lasted 7 days.

Old-timers recall an incident that occurred on that terrible summer day – one Jew named Benchik suddenly stood up and began to urge the others not to give in: “Jews, run away!” – and he ran into the wheat field. But he was quickly overtaken by automatic fire. The executions continued for several days – after that, the earth shuddered for several more days. Jews were also brought here from the surrounding villages; for example, the blacksmith Chaim lived in the village of Pagurtsy – the Germans did not touch him at first, since they needed him. But as soon as the need for him disappeared, he and his entire family were taken to the execution pit.

The specialists left alive were transferred to the second, smaller ghetto. They were shot in a month.

The last action of executions, it seems, took place in December 1942, when the last of the Jews were shot.

Only those Jews who left the ghetto before the execution managed to survive:

Khait (hiding with friends in the village of Morozovka), Sonya (last name unknown, lived in Ulanovka after the war), Kulchinsky, Mezhiritser and his niece.

I could not find any evidence of those who miraculously survived and got out of the execution pit in Ulanov.

Monument on Holocaust mass grave in Ulanov, 1940s-1950s. Photo from Yad Vashem

The data on the number of victims varies. According to various documents – up to 2850 people; modern researchers somewhat lower this figure – for example, the Kharkiv historian of the Holocaust A. Kruglov calculates the number of victims in Ulanov as approximately 900 people.

Ulanov was liberated by Soviet troops on March 10, 1944.

Mass grave in Ulanov, 1945

Immediately after the war, a metal monument and a pipe fence along the perimeter of the grave were erected on the grave of the victims of the Holocaust. The inscription (in Hebrew and in Russian) read: “Here lies the ashes of over 2,500 victims of German fascism, tortured, brutally shot and buried alive by the citizens of Ulanov and Salnitsa …”. Every year, a solemn memorial ceremony was held at this place: Jews – former residents of Ulanov came to participate in the ceremony and honor the memory of their loved ones. In 2001, instead of iron, a cemented fence was made.

On June 19, 2011 in Ulanov, a new monument was erected, on the initiative of Mikhail Yulievich Antsis. Relatives of Antsis lived before the war in Salnitsa and died in Ulanov.

More information about Holocaust in Ulanov can be found in Yad Vashem website.

After the WWII

After the war, several evacuated families returned to Ulanov, as well as a few survivors of the Holocaust (in total about 30 people):

· The family of the tailor Mezhiritser. His first family wife and 2 children died during the Second World War, he married Voskoboynikova from Salnitsy – their son Misha lives in Israel.
· The military commissar Krvchinsky’s family.
· Pesya Kerzhner and her daughters.
· The hairdresser Kuchinsky with 2 sons.
· The cooper Naum Kulchinsky; matzah was baked in his house for Pesach.
· The tailor Khait, whose wife and 3 children died during the war.
· The Kotlubovsky family
· Zabarki
· Fishman, whose first family was killed by the Germans and he married a Jewish woman, Eta, who also lost her family during the Holocaust.

Shumskiy and Fishman families in Ulanov, beginning of 1960s

The unofficial rabbi was Mezhiritser; he organized the funerals and people went to pray in his house.

Also, in the 1950s and ‘60s, old people used to gather to pray at Pesya Kerzhner’s house.

In 1957, the district center was moved to the city of Khmelnik, and Ulanov lost part of its population – many, including many Jews, moved to live in Khmilnik, or Vinnitsa, and some went even further.

The last Jewish wedding in Ulanov was in the 1970s, when Zina Veretnik married Yosya (surname unknown).

The last Jewish woman who lived in Ulanov, Sofia Isaakovna Kerzhner, moved in 2001 to Vinnitsa.

Former Jewish house in Ulanov, 2020:

Also my photos from Ulanov:

Jewish cemetery

Grave of rabbi Dov-Ber from Ulanov, disciple of Baal Shem Tov

Jewish cemetery in 1980s-1990s. Phot by rosetta.nli.org.il

View to the river from the Jewish cemetery:

Salnytsya is a village in Khmelnytskyi district of Vinnytsia Oblast in Ukraine.

In the 19th and early 20th centuries, it was a shtetl of Litin County of Podolia Governorate.

Jews called the village “Solchev” in Yiddish.

Most of the information for this article was taken from the book “Roads of Memory” by Faina Braverman, a native of Salnytsya (1923, Salnytsya – 2003, Kyiv), which I accidentally bought in 2019. Parts of this book can be found here.

Book of Faina Braverman

A lot of information was also taken from a three-hour interview by Sophia Attenzon (Becker) with the Shoah Foundation, where she described the pre-war history of Salnytsya and how her family survived the Holocaust.

Sophia Attenzon (Becker)

I visited the village during my expedition in 2020. Vera Stepanenko, who works in the Salnytsya library and is the author of the village’s website, was very helpful to me on the spot.

Of the pre-revolutionary buildings in the village, only the house of the wealthy Jew Rofker has survived. The house was built of red brick and, in Soviet times, belonged to the local collective farm.

Rofkers house:

In 1870, there was one synagogue in Salnytsya. In 1889, there were three synagogues. In 1885, a Jew owned a brewery in Salnytsya. In 1910, there were two synagogues in Salnytsya, including one Hasidic synagogue.
In 1914, Jews owned the only lumber yard, pharmacy stores, confectionery store, and brewery in Salnytsya, six grocery stores, eleven handicraft shops, and only wine and wine gastronomic goods store.

Salnitsya entrepreneurs list from Russian Empire Business Directories by 1913

In October 1920, during a pogrom carried out by units of the 1st Cavalry Army, more than 30 Jews were killed in Salnytsya.

I could not find information about other pogroms during the Civil War of 1917-1920. Still, judging by the slight decrease in the Jewish population (minus 20%), the pogroms did not have as destructive consequences as in other towns in Ukraine, where the Jewish population was either significantly reduced or forced to flee.

In the early 1920s, a mikvah and cheders operated in Salnytsya, but later they were closed.

Former center of the shtetl, 2020

In the 1920s, a Jewish collective farm named Komintern was organized in the village. Ida Zemlyak worked as an accountant there.

In the 1920s, a four-class Jewish school was established in the village, with a director and one teacher, each of whom taught in two classes. The director of the Jewish school was Israel Markovich Litenecky, who had a large family of five children. In 1937, he was arrested as a Zionist and never returned to the village. His entire family perished during the Holocaust. Interestingly, several other Jews reported Litenecky to the NKVD.

Site of the Jewish school in Salnytsya:

There was also a Ukrainian 10th-grade school, which most of the Jewish children attended.

In her book, Faina Braverman mentions many names of her fellow villagers who lived in the village in the 1920s-1930s:

– The family of rabbi Galperovich. The rabbi himself no longer lived in the village, but his wife Muntsa lived here with their three children: the eldest Rosa, the middle Dora, and the youngest Mendele. The four were among the few Jews in Salyntsya who survived the Holocaust. All three children lived in Leningrad after the war. Munetsya died shortly after the WWII in Khmelnytsky.
– The shochet Simkha Gershenzvit and his wife Tuba, and their daughters Fanya, Rahil, and Sara. Their house was on a hill, which made it the only house in the village with steps leading down instead of up. Simkha also performed the function of a mohel. Sara and Rahil worked in hospitals during the war, as they had medical education. After the war, they lived in Leningrad, and Jews and Ukrainians from Salyntsya constantly stayed in their house.
– The algebra and geometry teacher Netis. The Gildenersh family were the only Jews in the village to have a plot of land near their house where an apple orchard grew. The Kulchinsky family earned a living by weaving wicker baskets. The head of the family was called Leyb and his son Kiva. Kiva had a daughter Manya and a son Misha. Misha Gitstein fought on the front, survived, and lived in Kharkiv after the war.
– The family of the melamed Mosenkin, who earned a living by weaving women’s stockings. In the 1920s-1930s, the melamed could no longer teach Torah to children for free. Jewish families with the surnames Shram, Shumsky, Polonsky, Ugrinovsky, Karpovsky, and Ostrovsky.
– The Falis family: the head of the family’s first wife died, leaving behind two daughters. His second wife, Bilya, gave birth to a daughter Rivka.

Last class of the Ukrainian school, 1930

Teachers of local Ukrainian school, 1935

Before the war, there were two synagogues in Salyntsya. One was called “di kloiz,” and the other “di shil.” Di shil was larger. They were located on the riverbank but at opposite ends of the village. But during my visit to the village in 2020, local elders recalled that the synagogue was situated in the centre of the village opposite the modern building of the village council. This wooden synagogue was dismantled before the war.

Hitlerner-Orlov David Naumovich was born in 1904 in Salnytsya. He became the village council chairman in 1930 and held this position from 1946 to 1958. He died in 1996 in Kyiv.

