Shchors

Shchors is a relatively young town, with a history that dates only from the second half of the 19th century, when it was called Korzhovka. At the end of the 19th century the town was renamed in Snovsk and in 1935 it was renamed Shchors. In the early 1900s Jews of the town founded a self-defence group to protect themselves against pogroms. In 1905 there was an attempted pogrom that was prevented by the combined efforts of Jews and non-Jews. The Hafetz Haim Yeshiva operated there in the early 1920s, but was closed by the Ministry of Education late in the decade and moved to Poland. In 1926 160 pupils (42 percent of the total Jewish school-aged children) attended the Yiddish school. In 1939 there were 1,402 Jews in the town, comprising 16.3 percent of the total population. Shchors was occupied by the Germans on September 3, 1941, by which time more than half of the Jewish population had managed to leave. The remaining Jews were ordered to register and to wear a Star of David armband; they were also forced to perform various kinds of hard labor. The Jews of Shchors were concentrated on Proreznaya Street. They were murdered in several operations carried out by Germans, Hungarian soldiers, and Ukrainian police. Some of the Jews were transported to Chernigov and murdered there. Others were brought to the town from elsewhere in Shchors County and murdered in the town. Shchors was liberated by the Red Army on September 21, 1943.