Zhabokrich

Jews apparently lived in Zhabokrich since the second half of the 18th century. In the 1770s the number of Jews in Zhabokrich dropped due to attacks of the Haidamaks, but started to rise at the end of the century. In 1897 the town's 1,307 Jews comprised 21 percent of its total population. The Jews of Zhabokrich suffered greatly during the calamities of the revolutionary years and the civil war in Russia. In November 1917 Jews of the town were assaulted by group of peasants from neighboring localities. In late August 1919 a large-scale pogrom was carried out by the Ukrainian Army of Symon Petliura: many Jews were injured, a number of them mortally, Jewish girls and women were raped, and Jewish property was looted. Many Jews left Zhabokrich at that time; in the early 1920s fewer than 1,000 remained in the town. In 1926 the 924 Jews in Zhabokrich comprised 15.3 percent of the town's total population. In the mid-1920s there was a Jewish rural council in Zhabokrich. The Soviet ban on private business forced many Zhabokrich Jews to find new occupations. Some of them found employment in small-scale industry in the town itself and some on a Jewish kolkhoz Shlyakhom Lenina (In Lenin's Way), which later became a mixed Jewish-Ukrainian one, that was established near the town in the late 1920s-early 1930s. Many Jews from Zhabokrich, especially younger ones, left the town for larger towns and cities in search of educational and vocational opportunities. After the start of World War II some refugees from Poland arrived in Zhabokrich. After the German invasion of the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941, a number of Zhabokrich's Jews were recruited into the Red Army, while others were evacuated or fled into the Soviet hinterland. Concurrently, refugees from other localities in the Vinnitsa District and western Ukraine arrived in the town. German and Romanian forces occupied Zhabokrich on about July 20, 1941. A very short time after the start of the occupation about 10 Jewish men were taken hostage and shot at the Shlyakhom Lenina collective farm. In late July 1941 Romanian gendarmes perpetrated a massacre of about 400 Jews living in Zhabokrich. On September 1, 1941 Zhabokrich became a part of the Romanian occupation zone of Transnistria. In the late fall-early winter of 1941 245 Jews from northern Bukovina and Bessarabia were deported to Zhabokrich and settled in the empty houses of local Jews murdered in July of the same year. The deportees joined about 200 Jews of Zhabokrich who had survived the July massacre. A ghetto was established in the town. The inmates of the ghetto lived in appalling conditions, with a number of them falling victim to disease, hunger, and terrible sanitary conditions. They were also forced to perform various kinds of hard labor. The Jews living in the ghetto, especially the women, also suffered from abuse on the part of the members of the ghetto's Jewish council (Judenrat) and of the ghetto police. One of the Judenrat's members was executed by partisans for his conduct. In March 1944, shortly before the town's liberation, the planned murder of the surviving ghetto inmates was averted by partisans. Zhabokrich was liberated by the Red Army in mid-March 1944.