Tomashpol

Jews apparently began living in Tomashpol in the early 17th century. There are indications that the Jewish community of the town was mostly wiped out during the Chmelnitsky uprising (1648-1649). During the 1760s and 1770s the Jews of Tomashpol suffered from attacks by the Haidamaks. In 1897 Tomashpol's 4,515 Jews comprised 90.8 percent of the town's total population. Most of Tomashpol's Jews were small-scale merchants, artisans, or workers in a small brandy distillery or in the sugar factory owned by the Jewish industrialist Brodsky. In 1907 there was a pogrom in Tomashpol, during which a number of Jews were beaten, one Jew was killed, and Jewish houses and shops were damaged and looted. The Jews of Tomashpol suffered greatly from the violence of the years of revolution years and civil war in Russia. In 1919-1920 the Jews of Tomashpol were victimized by repeated pogroms perpetrated by the troops of Denikin's White Army. In these pogroms 25 Tomashpol Jews were kille and about 200 were wounded, Jewish women were raped, and Jewish houses looted and burned. Under Soviet Rule the town had a Jewish Soviet with deliberations in Yiddish. From the 1920s until the late 1930s a seven-year Yiddish school operated in Tomashpol. In the 1920s a local branch of the Zionist organization He-Haluts existed in Tomashpol and provided young local Jews with agricultural training in preparation for life in the Land of Israel. In the early 1930s two Jewish collective farms, Petrovskiy and Gigant (Giant) were established near Tomashpol. The former was disbanded after a short time, while the latter ultimately became a mixed, Jewish-Ukrainian kolkhoz. In the 1920s and 1930s many Tomashpol Jews, especially the younger ones, left for larger towns and cities in search of educational and vocational opportunities. In 1939 1,863 Jews lived in Tomashpol, where they constituted 62.6 percent of the total population. After the German invasion of the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941 most of the Jewish men from Tomashpol were drafted into or volunteered for the Red Army. A number of Jewish refugees from Bessarabia arrived in Tomashpol. A few Jews from Tomashpol succeeded in fleeing into the Soviet interior before the town was occupied by German troops on July 20, 1941. Immediately after the start of the occupation the Jews of Tomashpol were ordered to wear white armbands with the Star of David. In late July 6 Jews of Tomashpol were shot to death. In August 1941 Einsatzgruppe D shot about 150 (or about 300, according to some testimonies) Jews at the Jewish cemetery near the town. In September Tomashpol became part of the Romanian occupation zone, Transnistria. In December 1941 a ghetto was established in Tomashpol and a 12-member Jewish council, headed by Zalman Bronfman, was appointed. The inmates of the ghetto lived in overcrowded conditions, had to carry out various kinds of hard labor, and were forbidden to leave the ghetto. Apart from local Jews, Jews from surrounding towns and refugees from Bessarabia were also incarcerated in the Tomashpol ghetto. Tomashpol was liberated by the Red Army on March 16, 1944.