Lyakhovtsy

Jews are first mentioned as residing in Lyakhovtsy at the beginning of the 17th century. The Jews suffered greatly during the pogroms of 1705-1707. In 1897 the Jewish population of Lyakhovtsy was 1,384 out of a total of 5,401. In January 1918, during the Russian civil war a pogrom was staged in the town. Under Soviet rule a number of Jewish artisans formed cooperatives; others began working in state-owned factories as clerks or blue-collar workers, and several dozen became farmers and established a kolkhoz. In 1939, on the eve of World War II, there were 908 Jews in Lyakhovtsy; they comprised 50 percent of the total population. The Germans occupied Lyakhovtsy on July 5, 1941. In July 1941 a ghetto surrounded with a barbed-wire fence was established. In addition to local Jews, the Germans also concentrated in the ghetto hundreds of Jews from Yampol, Kornitsa, and other nearby towns. Overcrowding, starvation, the cold weather, and poor hygiene in the ghetto were prime factors in the spread of disease and the soaring mortality rate. On June 27, 1942 the ghetto was liquidated when its inhabitants were murdered outside the town in the forest near the village of Trostyanka. Fifteen Jewish craftsmen and artisans from the town of Teofipol were also taken there and shot to death. Knochenauer, the Gebietskommissar [regional commissar] of Izyaslav County, was in charge of this murder operation. According to one testimony, twelve Jewish specialists – artisans and craftsmen, with their families, were given a permission to remain in the ghetto. In September 1942 they all were murdered, apparently at the same murder site. Lyakhovtsy was liberated by the Red Army on February 29, 1944 and renamed Belogorye or Belogorsk in the same year.