Shpola

A Jewish presence in Shpola was first noted in the late 18th century. Only after the town became part of the Pale of Settlement of the Russian Empire and with the economic development of the area did the Jewish population of Shpola start to grow significantly. In 1897 it reached 5,388 or 45.15 percent of town's total population. Most of Shpola's Jews were artisans or small-scale merchants.

At the beginning of the 20th century, Shpola had two private Jewish schools with Russian as the language of instruction, one for boys and the other for girls, and an evening school for girls.

After the February Revolution of 1917, when there was an upsurge of political activity among the Jewish population, branches of the Zionist organizations Tseirei Zion and Poalei Zion were established in Shpola. The town also had a branch of the autonomist socialist Bund. The prominent Soviet Yiddish poet Itsik Fefer was born in Shpola in 1900.

The Jews of Shpola suffered greatly from the violence that accompanied the years of revolution and civil war in Russia. In 1919, in several pogroms carried out by anti-Bolshevik troops of Nikifor Grigoryev and by General Anton Denikin's White Army troops, scores of Jews were killed, Jewish women were raped, and Jewish property was looted or destroyed. To cope with the pogromists a Jewish self-defense unit was set up in Shpola.

In the 1920s a Jewish town council was formed in Shpola. Shpola also had a seven-year Yiddish general and a vocational school, as well as a Jewish kindergarten. The Jewish population of Shpola underwent profound social changes during the Soviet period. Many Jews found employment in government or public service, in local industry, or in agriculture. In 1934 the Molotov Jewish collective farm was established near Shpola. Many Jews, especially young ones, left Shpola for larger towns and cities in search of educational and vocational opportunities. In 1939 2,397 Jews were living in Shpola, where they constituted 16.3 percent of the total population.

After Germany invaded Poland in September 1939, Polish Jewish refugees arrived in Shpola. Many of Shpola's Jews succeeded in leaving the town before it was occupied by German troops on July 30, 1941. Soon after the start of the occupation the Jews of Shpola were registered, forced to wear white armbands with blue Stars of David, and were mobilized for various kinds of forced labor. Most of the remaining Shpola's Jews were concentrated in one neighborhood of Shpola, which became a ghetto. The Germans mockingly referred to this ghetto as "Palestine." A Jewish man named Kaufman was appointed to head this ghetto. His main functions were to distribute food among the ghetto inmates and to assign them to work for the Germans. The ghetto inmates were barred from going to the market and received only s meager amount of food. Many starved to death or died from one of the diseases rampant in the overcrowded ghetto. The murder of Jews started soon after the occupation began. About 200 Jews were murdered in August and September 1941. In March 1942, several hundred able-bodied inmates of the Shpola ghetto were transferred to labor camps in the neighboring Katerinopol County, where they were forced to carry out road construction and repair work. Most of the deportees to these camps were murdered at the end of 1942. At the same time, people considered unfit for work, mainly women, children, and the elderly, were transferred to a concentration camp in Daryevka, southwest of Shpola. There many of them starved to death, while the rest were murdered in the spring or summer of 1942. A small number of skilled workers were left in the Shpola ghetto. They were murdered in 1943, when the ghetto was finally liquidated.

The Red Army liberated Shpola on January 27, 1944.