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Katerinopol

Katerinopol

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

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Beginning

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

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

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

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

Jewish population of Katerinopol:
1797 – 1360 Jews
1847 – 1077 Jews
1897 – 1980 (27,5%)
1920 – 1260
1923 – 1587
1939 – 395 Jews.
2016 ~ 5

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

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

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

Katerinopol entrepreneurs list from Russian Empire Business Directories by 1913

Katerinopol entrepreneurs list from Russian Empire Business Directories by 1913

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

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

Rebuilded former Jewish shop in the center of Katerinopol, 2017

Rebuilded former Jewish shop in the center of Katerinopol, 2017

The synagogue was closed in 1927.

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

Holocaust

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

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

Memorial on the Holocaust mass grave in village Brodetske. Photo was taken from <a href="http://novadoba.com.ua/25145-kozhna-obrubana-gilka-zagublene-zhyttya.html" srcset=

novadoba.com.ua” width=”595″ height=”399″> Memorial on the Holocaust mass grave in village Brodetske. Photo was taken from novadoba.com.ua

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

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

Vera Spivak

Vera Spivak

After the War

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

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

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

Famous Jews from Katerinopol

Wolf Isaac Ladejinsky (1899, Katerinopol – 1975, USA),  agricultural economist and researcher, author of agricultural reform in PostWWII Japan.

Wolf Isaac Ladejinsky

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

Maria Yefimovna Kotliarova

Maria Yefimovna Kotliarova

Jewish cemetery

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

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

Маня Хазан
ум. 7 дика 1928

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

Information was taken from Lo-Tishkah website.

Genealogy

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

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

Comments

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2 Comments

  1. Гороховский -это видимо мой прадед. Мой дед родился в Брацлавом. Но я там их фамилии не нашла. Мой прадед был светский учитель, меламед, а также преподаватель в гимназии.

  2. Мой дед Юзя Хаит родился судя по ветхой справке, в Катеринополе. Однако Хаиты исходя по моим поискам, жили не в Катеринополе, а в Лысянке или Звенигородке. Моя прабабушка была Шик. Портные возможно произошла от одного из лысянковских Хаитов, который перебрался в Катеринополь и поменял фамилию.

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