Korsun

A Jewish community existed in Korsun since the early 17th century. Jews in Korsun were massacred during the Chmelnitsky uprising of 1648-1649. In the early 18th century Jews from Korsun were massacred during the Haidamak uprising. In 1897 the 3,799 Jews in the town constituted 46 percent of the total population. In the early 20th century there were one government-sponsored and four private Jewish schools in Korsun. There was also a Jewish poorhouse in the town. Korsun's Jews were active in the Russian revolutionary movement. Most members of the Bolshevik faction in Korsuny were Jewish. The Jews of Korsun suffered greatly from the violence of the years of revolution and civil war in Russia. In 1918-1919 many Jews were murdered and Jewish property was looted in pogroms carried out by various warring parties. The units of Jewish self-defense which tried to protect Jewish inhabitants of the town were disarmed by the pogromists. During the early Soviet period a town council with deliberations in Yiddish was established in Korsun. In the 1920s there was a Jewish five-year school in Korsun Shevchenkovskiy. In the 1920s and 1930s many Jews, primarily the young ones, left Korsun for larger towns and cities in search of educational and vocational opportunities. In 1939 1,329 Jews lived in the town, where they constituted 14.2 percent of the total population. German troops occupied Korsun on July 30, 1941. Apparently the majority of local Jews succeeded in leaving before the arrival of the Germans. About 300 Jews who remained in town were murdered by the end of 1941. The Red Army liberated Korsun on February 14, 1944. In 1944 the town was renamed Korsun Shevchenkovskiy after the Ukrainian national poet Taras Shevchenko, who was born nearby.