Leizer Broufman was the head of the Komsomol organization in the town. He was killed together with the Jews during the Holocaust.

Boris Lazarovich Haskelberg (1918, Salnytsya – ?) was drafted into the army from the town in 1938. He was demobilized as a disabled veteran after numerous injuries in 1944. He worked in various legal institutions in the USSR.
There was no doctor in the village but a paramedic named Solovyev. During the war, he was remembered for his bad attitude towards Jews.

Buildings of collective farm in Salnytsya:

Holocaust

In July 1941, Salnytsya was occupied by German-Romanian forces.
Ukrainian Marievich was appointed as the commandant, who humiliated and mocked Jews in every possible way, like other policemen. Among the policemen, there was not a single person who treated Jews relatively well. Jews were forced to do the dirtiest work.

In December 1941, all Jews were driven to the Ulanov ghetto. No transportation was provided, and everyone was forced to walk 10 km. After Jews settled in the ghetto, the Germans announced the payment of a contribution, and Jews were forced to collect money and valuables and give them to the Germans.
Some Jews were allowed to return to Salnytsya for a bribe but were later evicted to the Ulanov ghetto or killed directly in the village.

The Jews of Salnytsya were shot along with all the Jews of the Ulanov ghetto on June 10, 1942. Several days before the shooting, the Ulanov pharmacist Israel Dondar gave poison to anyone who wanted it, and some Jews ended their lives by suicide before the shooting pit.

Mass grave in Ulanov, 2020

Jew Cibushnik was a member of the Communist Party and managed to evacuate himself, but his wife and children remained under occupation and were murdered. After the war, he married a Ukrainian woman and named his two born children after his killed children – Misha and Sara.

Every July 10, surviving Salnytsya Jews and their descendants come to the Ulanov mass grave to commemorate the anniversary of the shooting.

Sofia Atenson (née Becker), born in 1917, mentioned several names of her classmates who died during the Holocaust in her interview in 1998: Bela Muchnik, Genya Karpovskaya, and Klava Arbisman.

Central street of the village, 2020

After the WWII

Vera Stepanenko reviewed the archive of the village council for 1944-1946 and found Jews in the lists of residents who returned here after the village was liberated:
– David Naumovich Hitlerner with his wife Raisa Yudanina and daughter Olga, and in 1947 daughter Faina was born; Usher Matveevich Atenzons with his wife Sofia and son Dmitry, and in 1947 son Leonid was born; in 1960 – son Grigory
– Isaac Iosifovich Abel with his wife Prilutskaya Sura and daughter Ludmila
– Shimon Moiseevich Sirotа (? – 1997) with his wife Roza Kravets and children Pobortsov Vladimir and daughter Maria was born in 1946;
– Roza Kravets (worked in a store)
– Maria (Muntsa) Mikhailovna Galperovich with her children Roza, Dora, and son Mikhail (Mendel)
– 60-year-old Maiselis Frida (Freidl) Meirovna
– Raisa Solomonovna Estis (left in 1948).

After the war, about 20-30 Jews lived here. But their number constantly decreased as the elderly died and the youth left for the big cities of the USSR.

Site of the syangogue in the center of former shtetl…

In 1960s-1970s, a monument was erected in the village to fellow villagers who died in the ranks of the Red Army. But in the lists of the names of the fallen soldiers, there are almost no Jews who were drafted in 1941.

In the late 1960s, the Atenzons built a brick house in the centre of Salnytsya. Sofia Leybovna Atenzon worked as an accountant. They raised and educated three sons. Usher Matveevich worked as the head of the Salnytsya pharmacy for almost 40 years, from 1944 to 1983. In 1984, due to the parents’ advanced age, the eldest son Dmitry Atenzon took them to Vinnytsia, where Usher died in 1994.

Sofia and Usher Atenzon

In the 1990s, after the death of their parents, Vladimir Pobortsev returned to the village from Moldova. He lived in the family home. Vladimir passed away in February 2020. He was the last Jew in Salnytsya…

Jewish history of Salnytsya is a sad story, so let this cute Salnytsya kitty be here

Jewish cemetery

The Jewish cemetery was no longer used, and deceased Jews were buried in the Ukrainian cemetery.

Yanushpol (until 1946, known as Ivanpol) is an urban-type settlement located in the Chudnivsky district of the Zhytomyr region.

I visited Yanushpol during my expedition in the summer of 2020. The local history teacher, Alona Groza, shared with me many facts about the Jewish community of the village.

Additionally, much of the information for this article was taken from an interview with Semion Bekker, born in 1935, which he gave to the Shoa Foundation project in Mariupol in 1998.

Semion Bekker

Yanushpol was founded in the 17th century as Yanushpol of the Volyn voivodeship within the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. From 1793, it was a part of the Russian Empire and was a shtetls in the Zhytomyr uyezd of the Volyn guberniya. From the late 1930s until 1954, it was the district centre.

Center of Yanushpol, 2020:

Schieve Raeder probably around 1900 , probably in Yanuspol. She’s behind the table, behind man in center with child in front of him. Photo provided by Brian Chenensky

In 1873, there were two synagogues in Yanushpol. At the end of the 19th century, there was a synagogue and a Talmud Torah. The main occupation of the Jewish population was trade, including the business of bread and livestock.

Yanushpol entrepreneurs list from Russian Empire Business Directories by 1913

From March 25-29, 1919, Yanushpol was the site of a pogrom carried out by forces of the Ukrainian Directory.

Approximate site of the synagogue in the center of the shtetl, 2020

In the 1920s, a Jewish school was opened in Yanushpol. However, the school was closed in 1937.

Jewish school in Yanushpol

In the 1930s, all of the synagogues in Yanushpol were closed. However, the rabbi continued to live in Yanushpol and performed the duties of a shochet (ritual slaughtered).

Two of the sons of thois religious family, both standing left, died at the front. The grandmother was a rabbi’s daughter married to shoihet. She was shot by Germans in Yanushpol. Survivor reported that she shouted Shma Israel just before she was killed

In 1939-1940, two brothers Roitmas who server in Red Army, were killed in action during the war with Japan.  

Holocaust

On July 3, 1941, German forces entered Yanushpol. Immediately after the occupation, the Germans evicted Jews from their homes. Police officers arrived with the Germans, who were not residents and wore black uniforms.

An open ghetto was organized in the centre of the town. It covered an area of 400 by 600 meters and was the place of residence for most of the local Jews before the war. There was no fence around the ghetto, but Jews could not leave it. All Jews were registered. Food was not supplied to the ghetto, and Jews survived on what they could barter with residents for their possessions or valuables.
The first group of people to be shot in Yanushpol were communists, including 32 Jews.

During WWII, there was a police station and prison

Former Jewish teacher Filipov was appointed the head of the ghetto, and the Germans passed orders to the Jews through him. Later, he died along with all the prisoners of the ghetto.
In the fall of 1941, Jews who survived shootings in other places, such as Chudnov, began to settle in the ghetto. Germans registered refugees too.
In the late spring of 1942, the Germans gathered all the Jews in the ghetto on the central street several times and released them to make the Jews accustomed and not expect anything wrong. However, after the announcement of the first gathering, many escaped and went into hiding. After the Jews were gathered for the third time, they were all taken in a column to the place where they were shot.

According to Martin Dean, about 80 Jews fit to work were selected and sent to the camp of Berdychiv, where they were exterminated.

In the early summer of 1942, near the sugar factory, Roma, two prisoners of war, and the Zvyagelsky family (a Ukrainian husband, Jewish wife Golad, and their 4-year-old child) were shot. Their bodies were reburied at the memorial in the centre of the village in the 1960s, along with all the single graves around the town.

Graves in the centre of village:

Locals destroyed Jewish houses in the centre of the village after the shooting.

Yanushpol was liberated by the Soviet army on January 7, 1944.

A total of 1,171 Jews were killed in the area.

In 1980s, during the trial of the participant in the shootings, the mass grave was opened, and the bodies were counted – 811 people (499 adults and 312 children).

More information about the Holocaust in Yanuspol can be found yadvashem.org  and yahadmap.org

After the WWII

Rakhil Leybovna Portnaya survived, although her parents died.

Isaak Portnoy and David Starik returned to the town from the army after the end of the war.

During the occupation, the Becker family survived by hiding and not joining the column of Jews who were taken to be shot. Later, they fought in a partisan unit. After the town’s liberation, Rosa Becker and her two children moved to her husband in the Far East. He had been drafted into the army before the war started. The family returned to the town after the father was demobilized in 1948.

The exact number of Jews who lived there after the war could not be found.
In 1952, Semen Becker was expelled from school because of his Jewishness, as an anti-Semitic campaign was unfolding in the country, known as the Doctors’ plot.

