Mikhalpol

Jews settled in Mikhalpol in the first half of the 18th century. In 1897 they numbered 1,392. In 1919 11 Jews were killed in Mikhalpol during the pogroms of the Russian civil war. Under Soviet rule the village had a Jewish rural council and a Jewish kolkhoz. Until the end of the 1930s Mikhalpol had a 7-year Yiddish school. In 1939 the town's Jewish population of 728 comprised 34 percent of the total. The Germans occupied Mikhalpol on July 11, 1941. Some time afterwards 18 Jewish men were shot to death at the local Jewish cemetery. In late October 1942 the remaining Jews of Mikhalpol and Mikhalpol County were taken to Yarmolintsy and murdered there, along with local Jews and those from the neighboring towns of Frampol, Gorodok and Satanov. Between 1942 and 1944 some Jews from Mikhalpol and the surrounding villages who had been caught in hiding were shot to death and buried at the Jewish cemetery. During the occupation the Nazis destroyed the local synagogue (dating from the 18th century), a wooden structure with colorful decorations. Mikhalpol was liberated by the Red Army on March 27, 1944; in 1946 it was renamed Mikhailovka.