Medzhibozh

The Jewish community in Medzhibozh dates back to the beginning of the sixteenth century. In the eighteenth century, the town became the center of activity of Rabbi Israel ben Eliezer, the Baal Shem Tov (or Besht), the founder of Hasidism. His gravesite and other areas connected with his life and activity, including the Besht Beit Midrash, turned the town into one of the most important places for Hasidim and a center for pilgrimage. At the end of the century, the Besht’s grandson Rabbi Barukh held court in Medzhibozh, and the famous Jewish wit Hershele Ostropoler also lived there. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, Rabbi Avraham Jehoshua Heschel was the rabbi of Medzhibozh. During the Soviet period, a Yiddish school operated in the town, but it was closed at the end of the 1930s. In January 1939, 2,347 Jews dwelled in Medzhibozh, accounting for 52 percent of the town’s total population. With the Germany invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941, only a number of Medzhibozh’s Jews managed to evacuate. Others believed that the souls of the great rabbis would save the town from misfortune as had occurred, so they supposed, during the pogroms of 1905 and 1919. Other recalled the moderate German regime of 1918. Following the retreat of the Red Army on July 6, local Ukrainian ultranationalists carried out a pogrom against the Jews. The Germans occupied Medzhibozh on July 8, 1941. From the first days of occupation, they humiliated the Jews, and demolished the famous Beit Midrash and other Jewish historical sights. All the Jews of the town were then herded into a ghetto, located on some poor streets of the town. On April 14, 1942, 220 Jewish men were sent with horses to the front line. None returned. Germans murdered 1,000 Jews on September 21 (according to another source, September 22), 1942. Most of those who succeeded to escape this mass murder operation were caught and killed over the next two weeks. About 100 young Jews of Medzhibozh who had been selected before the massacre, together with some additional Jews who had been caught in the first days after the mass murder operation, were sent to the Letichev labor camp. Only some of them survived. A few Jews from Medzhibozh survived in the neighboring villages with the aid of local peasants. The Red Army liberated Medzhibozh on March 24, 1944. Soon after the occupation of Medzhibozh, the Jews were evicted from their homes and sent to a remote quarter of the town that was fenced in with barbed wire. Either Haim Milis or Abram Shvets (sources differ on the identity) was appointed head of the Jews. Initially the Jews were permitted several hours daily to shop for food in the town market; later, however, the ghetto was hermetically sealed.Overcrowding, starvation and lack of heating led to a typhus epidemic in the ghetto and a high mortality rate among inhabitants. Early on, bodies were buried in the Jewish cemetery. As the death toll rose, however, bodies were interred in mass graves inside the ghetto. The Germans and Ukrainian police periodically subjected the ghetto inhabitants to depredations and drafted them for forced labor. Jews suspected of having been politically active under the Soviets were murdered.Most of the ghetto's inmates were shot during the murder operation, which began on September 21 (or 22), 1942.