Teofipol

Jews first settled in Teofipol in the 18th century. In 1897 the Jewish population of 2,914 comprised 65 percent of the total population. About 300 Jews were murdered in pogroms in 1917 and 1919. Under Soviets rule the town had a Jewish rural council and a Yiddish school. In 1929 a kolkhoz was founded; in 1936 it had 94 families. In 1939 the Jews numbered 1,266, comprising 36.9 of the total population of the town. The Germans occupied Teofipol on July 6, 1941. A ghetto was established (on the outskirts of town), where Jews from the village of Shibeno and other nearby villages were also held. On January 21, 1942, about 500 Jewish men were shot to death by a German rural police unit. On the next day the remaining Jews of the ghetto – women, children, and old people - were taken to the same murder site and shot to death by the same Gendarmerie unit. According to a ChGK document 970 Jews were killed in this two-day murder operation. Fifteen Jewish specialists – craftsmen and artisans, who had been kept alive when almost one thousand others were killed were housed in the ghetto with their families. On July 1942 they were taken to the forest near the town of Lyakhovtsy, where they were shot to death, along with Jews from Lyakhovtsy, Yampol, and Kornitsa. Teofipol was liberated by the Red Army on March 5, 1944.