Berezdov

By the mid-17th century Jews were residing in Berezdov. In 1897 the town's 1,319 Jews comprised almost 50 percent of the total population. In 1919, during the Russian civil war, a pogrom was staged against the Jews of the town. Under the Soviets the Jewish kolkhoz Der Nayer Weg ("New Way" in Yiddish) was established, apparently in the late 1920s; many Jewish families worked there or at the kolkhoz brick factory. During the 1930s Berezdov was the center of a Jewish rural council. In 1939 778 Jews (comprising roughly 26 percent of the total population) were living in the town; a total of 2,106 Jews were living in Berezdov County. Berezdov was occupied by the Germans on July 9, 1941. Few Jews managed to escape in time. On August 10, 1941 outside the town, near Dyakov village, an SS murder squad shot to death 152 Jewish men. Apparently some time afterwards, a group of Jews, mainly women, children, and old people, were shot to death near the village of Kutki. At the end of 1941 the Berezdov rural council carried out a census, according to which approximately 400 Jews, mainly women and children (including 70 children under the age of 6) were still living in the town. Apparently in early 1942 the remaining Jews of Berezdov (as well as several Jews from the nearby village of Kutki) were put into a large shed that had been built near the former regional executive committee building. This one-story structure was surrounded by barbed wire. The Jews were kept there at night; during the day they were taken to perform forced labor –mainly digging stone at the nearby quarry. Apparently during this period, according to testimonies 6 Jewish girls from the town were abused and then shot to death at the local cemetery by Ukrainian auxiliary policemen. On March 4, 1942 Jews from Berezdov were taken, along with the remaining Jews from the town of Kilikiyev, to the Slavuta ghetto. Some of them were returned to Berezdov and made to perform forced labor. Several dozen others were shot to death at the old Jewish cemetery of the town. In June the remaining Jews of Berezdov were taken to the Slavuta ghetto; they were murdered near the town, along with inmates of the ghetto, on June 25 or 26, 1942. Berezdov was liberated by the Red Army on January 13, 1944.