Nikolayev

Jews started to settle in Nikolayev in the late 18th century. In the first half of the following century Jews were expelled from the city by orders of Nicholas I, but the ban was gradually lifted in the 1850s and 1860s. At the end of the 19th century Nikolayev became part of the Pale of Settlement. Starting in the 1860s the local grain trade was in Jewish hands. Most of the Jews in Nikolayev were engaged in commerce or as artisans. 20,109 Jews lived in the city in 1897, when they comprised 21.9 percent of the total population.

In 1881 and 1899 there were pogroms in Nikolayev and much Jewish property was damaged. A Jewish self-defense force protected Nikolayev Jews during the pogroms of 1905. Nikolayev was a birthplace of the last Lubavich rebbe, Menahem Mendel Shneerson.

In 1910 there were 15 Jewish educational facilities in Nikolayev, including private and government-sponsored schools, a Talmud Torah, and evening courses.

The Jewish population of Nikolayev suffered greatly from the calamities of the revolutionary years and civil war in Russia. In a pogrom in 1919 29 Jews in the city were murdered. The famine that followed the civil war claimed many Jewish lives.

Under Soviet rule the occupational structure of Nikolayev Jews started to change. In the 1920s and 1930s many local Jews began to be employed in industry and shipbuilding and Jewish artisans started to form cooperatives. In the 1920s and 1930s Nikolayev had some Yiddish schools and, starting in the late 1920s a chamber of the Nikolayev court held its deliberations in Yiddish. However, during this period religious and non-Soviet activities were restricted.

In 1939 25,280 Jews comprised 15.2 percent of the total population of the city. This number increased when Jewish refugees from Polish territories arrived at the beginning of the Second World War.

Few Jews succeeded in leaving Nikolayev before it was occupied by German troops on August 16, 1941. Almost immediately the Germans established a Jewish council and ordered it to register the Jewish population of the city. The Jews were ordered to sew patches with a Star of David on their clothes and forced to clear the city streets and perform other kinds of hard labor.

The murders of Jews started soon after the Germans entered Nikolayev. During the first days of the occupation 8 Jews were hanged, together with 5 non-Jews, allegedly for looting. In the last week of August 1941 Sonderkommando 11a of Einsatzgruppe D shot about 230 Jews, either because they did not appear for registration or for some other failure on the part of Nikolayev Jews to obey the German authorities.

About 5,000 local Jews were murdered either in mid- or late September 1941.

In 1942 a labor camp was established in Nikolayev. Jews from Ukrainian areas under both German and Romanian administration were imprisoned in this camp. Its inmates were murdered in late 1942 or early 1943.

Nikolayev was liberated by the Red Army on March 28, 1944.