Former shtetl’s market square, 2020

Shlomo Weinbrand was sent to work at the school as a teacher. He was born in 1923 in the town of Slovechno. Before the war, he had completed school and had volunteered for the front. He was wounded three times. He graduated from the Zhytomyr Pedagogical Institute. He worked for 45 years in a school in Yanushpole. At the end of 1990, he moved with his wife, son, and daughter to Kiryat Motzkin (Israel).

Shlomo Weinbrand

In 1989, there were 5 Jews (0.1%) living in the town.
The last Jews in the village were an older woman named Sonya (last name unknown), whose son took her to live with him, and a shopkeeper named Rakhil (last name unknown), who left the village in the 1980s.

Ruins of ols Jewish house in the center of Yanushpol

On June 18, 2018, a memorial was erected in the centre of the village in memory of the Holocaust victims.

Famous Jews from Yanushpol

Elya Brodsky (1865, Yanushpol – 1924, Kalinovka Podolskaya guberniya), a rabbi. The son of the famous rabbi Yaakov-Shmuel B. was killed in 1919 by Petliura’s men. He received a traditional Jewish religious education. From 1890 to 1924, he was the rabbi of Kalinovka. An active participant in the religious Zionist movement.

Harvey Leibenstein (1922, Yanushpol – 1994, Cambridge, USA) – an American economist.

Harvey Leibenstein

Jewish cemetery

The Jewish cemetery was destroyed during the war when the tombstones were used for construction.

Steblev is an urban-type settlement in the Korsun-Shevchenkivskyi district of the Cherkasy region.
In the 19th and early 20th centuries, Steblev was a shtetl in the Kanev county of Kyiv province.

Information about the Jews of Steblev for this article was collected over more than 30 years by Klavdiya Kolesnikova, the director of the Jewish Museum in Korsun.

I visited Steblev in the summer of 2020 but could not find any information about the Jews in the town. Of the approximately one and a half thousand Jews who once lived in the town, only an overgrown Jewish cemetery remains.

Center of the former shtetl, 2020:

Jews began to settle in Steblev in the 17th century, but I could not find more accurate data.

There is mention of 2 prayer houses (1864) and one synagogue (1900 and 1913) in Steblev. In 1910, there was a private male Jewish school in Steblev. However, the Brockhaus and Efron Encyclopedias indicate 5 Jewish prayer houses in Steblev, which seems more plausible.

In the 1840s, the leaders of the Steblev kahal were Gershko Letichevsky, Avrum Mogilevsky, and Sruul Zaslavsky. In 1840, they received 40 rubles from the Kanev burgher Yoska Weinshen for freeing his family from conscription, but they kept the money and did not record it in the kahal’s books. As a result, the court found their actions illegal.

Steblev entrepreneurs list from Russian Empire Business Directories by 1913

Same in the text:

In March 1847, the constable Greenewich sent his scribe and chancellor to Steblev with a secret order to remove and take away all the hats and belts of the local Jews. The order was executed, and the items were delivered to the constable. But the Steblev Jews, outraged by this violence, filed a petition with the county court, valuing their fur hats and belts at 200 rubles in silver.
In the second half of the 19th century, Ovsey Liberman owned the Steblev sugar-refining plant. In 1891, Leyba Spivak rented the Steblyov woollen mill, which employed Jews.

Plan of bath (mikveh) in Steblev, 1908

List of the visitors of the Stebliv synagogue “Beis aMidrash”, 1902-1903:

In 1911, the manager of the Steblev pharmacy was the burgher Liber Eleevich Sheinblum, and the provisor was Yakov Iosifovich Aizenshtein. During World War I, in 1915-1916, military units were quartered in Jewish houses in Steblev and the village of Komarovka.

Yaretskiy family, Steblev beginning of 20 century

Civil War pogroms

After the two revolutions of 1917, Ukraine was swept by a wave of Jewish pogroms. The Kyiv regional archive holds a report by the fighter of the Steblev Jewish self-defence Bentsion Odessky, which describes this period in the town’s life.
The first time bandits entered the town was in May 1919. Half of the town was robbed. A month after this raid, a group of bandits and the Churupovtsy detachment carried out another attack on Steblev. During this raid, seven people were killed, and most Jews were robbed. During both pogroms, the local guard, consisting of Ukrainians, took part in the looting, so the Jews decided to organize self-defence. Its organizer was Gersh Goldenberg. Weapons were purchased from peasants for them.

Zemskiy hospital in Steblev. It was build in 1914

In the summer of 1919, thanks to the heroism of Gersh Goldenberg and Israel Blaslavsky, self-defence repelled the first attack. After that, more and more Jewish youth began to join the detachment. The detachment constantly repelled bandit attacks on the town.
During the retreat of the Denikin troops in the fall of 1919, thanks to agreements with the local non-Jewish intelligentsia, a clash with the Denikin army was avoided, as it was stronger, larger, and better armed than the Jewish self-defence.

Steblev Jewish self-defence, 1919

After the December Denikin pogrom in Korsun, Korsun Jews fled in different directions, especially to Steblev.
The report mentions one name of a fallen detachment member – Gedali Kutsubnevsky.
In November 1920, during the Medvinsk district uprising against the Bolsheviks, Steblev was raided by rebels under the leadership of Tsvetkovsky. The troops stationed in Steblev had a connection with the bandits and forced the guard to retreat. The bandits took over the town, robbed it, and killed 27 people – almost all elderly men. A month after this raid (December 1920), Tsvetkovsky led another attack on Steblev. His gang consisted of 300 infantrymen and 150 cavalrymen. The guard consisted of 60 people. The fight between the guard and the bandits lasted 4.5 hours, and the bandits retreated with losses.

Between the Wars

Report of JDC, regarding state of Jewish institutions in Steblev in the beginning of 1920s:

In the Cherkasy regional archive are records of cases brought against the Jewish residents of Steblev in the late 1920s for illegal trade or unpaid taxes. The cases include Steblev entrepreneurs: Matus Leybovich Rubinsky, Yankel Davidovich Khilkovsky, Abram Aronovich Dizhur and Eilik Froimovich Gutman, and Masha Leybovna Zaritska.

Sugar’s label from the Stelev’s factory of Ovsey Liberman

In 1929, two Jewish collective farms were created in the Korsun region: “Evpakhari” in Korsun and the “12th Anniversary of the October Revolution” collective farm in Steblev. They existed until the beginning of the Great Patriotic War. Very little is known about the “12th Anniversary of the October Revolution” collective farm, but in 1934, its chairman was Honor, and the party secretary was Vishnevetsky. Among the activists were Shmul and Lev Vinogradsky.

PreRevolution school in Steblev. Now it is used as a sawmill:

In the 1920s and 1930s, there was an outflow of young people from small towns to big cities, with more opportunities for education, professional growth, and advancement.
Over 30 years of her work, Kladviya Kolenikova managed to collect family memories of Steblev Jews. She recorded and kept stories that were shared with her by the descendants of the families: Zeltsman, Fishbeyn, Khilkovsky, Kaganov, and Belyavsky. In the 1930s, the shochet in the town was Shaya Yudilevich. The Zeltsman family, Isaac and Rebecca, worked in the pharmacy. Avrum Pinkhosovich Fishbein worked in the rural store.
Between the Revolution and the Second World War, the Jewish population of Steblev significantly decreased due to the destruction of the centuries-old economic system, the ban on private entrepreneurship, collectivization, and political repression. Before the Second World War, 200-300 Jews lived there.

Aizik and Revekka Zaltsman in Steblev pharmacy, 1939. Aizik was drafted to Red Army and disappeared in 1942.

I. Toporovskiy with wife and children, Steblev 1941

Holocaust

German troops occupied Steblev on July 29, 1941. According to residents’ memories, the Germans mocked the religious Jew Yankel Khilkovsky (born in 1870) and set fire to his beard.
The exact date of the execution of the Jewish population is not known. According to some sources, it was in August-September 1941, and according to others, it was in the winter of 1941-1942. Taking into account the time of the destruction of the Jewish population in neighbouring towns, I lean towards the second version.
The execution took place in the Dovzhik ravine, on the bank of the Ros River, where the local population used to take clay before the war. Here, local police officers dug two pits measuring two by 4 meters.

Local Jews were gathered and informed that they would be taken to the railway station in Korsun for resettlement. At first, they were led in that direction, but near the Rost River, they were turned and led towards a ravine where they were all shot.
According to eyewitnesses, 76-year-old Basya Belyavskaya led the doomed people, and when they were brought to the pit, she gave a police officer a gold coin so that she would be shot first and would not see the death of her children.
The exact location of the mass grave is not known, but it is said to be not far from the modern-day beach on the banks of the Ross River.

