Nagartava

Nagartav (Russian form of the Hebrew words for "Good River") was an agricultural colony established in 1809, by Jews from the Vitebsk, Minsk, and Mogilev provinces of the Russian Empire, on the banks of the small river Klochanka. The second wave of migrants who arrived during the early years of the colony's existence included ethnic Germans sent by the Russian authorities to teach the Jews agriculture. In 1897 1,571 Jews lived in Nagartav, where they comprised 91.8 percent of the total population. Most Jews in Nagartav were agricultural workers or artisans. In 1895, 1899, 1905 and 1907 there were pogroms during which Jewish shops were looted and Jewish property heavily damaged. The Jewish population of Nagartav suffered greatly from violence on the part of local bands and White troops during the civil war in Russia, as well as from the epidemics and famine that followed. The revival of the colony was made possible by aid from the Joint and the Jewish Colonization Association. In 1920 Nagartav became the seat of a rural council, which in 1927 became a Jewish ethnic one. In 1925 the Russian-language school that operated there since the mid-19 century became a Yiddish one. At the end of the 1930s it was reorginized into a Ukrainian school. In the late 1920s and early 1930s the KIM ("Communist Youth Internationale"), Naye Virtshaft (Yiddish for "new economy"), and Kirov kolkhozes were established in or near Nagartav. In 1926 Nagartav's 1,748 Jews comprised 90 percent of the total population. In the 1920s and 1930s many Jews, especially young people, left Nagartav for larger towns and cities in search of educational and job opportunities or to escape from collectivization and the Great Famine of the early 1930s. German troops occupied Nagartav on August 18, 1941. Few of its Jews managed to flee. About 1,000 Jews of Nagartav were murdered in mid September 1941. Nagartav was liberated by the Red Army on March 14, 1944. In 1954 Nagartav was merged with the neighboring village of Bereznegovatoye and the name Nagartav ceased to appeared in official documents.