Yanushpol

Yanushpol (until 1946, known as Ivanopol) 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 Hroza, 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.

Yanushpol was founded in the 16th 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:

 

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.

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

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

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).

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.

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.

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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 9-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.
The driver Yakubov, born in 1909, returned from the front as a disabled person.

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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.

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).

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.

On June 18, 2019, a memorial was erected in the centre of the village in memory of the Holocaust victims.

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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.

Jewish cemetery

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

 

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