Perished in Steblev:

Until recently, it was believed that 143 Jews were shot in Steblev – the number in the list stored in the State Archives of the Cherkasy region, but in 2009, a book by Sergei Khavrusya, “How the War Was” was published in which he named 15 new names. And recently, a native of Steblev, Petr Abramovich Fishbeyn, born in 1929, worked as a Russian language and literature teacher at the evening school in Korsun for many years and now lives in Israel, named 11 more names of his relatives and classmates. So the final number is 169 people.

After the WWII

After the town’s liberation, several Jewish families returned from evacuation and the front.

Rebecca Zaltsman returned with her son Anatoly, the widow of the head of the family Isaac Zeltsman, who died at the front. Before the war, she worked at the pharmacy. Anatoly graduated from school in Steblev and moved to Moscow, where Rebecca also went and died in 1983.

Rebecca Zaltsman, Steblev 1951

From Anatoly Zaltsman’s memoirs: “I was the only Jew in school for all nine years of my education. Another girl appeared in the 1st grade when I had already graduated.”

According to the memoirs of Peter Rashkovsky: “In the 1960s, I went to Steblev with my father, where he visited his Jewish friends. At that time, many Jewish houses were still in the centre of the former town. There was a store near the department store in the centre where a Jewish woman sold kerosene. My father spoke to her in Yiddish.”

After the war, the number of Jews in Steblev gradually decreased: people died or left for other cities and countries. The last Jewish woman in the town was Sonya Kupersmidt. She moved to Kyiv to live with her son in 1976.

In 2007, a memorial was installed at the site of the shooting of Steblev Jews in the Dovzhik ravine. The initiators of the monument installation were Petr Rashkovsky and Klavdiya Kolesnikova from Korsun. Before the COVID-19 epidemic in 2020, a local Ukrainian family voluntarily maintained the area around the monument. However, the head of the family died from COVID-19, and his widow moved to Germany.

Ros River near the Steblev, 2020:

Famous Jews from Steblev

Boris Alexandrovich Feldman (1907, Steblev, Kanevsky district, Kyiv province – 1985, Moscow), a polygrapher and doctor of technical sciences.

Genealogy

Valuable documents and different lists can be found here.

Jewish cemetery

The Jewish cemetery is heavily overgrown, and it is difficult to accurately count the number of gravestones. However, in the 2010s, someone attempted to excavate the graves.

Shenderivka is a village in the Korsun-Shevchenkivskyi district of Cherkasy region. It is situated on the right bank of the Ros River, near its confluence with the Borovytsia River.
In the 19th and early 20th centuries, Shenderivka was a shtetl in Kaniv County of Kyiv Governorate.

Information about the Jews of Shenderovka for this article was collected for over 30 years by Klavdiya Kolesnikova, the director of the Jewish museum in Korsun.

The first written mention of the village dates back to 1659.
In 1807, the village was granted town status, and trade and crafts flourished. Markets were held every two weeks on Mondays and bazaars on Fridays. The population of the town in 1864 was 2260 people.

Centre of former shtetl, 2020:

In 1860, a Jewish man named Balagovsky bought a sugar factory and much of the surrounding forests in Sidorivka, Shenderivka volost. In the early 20th century, the Shenderivka town council was almost entirely composed of Jews. The town elder was Haskal Minashev Portnoy, his assistant was Mordko Dovidov Korsunsky, and the tax collector was David Gofreyriner.
Shenderivka also had its own synagogue in 1900. According to the memories of Riva Yankelovna Schwartzburd, born in Shenderivka in 1910, the synagogue was in the centre of the town where the modern school now stands. It was pretty spacious, with two floors: the lower floor for men and the upper floor for women. In the centre was a raised platform for reading the Torah. All Torah scrolls and prayer books were kept in a special wall cabinet called the “orn koidesh” (ark). Kerosene lamps illuminated the synagogue.

In the book “The Entire Southwest Region: A Reference and Address Book for Kyiv, Volyn, and Podolsk Governorates,” published in Kyiv in 1913, there is information about 35 Shenderivka Jews who were engaged in trade: they sold pharmaceuticals, wine, leather, manufactured goods, flour, fish, and cattle.

Shenderovka entrepreneurs list from Russian Empire Business Directories by 1913

Among them was the Kitaygorodsky family, who ran a store herring of sale and various household items for peasants.

From the 19th century to the early 20th century, the village had woollen, sugar, distillery, brick factories, three water mills, three windmills, a roller mill, and a forest harbour. By 1903, the town’s population had grown to 5980, with more than 700 Jews living there. The Jews lived in the centre of the town, which was called “Mestechko” by the non-Jewish locals. Before World War I, there were about 145 Jewish houses in Mestechko.

List of Shenderovka Jews 1913-1917 collected by local historian Grigoriy Gorbenko:

During 1917-1921, various military forces passed through the village, including the troops of the Directorate, Atamans Grigoriev and Nestor Makhno, Denikin’s troops, and units of the Red Army. Most of them at least looted the Jewish population.
In the same summer of 1918, a terrible pogrom occurred in Shenderovka, called the “Bartholomew Night”. A former resident of this town recounted the event. Still, it was unclear from his story who carried out the pogrom: “On the third day of my arrival in Korsun, many refugees from Shenderovka arrived early in the morning and told of a pogrom of a cruel and savage nature that took place during the night. They mercilessly beat older adults, women, and children. The shooting was like on a battlefield; it was impossible to leave the house. They broke, looted, and destroyed… One girl went insane from either violence or fear, which is still a mystery. The Jews scattered to Korsun, Steblev, Boguslav, and Zvenigorodka.”

In Shenderovka, from 1917-1921, there were three pogroms and several minor attacks. Seven people were killed, five were wounded, and six died from epidemics. The number of refugees who arrived in Boguslav was 50. The entire Jewish population was repeatedly robbed.

In 1919-1920, a Jewish self-defence unit was organized to defend the town against small gangs.

As a result of the revolutions, the manor and economy of the nobility were plundered, trade, which was concentrated in the hands of Jews, declined, and only the diesel mill built at the beginning of the 20th century by the nobleman Rogozinsky remained partially active as a large industrial facility. In addition to the mill and the noble estate, the power station supplied electricity to about thirty peasant houses.
On May 29, 1921, the town’s residents gathered to appeal to the Soviet authorities not to disband the self-defence unit. All the town residents signed the document, which became a population census. List of these people:

Private trade resumed in the town during the NEP period (1921-1928). However, after the end of the NEP in the late 1920s, the town’s economic life was finally destroyed, and most Jews were left without work. This caused massive emigration to the Donbas, where labour was demanded to build new factories, mines, and plants. It was then that most of the Jews left Shenderovka.

In 1928, one of the Shenderovka synagogues was converted into a school.

In the 1990s-2000s, Klavliya Kolesnik recorded memoirs about Jewish life before World War II among the natives of Shenderovka: Riva Yankelovna Shvartsburd (born in 1910), Solomon Shlemovich Portnoy (born in 1914), both from Shenderovka, and Basya Solomonovna Belokopyt (born in 1912) from Korsun.

Jews who was born in Shenderovka:

Approximately 1,000 people died of starvation in the village during the famine of 1932-1933, though it’s unclear how many were Jews. In 1937-1938, 19 villagers were arrested and sentenced to execution by the NKVD “troikas,” but it’s unknown if any of them were Jewish. The Jewish school was closed in 1935.
Jankel Portnoy was in charge of the village store before World War II. He and his entire family perished during the Holocaust.

Site of synagogue in Shenderovka, 2020

On July 29, 1941, Germans entered Shenderovka. During the first few months, the Gestapo arrested and executed about 50 communists and Komsomol members. In September, the local authorities ordered the Jews to gather, telling them they would be resettled elsewhere. They were allowed to bring 32 kg of personal belongings with them. The next day, they were convoyed to the district centre and executed in Kushevskoy Yar near Korsun.
Only a few people managed to survive.Then 64 Jews from Shenderivka perished.

As residents found out, the daughter and mother of Kuk and Raya Portny were not killed along with everyone else. After numerous rapes, they were killed in 1942. After the liberation of Korsun  and the surrounding area from the Germans in 1944, a special commission opened a mass grave in Kushchevsky Yar, where 2,200 Jewish bodies from the Korsun region were discovered.

In 1944, Shenderivka became the epicentre of the final stage of the Korsun -Shevchenko Battle of 1944, where 517 Soviet soldiers died in the battles for Shenderivka. Among the participants of the Korsun -Shevchenko Battle were also Jews. In Shenderivka, Captain Yuri Lazarovich Vater, a native of Riga and a Soviet Army officer, was seriously wounded and captured. After being tortured, the Germans hanged him. Posthumously, Yuri Vater was awarded the Order of Lenin. A monument was erected at the site of his death, and a museum in his memory was opened in a local school. One of the central streets of Shenderivka is named after him.

