Snitkov

Jews apparently lived in Snitkov from the first half of the 18th century. In the 1730s Snitkov's Jews suffered from attacks by the Haidamaks. In 1897 1,126 Jews lived in the town, where they constituted 39 percent of the total population. On the eve of World War I Jews figured prominently in the economic life of Snitkov; they owned most of the shops, a lumber storehouse, and a mill.

During the early Soviet period (until 1926) Snitkov had a branch of the Zionist He-Halutz movement, whose members underwent agricultural training in preparation for settling in the Land of Israel. In the late 1920s or early 1930s the Jewish collective farm Kultura was established there. Until the mid-1930s there was a Yiddish secondary school in Snitkov. In 1926 Snitkov's 1,181 Jews comprised 31.9 percent of the town's population. In the course of the 1920s and 1930s many young Jews left Snitkov in search of new educational and vocational opportunities.

Few Jews of Snitkov were able to leave after the outbreak of the German-Soviet war. On July 23, 1941 German troops occupied the town. In a pogrom staged immediately after the entry of the Germans a number of local Jews were killed. Jewish houses were marked by Stars of David and Jews were also forced to wear them on their clothes - on the back and on the chest. A short time after the start of the occupation the Jews of Snitkov were confined to a ghetto. The ghetto inmates were harassed constantly - beaten, humiliated, robbed of their possessions, and forced to perform grueling work. They also suffered from hunger. In the second half of 1941 Bessarabian Jews from across the Dniester River were brought to the Snitkov ghetto. In March and August 1942 able-bodied Jews from Snitkov were sent to the Letichev labor camp. The majority of Snitkov's Jews were deported to Murovannye Kurilovtsy on August 20, 1942 and killed, together with local Jews, in murder operations in August and October 1942.

Snitkov was liberated by the Red Army in the second half of March 1944.