Pereyaslav

Jews are first mentioned as living in Pereyaslav in the late 16th century. The Jewish community of Pereyaslav was almost completely destroyed in 1648 during the Khmelnitsky uprising. After Khmelnitsky's Cossack Army in Pereyaslav swore allegiance to the Russian tsar in 1654, Jews were forbidden to live in the town. This ban was lifted only in the late 18th century, after Ukraine became part of the Russian Empire in the wake of the divisions of Poland and the Jewish Pale of Settlement was established. In 1897 the Jewish population reached 5,754, constituting 39.4 percent of the town's total population. At the turn of the century there was a government-sponsored Jewish school in Pereyaslav, with Russian as the language of instruction. In the early 20th century a Zionist organization was established in Pereyaslav. In 1881 and 1905 there were pogroms during which Jewish property was looted or destroyed.

The Jews of Pereyaslav suffered greatly from the violence accompanying the years of revolution and civil war in Russia. In 1919 several pogroms were carried out in Pereyaslav by armed gangs.

In the 1920s and 1930s there was a four-(later a seven-) year Yiddish school in Pereyaslav. Pereyaslav was the birthplace of one of the founding fathers of modern Yiddish literature, Sholom Aleichem (Solomon Rabinovich). In the 1920s the home where Sholom Aleichem was born was turned into a museuem devoted to this writer.

In 1939 Pereiaslav's 937 Jews constituted 11.3 percent of town's total population.

German troops occupied Pereyaslav on September 17, 1941. Most of the local Jews, including Jewish women with Ukrainian husbands, were murdered on the town's outskirts in 1941-1943.

The Red Army liberated Pereyaslav on September 22, 1943. Right after the liberation the town was renamed Pereyaslav-Khmelnitsky, in honor of the leader of the Cossack uprising of 1648-1649.