After the WWII

After the war, local Jews did not return to the village. 

In the late 1940s, Nelik Srulovich Goldich worked as a teacher at the school. Most likely, he was sent to work there from another place.

Some Jewish families from Shenderivka lived in Korsun after the war, most of whom had left Shenderivka in the 1920s.
Here are the stories of some of them:

– Nakhel Gershkovich Rashkovsky (1900-1971) and his wife Malka-Khaseya Nutovna Rashkovsky (Kitaygorodskaya) (1903-1970). During the evacuation, two of their children died. After the war, their son Peter was born, he immigrated to Israel in 2020.
– Gersh and Riva Schwartzburd (nee Doinova). They had two sons, one of whom died in a car accident in 1946 and the other in San Francisco in 2022. Riva lived in Korsun until 1999, after which she moved to her son in San Francisco, where she lived to be 96 years old.
– The family of Semen Portnoy. Semen was born in Shenderivka in 1914 after the start of World War I, so his Jewish name was Shalom. Semen fought on the fronts of World War II, survived, was a correspondent for the Cherkasy newspaper, lived in Shpola and Zvenyhorodka, and in Korsun, where he died, he had a son and a daughter.
– The Kautsky family
– The Kolesnikov family

Semion Portnoy and Klavdiya Kolesnikova, Korsun 1996

Genealogy

More documents about Jews of Shenderovka can be found here.

Jewish cemetery

Residents stole stones from the Jewish cemetery, which was partially used as a garden. In 2020, I could only find one tombstone, the inscription of which is impossible to read.

Site of Jewish cemetery in Shenderovka, 2020

Last gravestone which locates on destroyed Jewish cemetery

Borshagovka is a village located in Pohrebyshchenskyi district of Vinnytsia district, Ukraine. In 2022, approximately 500 people lived there. Borshagovka locates near the confluence of the Orikhovatka and the Ros Rivers.

In 1793, after the second partition of Poland, Borshagovka became a part of the Russian Empire. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, Borshagovka was a shtetls of the Skvira of Kyiv guibernia.

Historically, the village was divided into three parts: Mestechko (the centre with a market square where Jews mostly lived), Sad, and Zarechye.

Most of the information about the Jews of Borshagovka after the Revolution was obtained from an interview with a native of Borshagovka , Rakhil Karp, which she gave to the Shoa Foundation in the 1990s. Her entire family did not evacuate from the shtetl in 1941 and was executed in Pohrebyshche.

Rakhil Karp during the interview to Shoa Foundation, end of 1990s

In the summer of 2022, I visited a village in search of any traces of the Jews and found only the remains of a destroyed Jewish cemetery and a few fragments of tombstones.

Borshagovka in 2020s:

In 1708, on the orders of Hetman Mazepa, the general judge Vasily Kochubey and the Poltava colonel Ivan Iskra were executed in the village. In 1908, on the 200th anniversary of the execution, a monument made from black stone was erected in the centre of the village. This monument is the oldest architectural object here.

Group of local Jewish woman near the monument in the center of Borshagovka, 1938

In 1863, there was a synagogue in Borshagovka . From the 1880s, Rabbi Shlomo-Doyv-Ber Shapiro (1854–?) was the rabbi, followed by his son Yakov-Itskhok.

After the 1861 reform, Count Rzhevusky, who owned most of the land around Borshagovka, leased it to a local Jew named Gabe. According to the laws of 1881, Jews were prohibited from owning land, and then wealthy local Ukrainians began to lease the county land. In the centre of the shtetl was a Jewish mikveh on the Ros River.

In the early 20th century, thanks to the local Jewish community, a road was built connecting shtetls with Skvіra.

Among the wealthy residents of shtetl, there were merchant Singer and his son-in-law Chernov, who were said to be millionaires.

Borshagovka entrepreneurs list from Russian Empire Business Directories by 1913

Pogroms

Borshagovka ceased to exist as a Jewish village during the Civil War of 1917-1920 when, due to numerous pogroms, Jews were forced to flee to other places.

From the memories of Rakhil Karp:
The Sokolovsky gang request a considerable sum of money from Jews. Bandits took 25 hostages and locked them in the synagogue. Jews failed to collect, and 20 hostages were killed. The village was burned from three sides. Residents actively participated in the pogroms. The most notable was Anton Lipinskiy, a Pole who led a gang and killed many Jews in the village.

Market square still a market square, 2023:

The town was destroyed due to pogroms in the summer and autumn of 1919. Here are the descriptions of the five largest ones:

June 1919 – numerous attacks by local gangs with human casualties.
July 1919 – Sokolovsky’s gang burned down shops and houses, killed ten people and injured 15, who later died from their wounds. Many women were raped.
July 1919 – on the day of the fair, Sherbanyuk’s gang burst into the town, took 43 men outside the town limits and killed them with swords, while 17 people were killed in the town. In addition, the property of Jews was looted.
August 1919 – Sokolovsky’s gang and Mezhinsky’s detachment broke into the town. Jews hid in the synagogue and the bathhouse but were pulled out and killed. Women and children mostly hid in the bathhouse, where they were dragged out, raped, and killed. One hundred twenty people were killed with incredible cruelty. Among the names of the dead were Bril Tsalikes and Shimshon Rybak.
In September 1919, Sokolovsky’s gang was operating around the town. All the Jews who could walk joined the retreating Red Army, and about 40 families left the town. Only sick and wounded Jews who could not walk remained. The gang invaded the town and burned down the last intact street. The remaining Jews were gathered by the bandits and thrown into the fire. As a result, 150 women and children were killed.

Description of pogroms in Borshagovka:

In total, up to 600 local Jews were killed during the pogroms.
Only poor people from Dzyunkiv came to Borshagovka to ask the local peasants for bread.
When Red Army soldiers caught Anton Lipinsk, one of the local militants, and executed him, the peasants from Borshagovka took revenge on the poor people from Dzyunkiv and killed them.

After the pogroms, the population fled to Skvira or Tetiev. In Skvira, most refugees died of hunger or typhus.
In Tetiev majority of Jews were killed during the bloody pogrom.

More information about pogroms in Borshagovka can be found here netormoz.wordpress.com

Rakhil Karp mentioned in her interview for the Shoa Foundation in 1998 that she was named after her grandmother, who died of grief after her husband and two sons were killed during the pogrom of 1919. Her husband and younger son were burned in the synagogue in Borshagovka, while the older son Moshko died during the Tetiev pogrom. At the same time, part of the mother’s family of Rakhil Karp were killed – her brother Isaac Alpert, pregnant sister Malia with two children and her husband.

Rahil Karp with causin Israel Itskovich Alpert, Borshagovka 1921. In the 1920s, Khava Alpert with his son, moved to the USA. They lived in New York and sent different packages to Borshagovka until the start of WWII.

The report on the disastrous situation of the Jews in Borshagovka was signed by three residents: Yakov Malsky, Chaim Levenberg, and Yosef Tsap. After establishing Soviet power in the 1920s, many Jews returned to the town.

In the 1920s, there was a Jewish school in the village. In the 1920s and 1930s, Jewish youth left the town and went to larger cities in the USSR after finishing school.

Here are the names and occupations of the Jews in Borshagovka in the 1920s mentioned by Rahil Karp in her interview:
– Pavelotsky was engaged in grain procurement
– The Karp family, Pinya and Maryasya, with their daughter Rahil, moved to Kyiv in the 1930s
– Chaim Karp was a shoemaker

The Jews were craftsmen, shoemakers, tailors, and one tinsmith. All of them were equally poor and lived relatively poorly.

The synagogue building was located on the town’s central street, not far from the church and the cathedral. The synagogue was a two-story building. It ceased to function as a synagogue in the 1920s. The building was destroyed during World War II.

Approximate site of the synagogue in Borshagovka:

There are also several heavily rebuilt Jewish houses in the centre of the former shtetl:

No rabbi was in the town, and he was invited from another town. A melamed in the village went to houses and taught children to read and write. There was no separate building for teaching, and the lesson was held in the student’s homes in turn.

Before Passover, the Jews kashered one house and baked matzo there for the entire town.

The Jewish population, like the non-Jewish population, suffered from the famine of 1933. Several children in one Jewish family died of hunger. Unfortunately, I was unable to find out the exact number and surname.

Before the war, several dozen Jews lived in Borshagovka. Residents remember that triplets were born in one Jewish family before the war.

