Velikiy Zhvanchik

Jews first settled in Velikiy Zhvanchik in the 18th century. In 1897, they numbered 638 and comprised 21 percent of the total population. In 1926 the Jewish population stood at 615. In the 1920s and 1930s a Jewish rural council and a 4-year Yiddish elementary school operated in the town. Most of the local Jews worked in several artisan cooperatives. In mid-July 1941 the Germans occupied Velikiy Zhvanchik and the Jews were immediately ordered to register and to wear yellow patches with the Star of David on their chests and backs. On August 31, 1941, the 320th Police Battalion shot to death 380 (according to the German sources or 1,200, according to a Soviet document) Jews from Velikiy Zhvanchik and from a nearby townat a location near the Sokolets Forest. The remaining Jews of Velikiy Zhvanchik, who had been found hiding, were put into the ghetto that had been set up on one street of the town. They suffered from the harsh conditions there: they were taken daily from the ghetto to perform hard labor, there was barely any food, and contagious diseases, such as typhus and scabies, led to a high mortality among the ghetto inmates. In June 1942 the remaining Jews of the town were murdered at the same location outside the village. A small group of Jews was taken to the Dunayevtsy ghetto and apparently murdered there, along with the ghetto inmates, on October 19, 1942, in the Solonichnik Forest. Velikiy Zhvanchik was liberated by the Red Army at the end of March 1944.