Olshana

Jews lived in Olshana from the late 17th or early 18th century. In 1897 its 1,233 Jews constituted 20 percent of Olshana's total population.

Olshana's Jews suffered greatly from the violence accompanying the years of revolution and civil war in Russia. In a series of pogroms staged there in 1919 by various warring parties scores of Jews were murdered, Jewish women were raped, and Jewish property was looted or destroyed. A Jewish self-defense force was established in Olshana; it existed until 1923.

During the early Soviet period a seven-year Yiddish school was opened in Olshana. Olshana also had an orphanage for children orphaned by the pogroms.

In the 1920s and 1930 many Jews abandoned Olshana for larger towns and cities in search of educational and vocational opportunities. In 1939 195 Jews reamined in Olshana, where they constituted 3.3 percent of the total population.

German troops occupied Olshana on July 28, 1941. Soon afterwards a ghetto was established there; it was composed of several houses along one of Olshana's streets. Ghetto inmates were forced to wear white armbands with black Stars of David and to perform various kinds of hard labor. In September 1941 a first group of Jews who were members of the Communist Party or Soviet functionaries were shot at the local cemetery. In October 1941 about 100 Jewish men were shot dead on the town's outskirts. In early May 1942 most of the remaining Jews of Olshana were deported to Zvenigorodka, the seat of the neighboring county, where they shared the fate of Zvenigorodka's Jews.

The Red Army liberated Olshana on February 5, 1944.