Khotimsk

In the early 20th century there were 2,200 Jews in Khotimsk, comprising approximately two thirds of the local population. During the early Soviet period some Jews engaged in crafts and farming, while others became white-collar workers. The town had a Yiddish-language government school that functioned until mid-1938. Industrialization and urbanization led to a decline in the Jewish population of Khotimsk; by the late 1930s only 790 Jews, about one quarter of the total population, remained. The Germans occupied Khotimsk on August 15, 1941. On July 12, 1942 the Jews were imprisoned in the Jewish school building, that became a kind of ghetto surrounded by barbed wire and guarded by police. Most of the Jews of Khotimsk were killed in September 1942. Khotimsk was liberated by the Red Army on September 26, 1943.