Mayfeld

Mayfeld ("May field" in Yiddish) was a Jewish agricultural settlement founded under the name of "Khaklai" ("agricultural worker" in Hebrew) in 1923 by Jews who were members of the Hehalutz Zionist movement who had come from Belarus and Ukraine. Most of the men of the settlement, which was renamed Mayfeld in 1929, worked in agriculture, while the women worked in a weaving cooperative. In the early 1930s the village became the Mayfeld Collective Farm. There was a Yiddish 7-year school, where 136 pupils from Mayfeld and 15 other Jewish settlements in the area studied. During the Great Famine in Ukraine in 1932-1933 a number of Ukrainian families moved to Mayfeld. Before the war 150 Jewish families lived there. Most of them left before the arrival of German troops. At the end of January-the beginning of February 1941 Jews from Mayfeld and from surrounding collective farms, were murdered on the outskirts of Mayfeld. Mayfeld was liberated by the Red Army on April 12, 1944. After the war it was renamed Mayskoye.