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Gaysin

Community
Gaysin
Ukraine (USSR)
Former Jewish house in Gaysin. Photographer: 	Benjamin Lukin, 1998.
Former Jewish house in Gaysin. Photographer: Benjamin Lukin, 1998.
Benjamin Lukin and Boris Khaimovich, Copy YVA 14615999
Jewish settlement in Gaysin was initially recorded in the first half of the seventeenth century.

Towards the beginning of World War I, Jews played a dominant role in the economic life of Gaysin. The Jewish community was badly damaged by the pogroms that accompanied the Bolshevik Revolution and Civil War. The pogrom of May 12, 1919, carried out by the White Army, left 400 Jews dead.

During the Soviet period, a Yiddish school and a special Yiddish court operated in Gaysin. As result of Soviet social policy at the end of the 1920s, the private sector in Gaysin diminished. In 1939, just over 4,109 Jews were living in Gaysin, 27.7 percent of the total population.

The Germans occupied Gaysin on July 25, 1941. At the beginning of August 1941, a census of the Jewish population was taken and a ghetto established in the town. In late 1941, Jews from the surrounding villages were moved into the Gaysin ghetto. Abuse, torture, and looting of Jewish houses by the Germans and local policemen, as well as the murder of individual Jews, became everyday occurrences from the first days of German rule.

Most of Gaysin’s Jews were killed in murder operations carried out in a place known as Belendinka (Belendiika/Belendeevka) between September 1941 and May 1943. The Red Army liberated Gaysin on March 14, 1944.

Gaysin
Gaysin District
Vinnitsa Region
Ukraine (USSR)
48.812;29.391
Former Jewish house in Gaysin. Photographer: Benjamin Lukin, 1998.
Benjamin Lukin and Boris Khaimovich, Copy YVA 14615999