Moshny

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

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

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

Moshny was granted Magdeburg rights in 1592.

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

A fire in 1881 destroyed sixty Jewish homes.

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

PreRevolution photo of market square in Moshny

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

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

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

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

Site of the synagogue in the center of Moshny

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

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

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

There was a Moshny Jewish cemetery in this field, 2017

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