Novaya Priluka

Jews started to settle in Novaya Priluka in the first half of the 18th century. The Jewish population of Novaya Priluka began to grow dramatically in the 19th century. In 1897 2,011 Jews lived in the town, where they constituted 78 percent of total population. Jews played a major role in the economic life of Novaya Priluka on the eve of World War I, owning most of the shops and small-scale industry in the town. The Jews of Novaya Priluka suffered greatly from the violence of the revolutionary years and civil war in Russia. A number of town's Jews were killed in a pogrom carried out by Cossacks in January 1918, when Jewish property was also looted. In the 1920s and 1930s there was a Yiddish school in Novaya Priluka. In 1926 the town's 2,151 Jews comprised 55 percent of the town's total population. However, the number of Jews declined during the 1920s and 1930s due to the migration of young Jews from of the town in search of new educational and vocational opportunities. After the June 22, 1941 German invasion of the Soviet Union most of the Jewish men in Novaya Priluka were conscripted into the Red Army. Many Novaya Priluka Jews tried to flee, but not many succeeded in reaching the Soviet interior. German troops occupied Novaya Priluka in mid-July 1941. One week after the start of the occupation Germans and Ukrainian collaborators brutally murdered several dozen Jewish men of the town. A short time afterwards a number of local Jewish women and children were shot to death. In September 1941 Novaya Priluka Jews were forced into a ghetto consisting of a single street. The ghetto inmates were forced to wear Stars of David on their chests and backs. In October 1941 the occupation authorities carried out a registration of all the children in the ghetto and imposed a tax for each child; they murdered the children whose parents were unable to pay. The ghetto was liquidated in November 1941. About 2,500 of its inmates were murdered at Staraya Priluka village, a short distance from Novaya Priluka. The Jews who hid but were discovered by the Germans and local collaborators were shot in a forest near Lesovaya Lyseevka village (in Kalinovka County), about 12 kilometers west of Novaya Priluka. Novaya Priluka was liberated by the Red Army in January 1944.