REPKI (Ukrainian: Ріпки) is a rural settlement in Chernihiv Raion, Chernihiv oblast, northern Ukraine.
Present town population is 14,152 according to Ukraine 2022 census
Link Ref: 2022 Ukrainian Census
Local government: Ukraine
Town is located 37.4 km North-West from Chernihiv. The earliest known mention of Ripki is found in the records of Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. At the time, the settlement was called Rzepki. It has been recorded as an estate of the Perockie family of Polish nobles since ~1571. The original estate encompassed the villages Danichi (7.4 km away), Buyanki (8.4 Km away) and Hlynenka (now incorporated into a modern day city of Ripky).
- It is estimated that from circa 1611 individual Jewish families began to settle in Repki and its environs, primarily to render services to the Polish nobles.
- The Russian censuses of 1797 recorded 1,113 Jews residing in the rural area (including Ripki). Also there were 1,389 Jews residing in the city of Chernihiv in 1801.
- The “All Russia Censuses” of 1897 reported 3,049 Jewish residents in Ripky alone.
- By 1922, the entire Jewish population of Ripki district was reduced to ~ 450 (due to multiple Jewish pogroms and genocide committed by the White army, bolsheviks and Ukrainian atamans)
- By 1939 - there were only 39 Jewish residents
- By 1942 - zero
The cemetery # 251940 (US Commission No. UA24160101) is the oldest known Jewish cemetery of the Ripki raion. It was in use during the last phase of the Russian Empire and throughout the early decades of the USSR. The victims of 1881-1932 Jewish pogroms were likely buried there. The Hasidic communities of Danichi and Lovin have also utilized this cemetery. Their last known burial was recorded in 1933.
Present site condition: The isolated suburban flat land has no sign or marker. It is not shown on the town’s map. Site has no visible grave markings or headstones. The cemetery was vandalized prior to World War II, and during World War II. The headstones and metal items were stolen, reused or incorporated into roads or private structures. The cemetery contains no known mass graves from WW-II (the victims of the Holocaust were buried in the newer Pelski cemetery)
Ripky municipality owns the site. It is currently included into a category of “other properties”. The boundaries of the cemetery are smaller than that of 1939, due to encroachment of adjacent residential development.
Jewish community tended the cemetery until 1933. Presently there is no maintenance plan for this cemetery.
This description used a cemetery survey report of 10/17/94, conducted by Sokolova Eleonora Evgenievna.