Borispol

Jews apparently started to settle in Borispol in the early 17th century. The Jewish community of the town was totally destroyed in 1648, during the uprising of Bogdan Chmelnitsky. After Borispol became part of the Russian Empire in 1667 Jews were officially forbidden to settle here. The revival of Jewish life in Borispol did not occur until the late 18th and early 19th centuries.

In 1897 Borispol's 1,094 Jews constituted 12.2 percent of the town's total population.

In 1881 a pogrom was staged in Borispol by peasants from the surrounding villages: several Jews were wounded and Jewish property, houses, and shops were damaged or looted. From 1882 to 1903 Jews were officially forbidden to live in Borispol although evidently this ban was not strictly enforced.

In 1891 the painter Yosef Zaritsky, who became a leading artist in Israel, was born in Borispol.

In the early 20th century there was some Zionist activity in the town.

The Jews of Borispol suffered greatly from the violence of the revolutionary years and the civil war in Russia. In August 1919 a pogrom was staged in Borispol by Anton Denikin’s White Army troops: a number of Jews were murdered, Jewish women were raped, and Jewish property was looted or destroyed.

The Jewish population of Borispol underwent profound changes during the Soviet period. In the late 1920s in the Krivoi Rog area a group of Borispol Jews established an agricultural cooperative, which later became the October collective farm.

In the 1920s and 1930s many Jews, especially younger ones, left Borispol for larger towns and cities in search of new educational and vocational opportunities. In 1939 only 375 Jews remained in the town, where they comprised 2.8 percent of the total population.

Few Borispol Jews succeeded in leaving the town before it was occupied by German troops on September 23, 1941. Most of the Jews who remained were murdered, together with Jews from the surrounding villages, in the late fall or early winter of 1941.

During the German occupation a camp for Soviet prisoners of war was established in Borispol. In October 1941 about 1,100 Jewish inmates of this camp were murdered by Sonderkommando 4a of Einsatzgruppe C.

Borispol was liberated by the Red Army on September 23, 1943.