Teplik

The first reference to a Jewish presence in Teplik dates to 1765. In 1768 the Jewish population of Teplik suffered from attacks by the Haidamaks. In 1897 3,725 Jews lived in Teplik, where they comprised 52.9 percent of the total population. Most of Teplik's Jews were small-scale merchants or artisans. In 1910 there was a private Jewish school with Russian as the language of instruction. The Jews of Teplik suffered greatly from the violence of the years of revolution and civil war in Russia. In pogroms staged in Teplik during this period Jews were abused and wounded, Jewish women were raped, and Jewish property looted or destroyed. Several hundred Jews of the town were murdered in July 1919 in a pogrom staged by the Ukrainian troops of Symon Petliura. Many Jews left the town at that time in search of greater security. Soviet rule, established in Teplik in the early 1920s, to a large degree altered the occupational structure of Teplik's Jews. Some of them became integrated into the municipal and government service, while others turned to agriculture. In 1930 100 Jewish families left Teplik for agricultural settlement in the Crimean Peninsula, but 60 families soon returned. In 1920s a Jewish ethnic town council was established in Teplik, with its deliberations being conducted in Yiddish. From the 1920s until the late 1930s there was a 7-year Yiddish school in Teplik. During the 1920s and 1930s many young Jews left Teplik for larger towns and cities in search of educational and vocational opportunities. In 1939 Teplik's 1,233 Jews comprised 23.5 percent of the town's total population. After Germany invaded Poland in September 1939 a number of Jewish refugees from Poland arrived in Teplik. After the start of the German-Soviet war in June 1941, refugees from Bessarabia came to Teplik. Many local Jewish men of military age were mobilized into the Red Army. Otherwise, few of Teplik's Jews managed to leave before German troops occupied Teplik on July 26, 1941. Immediately after the start of the occupation all the town's Jews were registered, made to wear white armbands with blue Stars of David, and a Judenrat was established with Noah Mazus appointed as its head. The Jewish population of Teplik had extraorbitant "taxes" in cash and various goods levied on it. The Jews were also restricted in their movement, barred from shopping at the market, and forced to participate in grueling work. In the first half of 1942 the Jews of Teplik were confined to a ghetto encompassing two streets near the local pond. On March 2, 1942 all able-bodied Jews of Teplik between fourteen and forty-five were transferred to Raygorod and other labor camps of Thoroughfare IV, the highway that was under construction and was planned to connect Lwow in western Ukraine and Taganrog in southern Russia. About 800 remaining inmates of the Teplik ghetto who were considered unfit for work were murdered on May 27, 1941 southwest of the town. Only a few skilled workers, probably no more than 15, were spared this massacre and left in the ghetto, which was also turned into a labor camp of Thoroughfare IV. In the summer of 1942 several hundred North Bukovinian Jews from the Romanian zone were sent to this camp. Most of the inmates of the Teplik camp were murdered in the fall of 1943. Teplik was liberated by the Red Army on March 10, 1944.