Novo Ukrainka

Jews first settled in Novo Ukrainka in the late 1850s. The town's development benefited from the construction of the Odessa-Kremenchug railway line in 1881 and the establishment of a local station. A pogrom was carried out in Novo Ukrainka in the spring of 1881. In 1897 the Jewish population of 2,909 comprised 18 percent of the total population. A Jewish council functioned in the town in the 1920s even though its working language was Ukrainian. A Yiddish school was established in the town in the late 1920s. Later it was relocated to the premises of the Ukrainian school, where the Ukrainian principal was hostile toward the Yiddish school. The number of Jews living in Novo Ukrainka declined: in 1939 its 802 Jews comprised only 5 percent of its total population. The town was occupied by German troops on August 2, 1941. Apparently most of the Jews fled to the east during the first weeks of the occupation. Einsatzgruppe C headquarters was located in Novo Ukrainka from August 28 to September 20, 1941. Late in that period, in mid-September 1941, 150 - 200 Jews of Novo Ukrainka and nearby villages were shot in the Gusarskiy Forest. In addition several dozen Jews were killed in two smaller scale murder operations in the area of the Druzhba ("Friendship") kolkhoz. Novo Ukrainka was liberated by the Red Army on March 17, 1944.