Novaya Ushitsa

Jews apparently started to settle in Novaya Ushitsa (that until 1829 was called Letnevtsy) in the 17th century. In the 18th century the town became known due to the Novaya Ushitsa case (1838-1840), when two Jewish men who were accused of harming the Jewish community in Sokolets were killed in Novaya Ushitsa by a group of local Jews. The latter were convicted of murder. Rabbi Yisrael of Ruzhin (1796-1850) was accused of agreeing to the murder and exiled from his Hasidic court, but he was later acquitted. In 1897 Jewish population stood at 2,011 or 56 percent of the total population. Under Soviet rule a Jewish rural council operated in Novaya Ushitsa. The town had a 7-year Yiddish school until the late 1930s. In 1939 the Jewish population of 1,545 comprised 55 percent of the total. In the the county outside of Novaya Ushitsa there were 1,059 Jews at that time. The Germans occupied Novaya Ushitsa on July 14, 1941. The Jews were forced to wear badges with a Star of David. A Jewish elder was appointed and several taxes were imposed on the Jewish community. During this period some Jewish refugees from northern Bukovina and Bessarabia arrived in the town. A short time afterwards a ghetto surrounded by a barbed wire fence was set up. The men and youngsters were sent from the ghetto to perform various types of forced labor, such as paving roads and moving rocks and earth. In the spring of 1942 Jews from neighboring villages (Zamekhov, Pilipkovtsy, Slobodka, and Pesets) were brought to the ghetto. On August 20, 1942 the Jews were collected at the town's square and told that they were going to be sent to Palestine. After a selection, the Jewish craftsmen and artisans, together with their families, were left in the town. At the same time a group of able-bodied young men and women was sent to a labor camp at Letichev to do road work (several months later they were killed at the site). The rest, including mostly women, children, and elderly people, were taken outside of town and shot to death. In October 1942 the skilled workers and their families who had been kept in the ghetto were shot to death at the same site. After these murder operations the Germans hunted down Jews who had succeeded in hiding, imprisoned them, and, shortly afterwards, shot them to death at a local factory. Novaya Ushitsa was liberated by the Red Army on March 27, 1944.