Buki

The first written reference to a Jewish presence in Buki is dated 1765; however the number of Jews living in the village was very small. The few Jews who were living in Buki during the Haidamak uprising in 1768 were either murdered or fled the village. In 1897 Buki's 2,298 Jews constituted 58.6 percent of the total population. In the early 20th century there was a private Jewish school for girls in Buki. In the early 20th century Zionist activity took place in Buki.

The Jews of Buki suffered from the violence accompanying the years of revolution and civil war in Russia. Several hundred Buki Jews lost their lives during the pogroms staged in 1919-1920 by various warring parties. Many Jewish women were raped and Jewish property was looted or destroyed. Many Jews choose to abandon the village at this period to seek safer locations.

The migration of Jews from Buki continued during the early Soviet period. In the course of the 1920s and 1930s many Jews, especially younger ones, left Buki for larger towns and cities in search of educational and vocational opportunities. In 1939 the 546 Jews living in Buki constituted 17.6 percent of the town’s total population.

German troops occupied Buki on July 22, 1941. Apparently few Jews succeeded in leaving in time. Very soon after the start of the occupation the Jews of Buki were registered, forced to wear armbands with the Star of David, and assigned to various kinds of grueling work. In late 1941 most of Buki's Jews were murdered in and around the village. Jews who were spared these massacres were incarcerated in a labor camp established on the site of a prewar state farm (near the town), to which Jews from the surrounding villages were also taken. In May 1942 the inmates of this camp who were deemed unfit for work were murdered, while moost of the camp’s inmates was either murdered or liberated by partisans (according to one testimony) in 1943.

The Red Army first liberated Buki on January 7, 1944; however, a week later the Germans recaptured the village.

Buki was finally liberated by Red Army troops on March 6, 1944.