Local Jewish woman on the bank Ros river, 1940

School graduates in Borshagovka, June 21, 1941 (1 day before German invasion). 2 – Manya Karp, killed together with parents in Pohrebyshche

Holocaust

At the beginning of the war, none of the Jews from the town could evacuate. The Jewish population of Borshagovka was sent to Pohrebyshche and executed. The family of Rachil Karp, who was called to the front, hid in a neighbouring village called Obozivka for about a year, but someone betrayed them, and they were sent to Pohrebyshche, where they were killed. It is also known that a local peasant woman in Obozivka hid a Jewish girl named Liza.

After the liberation, a trial was planned for three local policemen, but one of them committed suicide. Eventually, the other two were convicted and hanged for their brutality towards Jews and prisoners of war (the POW camp was located near the town). Throughout the occupation, Jews from Dzunkiv, Novofastiv, and Borshagovka were taken to Pohrebyshche and killed.

Only one Jewish woman, Raisa Plotitsa, survived the occupation. She managed to escape to Vinnytsia with the help of a Ukrainian woman named Maria Kaprun, who initially sheltered her in Borshagovka and later gave her documents and sent her away. Raisa survived and lived in San Francisco in the 1990s.

In her interview, Rachil Karp named the following local Jews who perished during the Holocaust:
– Chaim Volkovich Karp (who worked in an artel), his wife Pesa Srulevna, and their daughter Manya, born in 1924.
– The Fuchs family with two sons, Shika Polishchuk, his wife Surka, and their two children
– Elia and Rachilia Plotitsa with their daughter Sonia who was taken to Pohrebyshche
– the Gun family with their daughter and granddaughter
– Daniel Vaisban, his wife, mother-in-law, and son
– Pavlotsky family, including the head of the family, his wife, their daughter Rivka who had tuberculosis, and their granddaughter

Chain Karp, killed in Pohrebyshche when he was 48 years old

Pesa Karp cared for Rivka Pavlotsky, who had tuberculosis, but she died before the general execution.

After the Jews were killed, their homes were looted.

After the WWII

No information is available about the Jews who lived in the town after World War II.

Genealogy

Some documents can be found here

Jewish cemetery

The cemetery is located on the territory of a farm on the picturesque bank of the Ros River. During the German occupation, a slaughterhouse was built on the Jewish cemetery, and all the monuments were taken to an unknown location. After the town’s liberation, buildings for local collective farms were constructed on the site. 

Last gravestones:

Ros river near the cemetery:

Dzyunkov, a village in the Pohrebyshchensky district of Vinnytsia region (Ukraine). Since 1793, it has been part of the Russian Empire.

In the 19th and early 20th centuries, Dzyunkov was a small town in the Berdychivsky district of Kyiv province.

In 2022, I visited Dzyunkov in search of any traces of Jews in the village. Instead, the locals showed me the remains of a Jewish cemetery on the slope of a hill on the outskirts of the village with several stones.

Also, in the middle of the village, there is a vast space where the Jewish houses used to be, in the middle of which is an entrance to an old cellar. According to the locals, the cellar was used by Jews as a refrigerator.

Remains of old cellar, 2023:

I was unable to find much information about the Jews of Dzyunkov.

In 1865, there was a synagogue in Dzyunkov.

Bridge on the river which separate Jewish part of the shtetl from Ukrainian

From 1889, the rabbi of Dzyunkov was Shmuel-Yuda Dinin (1865-?). In 1910, the pharmacy was owned by Shevel Alperovich.

Dzyunkov entrepreneurs list from Russian Empire Business Directories by 1913

Dzyunkov ceased to exist as a Jewish town during the Civil War of 1917-1920 when, due to numerous pogroms, Jews were forced to flee to other places.

Local partisans organized the first pogrom on June 1, 1919. The partisans gathered Jews in the synagogue and demanded a contribution of 300,000 rubles from them. The Jews could only collect 50,000. Then the pogromists killed 35 people with swords. About forty Jews were seriously injured.

The Sokolva gang organized the second pogrom in August 1919. They robbed the city and killed six Jews.

In December, local hooligans attacked the town again. They looted shops and apartments and also killed four Jews.

In February, a detachment of the Volunteer Army invaded the city. Immediately upon their arrival, they began to loot homes and shops, rape women, and beat and torture Jews who fell into their hands. They also killed Rabbi Chaim Dinin, 28, and Eliyahu Zinger, 24. In total, the Denikinists killed seven people.

In March 1920, a local gang led by Strymetsky, 27, who served in the Petlyura army, invaded the city. He looted the city, killed ten Jews, and injured five.

When wealthy Jews saw their lives in danger due to constant attacks and pogroms, especially after local robber Strymetsky began to attack the city very often, they left the town. They moved to Pohrebyshche, where there was organized and armed self-defence.

Former center of the shtetl:

Old paved road under modern asphalt in the centre of former shtetl, 2023

A self-defence force of 70 people with 50 rifles was organized in Dzyunkov, but it did not last long. After the arrival of the Petliurists, they confiscated all weapons.

More information about pogroms in Dzyunkov can be found here.

Non-Jewish part of Dzyunkov, now it is a center of village:

Memorial to soldiers who were drafted from the Dzyunkov and killed in action during WWII (no Jewish names mentioned):

Holocaust

According to the memories of residents, the Germans mocked Jews. For example, they harnessed them to a barrel on wheels and forced them to carry water around the village.
During the war, a German manager named Kurtz in the village participated in the mockery and extermination of the Jewish population.
In April 1942, 94 Jews were shot in D. According to one account, they were deported to Pogrebishche and shot there, while others claim it happened somewhere in the village.
I could not determine if Jews lived in the village after the war.

Genealogy

Some documents can be found here

Jewish cemetery

The Jewish cemetery is located on the slope of a hill.
In the 1980s, up to 50 tombstones could still be seen in the cemetery, but they were stolen in the 1990s. So now, only a few tombstones can be found among the bushes.
At the bottom of the hill stands a solitary house where a local policeman lived after the war and participated in the extermination of the local Jews.

Yes, it is a cemetery…

Novye Mlyny is a village located in the Nezhin district of the Chernihiv region on the left bank of the Seim River. The population was 905 people as of 2006.

During its prime, around 400 Jews were living in Novye Mlyny, and I am describing on this website shtetls where more than 1,000 Jews lived. However, in 2015, I accidentally purchased a book on Amazon called “Mother and Son” by Abram Vilcher. He describes in detail the Jewish town of Novye Mlyny in the early 20th century. The book’s author left the USSR in the 1920s and immigrated to the US with his family. Text from this book was used for this article.

Also, there is possibly the last wooden synagogue in Ukraine.

I visited the town during my expedition in 2020. Besides the synagogue building, no traces were left in the village of Jews having lived there.

Wooden synagogue in Novye Mlyny:

Early in the 19 century, a German engineer passing through the area had realized the commercial potential of building water mills along the banks of the Seim. He built five wooden dams some five hundred feet apart to create waterfalls, and at each site erected a mill to produce flour, edible oils, starch and sugar, using the vast agricultural produce of the surrounding villages. Thus the shtetle obtained its name: Noviye Mlini, new mills.

At the close of the Nineteenth Century, a few Jewish families had settled in the township of Noviye Miini in the State of Chernigov in the Ukraine. By the year 1917, the Jewish community had grown to forty-five families, and during that period they experienced no organized acts of hostility. From time to time, there were incidents of harassment by government officials, acts which often occurred when the perpetrators were short of cash. The Jews kept these events at bay by bribery, a practice which eventually became routine.

Road to Novye Mlyny, 2020

Noviye Mlini, a shtetle in the Ukraine, with a population of some two thousand souls and forty five Jewish families, had two main streets. One from the River Seim, leading from east to west, was known as Sosechnaya Ulitza, the paved street, although its bricks were buried under a cover of mud and sand. Along Sosechnaya Ulitza were lined small wooden buildings, mostly occupied by Jews, housing the stores and markets of the shtetle. Noviye Mlini was a county seat and the trading center of the surrounding villages. A second main street, running perpendicular, south to north, was Zerkovnaya Street, so called because at each end and in the middle were churches. The north end of Zerkovnaya opened onto a large estate with a high fence and an iron gate — the only one in the town. Beyond a large courtyard, a stately house stretched the width of the courtyard, with curving staircases at each end leading to elaborately carved doors. To the right of the courtyard was a strawroofed cottage, typical of the Ukraine. Occupied at one time by serfs of the poretz, the landholder, the cottage was rented to the Jewish community for use as a schoolhouse. It contained two large rooms, one for the heyder, the other for the residence of the melamed the teacher his wife and two-year-old child.

Most of the forty five Jewish families lived clustered around the center of the town, occupying houses rented from their Christian neighbors. Some Jews were artisans: a tailor, a cobbler, a tinsmith, a carpenter, a rag peddler. The majority, however, were engaged in small retail trade. There were a few well-to-do families.

The center of Jewish life was the old synagogue, a log structure, unadorned.

