Pogrebishche

Jews are first mentioned as living in Pogrebishche in the early 17th century. The Jewish community of Pogrebishche was completely destroyed during the 1648-1649 uprising of Bogdan Chmielnitsky. Only toward the end of the century did the renewal of Jewish life in Pogrebishche begin. Between the 1730s and 1760s the Jews of Pogrebishche suffered greatly from the assaults of the haidamaks.

In the course of the 19th century the Jewish population of Pogrebishche grew. 2,494 Jews were living in town in 1897, when they constituted 39.7 percent of the town's total population.

The Jews of Pogrebishche were hit hard by the calamities of the revolutionary years and civil war in Russia. In May 1919 Red troops staged a large-scale pogrom in the town, murdering 400 local Jews. In August of the same year 350 Jews were murdered in a pogrom carried out by Ukrainian nationalists.

In the early Soviet period the Jews of Pogrebishche, like those elsewhere, had to cope with the changes brought by Soviet rule. Limitations of and, later, a complete ban on private trade left many of Pogrebishche's Jews without a means of existence. The merchants had to seek alternative employment. Some of them found work in small-scale industry in the town; others turned to the agriculture, establishing the Erd un Arbet (Land and Labor) cooperative near Pogrebishche.

In the 1920s and 1930s Pogrebishche had a Jewish town council that supervised various Yiddish cultural and educational activities. In 1924 a local Yiddish school was opened.

In the 1920s and 1930s many young Jews left Pogrebishche for larger towns and cities in search of educational and vocational opportunities.

In 1939 1,445 Jews lived in Pogrebishche, constituting 15.15 percent of town's total population. After Germany invaded Poland in September 1939 a number of Polish Jewish refugees arrived in Pogrebishche.

Pogrebishche was occupied by German troops on July 21, 1941. A few days later about 40 Jewish men were killed. The rest of the Jews were forced to wear white armbands with a blue Star of David. Most of Pogrebishche's 1,300 Jews were murdered on October 18, 1941 in a forest near the town. Those Pogrebishche Jews who succeeded in escaping this massacre and Jews from surrounded localities, a total of 400 people, were murdered in late October 1941. Later a small number of Jews were incarcerated in a ghetto that existed until June 1942, when its inmates were murdered. Only about 20 Pogrebishche Jews who managed to escape the Nazi onslaught by being hidden by local Ukrainian families survived until the liberation of the town by the Red Army on December 30, 1943.