Nikopol

Jews began to settle in Nikopol at the end of the 18th century. In 1897 Nikopol's 3,284 Jews comprised 19 percent of the total population. At the turn of the century the town had a private Jewish school and a Jewish school for adults. Most of Nikopol's Jews were small-scale traders or craftsmen. In 1905 there was a pogrom in Nikopol. The Jewish population of Nikopol decreased during the calamities of the revolutionary years in Russia and the famine of the early 1920s but began to increase again in the mid-1920s largely due to migration to the area. In the 1920s and 1930s several Jewish kolkhozes were established in the area around Nikopol. From the 1920s until the late 1930s there was a seven-year Yiddish school in the town. In 1939 Nikopol's 3,767 Jews comprised 6.5 percent of the total population. Many Jews left the town before the arrival of German troops on August 17, 1941. Soon after the occupation began the Jews were ordered to register and to sew the Stars of David onto their clothes. About 1,000 Jews who had remained in Nikopol were murdered early in October 1941 and at the end of March 1942. In February 1942 about 20 Jews from Kamenka-Dneprovskaya were brought to Nikopol and murdered there. Nikopol was liberated by the Red Army on February 8, 1944.