The new synagogue was a wooden structure, two stories’ high, with a balcony for the women. The Torah ark was a wooden commode, elaborately sculptured with lions holding up the tablets of the Ten Commandments. Four hanging kerosene lamps emitted bright light. Overpowering every other object in the shul were two huge stoves, two stories high, covered with black painted sheet metal and overlaid with a golden diamond design.

Syangogue:

Rabbi Moyshe, a short stocky man with an opulent grey beard framing his face and covering his upper chest, stroked his beard

Moishke, a handsome man in his late thirties, was new to Noviye Mlini. He was a refugee from Poland, having fled the German invasion of Russian Poland in 1914. He served the community as a shochet, the ritual slaughterer; as a mohel who circumcised the male infants, and as the chazzan, the cantor.

According to the 1897 census, 349 Jews lived in the town, accounting for 10% of the population.

Market square:

Pogrom

In this year, 1919, autumn approached early. The ten days between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur were unusually solemn for the Jews of Noviye Mlini. There were forebodings. A civil war was raging in Russia and the Red Army was retreating along the River Seim. Day and night, soldiers, horses, wagons and artillery trudged in an endless stream through Noviye Mlini in the direction of Sosnitza, behind the River Desna. The advancing army of General Denikin was only eight miles away. News reached the Jewish community that Denikin’s army, on entering a town, would prey on the Jews, robbing, killing and raping. Although the stories were unconfirmed, the fear was real. Each Jewish family took precautions, sending the young men and women into hiding and burying whatever valuables they had under the brick ovens or in the yard. Yankul der Blekher took no precautions. “Who would touch a pauper?” On the evening of September 14, the Red Army abandoned Noviye Mlini and Denikin’s Army approached. In the vanguard was a Kossack cavalry division dressed in new uniforms, with fur hats, shiny boots and sabres. They were followed by smartly outfitted foot soldiers. In comparison with the shabby Bolshevik mob, Denikin’s cadre looked formidable and invincible. At evening, a high-ranking officer arrived.

Motul and Itze led the cossacks to the home of Yudewitch, a relatively prosperous merchant who lived on the same street. Yudewitch, who had anticipated the events, had left a few days earlier with his wife and two daughters for Konotop. The cossacks broke down the locked door and entered the nicely furnished house. They ransacked it, taking silverware and a clock off the wall. On the table in the kitchen stood two clay jugs filled with buttermilk. One cossack, with a roar of laughter, poured the milk over the heads of Motul and Itze. Motul shivered and wiped his face with his sleeve.

Chaim lived on Sosechnaya Street, across from the shul. He was a refugee from wartorn Lithuania. He had settled in the shtetl in 1915 and opened a barbershop — the first in Noviye Mlini. On each of the two front columns, he had hung a painting. One was of a barbarian with wild, uncombed hair and the other of a well-groomed man with neatly cut hair. Above the two portraits was a sign: “Parikmakherskaya” — barber. Chaim was childless, and bestowed all his love on his wife, Chaika, whom he treated as if she were a little girl. Whoever came in for a haircut was treated to a long discourse on the Bible and the Midrash and to folk stories.

Old PreRevolution building in former shtetl

When the Denikin Army entered Noviye Mlini, the officers flocked to the barbershop. From late in the afternoon through the whole night, Chaim cut hair and shaved officers and cossacks, without a stop. By dawn, he was weak from lack of food and sleep. “Please, let me rest a few minutes; then I’ll be able to give greater service to Your Excellency. I am exhausted,” Chaim pleaded to a high-ranking officer. “I have no time to wait. Go wash your face in cold water and continue.” A drunken cossack followed the officer to the barber’s chair. While Chaim was cutting his hair, the cossack fell asleep. When Chaim began shaving, the razor nicked the man’s face. The cossack jumped from the chair with pain and felt the blood on his face. In anger, he grabbed his rifle and struck Chaim over the head with it, splitting Chaim’s skull. With a roar of a wild beast, Chaim fell — blood pouring from his skull. Chaika, Chaim’s wife, had been hiding in the attic. She heard Chaim’s cry and rushed into the room — now empty of soldiers. Chaim lay dying in a pool of his blood.

Old shtetl’s building in the centre of village

During the night of the pogrom, Katusha heard and saw the roving bands of soldiers, their coming and goings into Luba’s house. As usual, she left early that morning for the marketplace which was crowded with peasants, mostly from outlying villages, busily looting the Jewish stores. The stores belonging to Christians, identified by a large cross painted on their doors, were shut and locked. Egged on by the Denikin officers and cossacks, the peasants plundered the Jewish stores and homes. They carried away everything that was movable. It was a festive occasion.

Shleime Slutsky, a middle aged Jew, lived with his wife, Cheya, and two sons, Simenke, 19, and Kalman, 21, in a house facing the market square. The house was attached to a large hardware store, the most successful store in the shtetle. It was rumoured that Shleime was a gvir — a rich man. While most of the shtetle’s Jews went into hiding, Shleime decided that his family should stay at home to protect the property. He relied upon his long experience of staying out of trouble with the goyim by bribing them. He was fond of saying, “When you grease the axle, the wheel rides smoothly.” On the first night of the pogrom, the family climbed through a secret door into the attic of the store. Miraculously, their home was spared that night. The following morning, peasants broke into the store. The family abandoned their hideout and came down to save their belongings. There was so much loot that the peasants and soldiers just ignored the protesting owners. A new band of young cossacks entered the house and saw the family Cowering in a corner of the living room.

Ruins of old house

The Denikins had used the synagogue as a stable, and Motul saw horse manure, hay, torn prayer books and prayer shawls, and pieces of torn Torah, all scattered upon the floor. A small crowd of fellow Jews who had come out of hiding were cleaning busily. There were greetings without handshakes, expressions without words. “Motul, we’ll have a minyan soon,” said Shmuel, the shamess, caretaker of the shul. “Look around, you may find your tallis or prayerbook. Some can be put together and used.” A small crowd of Jews gathered in the courtyard of the synagogue. Members of the Chevra Kadisha, the burial society, had brought the bodies of three murdered Jews to the synagogue for burial in temporary shallow graves. As was the tradition, a small grave was also dug to bury the torn Torah and prayer books. Among the wailing women and deeply despondent men stood the revered Rabbi Joseph.

As a result of the pogrom, three people were killed – Zyama (brother of Abram Vilcher), hairdresser Chaim, and the son of merchant Shlema Slutsky.

Old house in the centre of village

After Pogroms

After the establishment of Soviet power and the destruction of traditional economic ties, Jews began to leave Novye Mlyny en masse. In the 1920s, most Jews left for Konotop, Chernigov, and other cities of the USSR.

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

I could not find out if any Jews lived in the village at the beginning of World War II.

Grave of soviet soldiers who perished during the village liberation in 1943

After the war, a Jewish janitor worked at the local school, but I needed to determine if he was a local resident or if he was brought in from another place for work after the war.

During my visit in 2020, the synagogue remained closed and was not used for anything in the village. According to the information from residents, only one room in the building was being used. It had been converted into a milk collection point.

Famous Jews from Novye Mlyny

Yosef Haim Brenner (1881, Novye Mlyny – 1921, Israel) was a Jewish writer, literary critic, translator, and one of the pioneers of modern Hebrew literature.

Yosef Haim Brenner

Jewish cemetery

The town did not have a Jewish cemetery, and Jews buried their dead in the Jewish cemetery in Sosnitsa.

Khmelnik is a city and the administrative centre of the Vinnitskiy district. As of 2013, the population of the city was 28,217 people.
Khmelnik is located on the Southern Bug River, dividing it into Old and New cities.

The city was first mentioned in the chronicles in 1363. It was situated 6 km from the Black Road, used by Tatars and Turks during their attacks on Ukraine, and was a gateway to Podolia from the northeast. Therefore, Khmelnik gradually fortified itself, and by 1434, when it became part of Poland, it was a fortified castle with houses around it. In 1448, Khmelnik was granted the Magdeburg law.

In 1793, Khmelnytskyi became part of the Podolian Governorate of the Russian Empire.
In 1881, Khmelnytskyi had one of the largest Jewish communities in the Podolian Governorate. During the Civil War, a Jewish self-defence unit was organized in Khmelnik.

Synagogue in Kkmelnik, 1930’s

Khmelnik entrepreneurs list from Russian Empire Business Directories by 1913:

In the 1920s and 1930s, the Jewish National Council operated, and a school with instruction in Yiddish was in operation. In the late 1930s, all synagogues were closed, and Jews were forced to pray in private homes. There were two rabbis in the town.
In 1935-1935, the only Jewish school in the city was closed, and teachers were repressed.

Old-age home in Khnelnik, 1910s-1920s. Credit by Shlomo Vasilevskiy

In 1934, a unique therapeutic radon water was discovered in Khmelnik, which has no global analogues. Since then, many sanatoriums have been built in the city and declared a resort area.

