VERKHiVKA (Verkhovka ):

Source with photos: "Verkhovka (Ukrainian Verhіvka gender. Vezhhuvka Yiddish Verhifke) - village Trostyanetsky region Vinnytsia region, up to 1923 - the county town Bratslavskogo Podolia. In the XVIII century. Verkhovka received the status of town. During the unrest in the first half of XVIII. place Haidamaks been attacked. The consolidated list of damage caused haidamaks (made in 1750) indicated that the Jews lost Verkhovka then 800 PLN. Initially Verkhovskaya Jews were assigned to community SNITKO town. Census 1765 and 1776 years. registered in Verkhovka, respectively, 32 and 44 Jewish houses, and in 1765 census. participated rabbi Joseph Moshkovich. In the 1776 census of Jews in the summary were recorded 51 men, 52 women, 10 boys, 11 girls and one man servant. According topographic description recently attached to Russia Bratslavskogo povet drawn up in 1799, in the town Verkhovka owned by Count Stanislaw Potocki were sduyuschie significant buildings: the manor wooden house with a fruit garden, a wooden church and "wooden Jewish school with two prishkolkami" (ie synagogue with two prayer houses). Residential development town were 212 Christian and 33 Jewish court. Shopping center was Verkhovka hotel courtyard. Verkhovskaya Jews kept besides distillery sbyvaya most of vodka in Odessa and Tiraspol, and rented a water mill. The Christian population was engaged mainly in farming, women as "most Jews are hired to wash clothes, fetching water and drown their inn." In 1852. Verkhovka was in 38 local and 6 nonresident Jewish craftsmen. In 1853, according to official figures in the town was a synagogue, its parishioners and 389 rabbis and Alter Ladyzhenskii Avraham Yosef Moldavskiy10. In 1857 there were 415 houses with 2973 inhabitants, including 722 Jews. According to 1871 was 1010 inhabitants Verkhovka assigned to trading estate and 1105 - to the rural, the total number of houses - 393. In 1889, the Jewish community in the composition contained 730 people two synagogues. At the beginning of XX century in the village were three synagogues, the Jewish population was 1,094 people (32% of the population). At the beginning of XX century. almost all the few commercial establishments in Verkhovka - three manufactory, grocery and pharmacy shop - owned by Jews. At the end of 1917 in Verkhovka a situation close to mayhem, but due to the aid of troops prevented violence. In May 1919 one of the peasant bands, went into town, pogrom, in which about 40 people were killed and dozens were tortured and abused. Only by payment of "reparations" Verkhovka Jews could be saved from the massacre. correspondent of the newspaper "Der Emes" ("Truth") reported in 1923 that remains in place 60 - 65 Jewish families, they were mostly women and children. According to the inspector of the Jewish Relief Committee, the township was so destroyed that there was nowhere to put the children's home for orphans, so orphans sent to Trostianets. Under the premise of a Jewish school used synagogue. Before World War II in Verkhovka lived about thirty Jewish families.During the Second World War was Verkhovka in Transnistria, which was under Romanian control. Community life and continued here at this time. All Jewish town were actually thirty storey houses surrounding a large commercial area. Here was organized the ghetto where the summer and autumn of 1941 put Jews from Bessarabia and Bukovina, including several well-known families of Hasidic "Vizhnitsky" dynasty. All deportees were placed in the homes of local Jews, resulting in the ghetto creates excessive population density. 7 November 1941, on the eve of the Sabbath, on the orders of the occupying authorities was razed to the ground old wooden synagogue, the Torah scrolls from it saved Shoikhet, moving them to his home. By late autumn 1941, the ghetto was Verkhovka about 1,200 Jews, it was fenced in and out of it is prohibited. Ukrainians were allowed to enter the ghetto, where they exchanged food things. Schwarz became the head of the community of Bucharest. winter of 1941/42 in the ghetto began typhus epidemic from which died every day up to twenty or thirty people. The dead were buried in a common grave, the exception was made ​​for Bukovynian rabbis buried in individual graves in the old cemetery. Clothes of the dead peasants bartered for food with which to support poor prisoners. From typhus, cold and starvation killed about half the population of the ghetto. Only summer 1943 with funds raised by the Romanian Jews in the ghetto were organized community kitchen and hospital. In December 1943, the Germans began to be carried out in Verkhovka share extermination of Jews, but for some reason it was discontinued. The winter of 1944, with the beginning of the German retreat, the regime tightened in the ghetto. German soldiers and "Vlasov" retreating through Verkhovka, repaired violence against Jews and robbed them. When the war was deported Bukovina and Bessarabia Jews returned to their homeland. In Verkhovka in the postwar years was only a few Jewish families. C. 1990s Jews did not live here Lukin, "100 Jewish towns in Ukraine" Detailed photos. [Mar 2014]