The 1939 census counted 4,793 Jews in Khmelnik, which constituted 64.8% of the total population. This number does not include the Jews of Ugrinovka, a village near Khmelnik (now part of the city). The Jewish population in the Khmelnik district numbered 810 people, most of whom lived in Ugrinovka.

In 1939-41, Jewish refugees from Poland settled in Khmelnik. Polish refugees were housed in the former synagogue building. Overall, the Jewish population of Khmelnik and Ugrinovka was about 6,000 people by the summer of 1941.

Khmelnik, 1930s. Photo from the collection of Pavlo Zholtovskiy and Stefan Taranushenko.

Part of the information for this article was taken from an interview with Israel Shvitelman, who survived the Khmelnik ghetto. In the 1990s, he gave an interview with the Shoa Foundation.

Khmelnik in 1930s:

Holocaust

When Soviet troops were retreating, German aviation heavily bombed the city. During the retreat, a bridge over the river Bug was blown up. Germans entered the city on June 17, 1941.

The overwhelming majority of Jews could not evacuate and remained under German occupation.

The first order stated that Jews were prohibited from buying anything except for potatoes and peas at the market. But soon, another order explained that a Jew caught at the market would receive from twenty-five to fifty lashes. Thus, the Jewish population was doomed to starvation.

Jews were registered and forced to wear a white armband with the Star of David and later yellow circles with a blue six-pointed star on their clothing. A Judenrat was created, headed by Berko Elzon, Breitman, and others. Jews were subjected to constant humiliation and mockery.

PreRevolutuon building in Khmelnik, 2020

They were only allowed to walk on the side of the road. If Jews did not walk on the side of the road, they were severely beaten.
The commandant Yanka, police chief Tarnavsky, and policemen Dremlyuga and Faryna were especially brutal. In addition, teachers at the local school played an active role in anti-Semitic propaganda.

On August 12, 1941, the Germans executed 229 Jews (mostly older men). According to other data, 360 men were killed, including a rabbi. Local Ukrainian communities also fell into this raid.
At first, they were gathered from all over the city. During the collection of the doomed around the city, if someone said they were sick with typhus, they were immediately shot in their own house.
The doomed were kept for some time in the district council building, where they were heavily tortured. After that, they were shot. After the war, this mass grave was opened, and the wife of a local Jewish hatmaker recognized his body.

Adel (in white dress, surname is unknown) and members of Tsiprin family during her visit to Khmelnik from USA, 1936. All people on the photo were perished during the Holocaust in Khmelnik or Pikov.

In the fall of 1941, Jews from surrounding villages were resettled in the city and Jews deported by Romanians to the Vinnytsia region from Bessarabia and Bukovina.
In the fall of 1941, a ghetto was created. It was located in the old town on Shevchenko Street, on the bank of the Bug River, and was connected to the rest of Khmelnytskyi by a guarded bridge. The ghetto was fenced on one side with barbed wire. The Jewish population of the new city was ordered to move to the old town. The local people immediately looted abandoned houses.

Shevchenko Street, 2020

During the resettlement of Jews, they were robbed.
Ukrainians who lived in the ghetto were not evicted and were very friendly towards the Jews.

Photo from the book “Feniks Khmelnik” by Isaak Resnikov

The ghetto was prohibited from leaving, but Jews were forced to go in search of food, and those caught were either killed or severely beaten. Some Jews were taken from the ghetto to work and were forced to learn trades from local Ukrainian apprentices. In addition, the ghetto was subject to tribute, and the elder of the ghetto would go from house to house and determine how much each household had to contribute in valuables or money.

Old Jewish house in the territory of ghetto, 2020

The elder of the ghetto was David Elzon. Prisoners were used for heavy forced labor, and women were used for harvesting crops. The deceased or those killed in the ghetto were sometimes allowed to be buried in the Jewish cemetery. Jews were forced to take water from the river. The synagogue was located within the ghetto area, and Jews were allowed to pray there.
The elder of the ghetto, David Elzon, had an unusually beautiful daughter. Her father wanted to save her. During a winter outing from the ghetto, she was noticed by the guards on the bridge, and to avoid falling into their hands, she jumped off the bridge and died.

PreRevolution brewery in Khmelnik

At dawn on January 9, 1942, the SS, local police, and those who arrived from Litin surrounded the ghetto and began driving Jews to the Ugrynivsky Bridge. Here, a selection was made of the families of specialists. The remaining prisoners – 5.8 thousand people – were executed outside the city in a pine grove. A week later, on January 16, 1942, 1,240 Jews were killed there. After this, all Jews in the city, including those who had hidden or hidden during the execution, were gathered in the ghetto. White passes were issued to specialists and blue ones to others.

On January 25, 1942, a Gestapo officer saw rabbi Shapiro of Khmelnik. He dragged him out of his hiding place and began beating him, demanding gold. Finally, he pulled him out onto the street and stabbed him in the throat with a knife. Shapiro’s body lay for several days; the Germans did not allow him to be buried.

Grave of rabbi Shapiro in Jewish cemetery:

On June 12, 1942, 360 children were shot dead (Hungarian soldiers took part in the action). The aim of this operation was to destroy all Jewish children in Khmelnik. However, several teenagers managed to run away from the execution site.

The ghetto was liquidated on March 3, 1943, when 1.3 thousand of people were shot. After the ghetto was liquidated, a Jewish labour camp was created (135 people, including eight women). Its prisoners were executed on June 26, 1943: 50 prisoners were shot, and 82 escaped, including 13 who ran away from the execution site.

They were hiding in the territory occupied by the Romanians. There was an underground organization in the ghetto, which included L. Boima-Giller, A. Schwartz, and others. Many arranged secret hiding places in their homes. Several people fled to partisan units (Weisman and others).

Soviet troops liberated Khmelnik on March 10, 1944. In April 1944, several collaborators of the occupiers (deputy chief of police Shchur and others) appeared before a military tribunal. Several dozen Jews were saved by Ukrainians (the Oleksiuk family and others). With the help of a Ukrainian family, Mikhail Klinger and his sister were rescued. Abram Becker survived in the ghetto and then fought in a partisan unit.

Mourning events are held in Khmelnik annually on the third Sunday of August.

Annual meeting in 1988. Photo by Iosef Brener

Meeting in 2020:

Some information about Holocaust in Khmelnik can be found here.
Details of Holocaust in Khmelnik:

After the WWII

After the war, many Jews returned from evacuation. Those who served in the Soviet Army and survived the war also returned.

There was no mohel in the city, and a mohel from Vinnytsia came to perform circumcisions on Jewish boys.
In the 1950s, up to 70% of children in local  Russian school were Jewish.

Khmelnik Holocaust survivors: Izrail Shtivelman with parents, 1950s

Unfortunately, I was unable to find more information about the Jews of Khmelnik in the post-war period.

The Jewish community was officially registered in Khmelnik only in independent Ukraine in the 1990s.
The first head of the community was Semen Moiseevich Berenshtein, who left for Germany in 1998.
After him, this position was taken by Irina Borshchevskaya. She left for Germany in 2001. 

Maria Koltonuk is the head of local Jewish community.

In the 1990s, the majority of Khmelnik’s Jews emigrated to Israel.

The Jewish community tried to regain ownership of the synagogue building but was unsuccessful.

Former syangogue in Kmelnik. Now it belongs to sanatory Radon. Photo by cja.huji.ac.il

In the 1990s, the community had a Jewish choir and ensemble.
One of the community activists was Stern, who gathered a minyan and knew how to pray. Stern lived to be 100 years old.
The last World War II veteran in the community was Goldenberg, the head of the railway sanatorium until retirement.

One of the community activists was Isak Abovich, a former prisoner of the Khmelnik ghetto. He contacted Khmelnik’s Jews living in the USA, Israel, and Germany and raised funds to repair and clean the Holocaust victims’ graves. With the funds raised in 2001-2002, monuments were reconstructed at all Holocaust mass graves.

Fist group of graves:

Second group of graves:

View from the second group of the Holocaust mass graves:

Issak Abovich was the last prisoner of the Khmelnik Ghetto in the local Jewish community. In the 2000s, he moved to Israel to be with his daughter.

Isak Abovich dreamed of these gallows, and he decided to make them a monument.

Old Jewish cemetery

The old Jewish cemetery was destroyed. Now a sports stadium for School No. 4 stands in its place.

New Jewish cemetery

Grave of 360 Holocaust victims who were reburied here:

In the 1960s-1970s, human bones were found on the territory of the ghetto. They were reburied in the Jewish cemetery:

A guard constantly lives in the graveyard and monitors the order.
He compiled a list of graves: