Yustingrad

Yustingrad was founded as a Jewish town in 1825 by Jews who, on the order of Russian Emperor Nicholas I, were expelled from the village of Sokolovka. In the course of the 19th century a number of non-Jewish families settled in Yustingrad. In 1897 2,521 Jews lived in Yustingrad, where they comprised 79 percent of the total population. Most of the Jews in Yustingrad were small-scale merchants or artisans. The Jews of Yustingrad suffered greatly from the violence accompanying the years of revolution and civil war in Russia. About 150 local Jews were murdered in a pogrom carried out by the armed gangs of Daniil Terpilo (known as "Chieftain Zelyonyi")in August 1919. Most of the Jewish residents abandoned Yustingrad at this time in search of refuge. Few of them returned when the situation stabilized in the early 1920s. During the early Soviet period, a town soviet (council) was organized in Yustingrad with its deliberations being conducted in Yiddish and Ukrainian. In the 1920s and 1930s many Jews again abandoned Yustingrad for larger towns and cities, this time in search of new educational and vocational opportunities. With the outbreak of World War II in Europe in September 1939, a number of Polish Jewish refugees arrived in Yustingrad. More refugees from the western areas of Ukraine came to the town after the start of the German invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941. German forces occupied Yustingrad in the second half of July 1941. A Jewish council was appointed to collect from the local Jews money and valuables for the Germans. The Jews were forced to sew yellow Stars of David on the chest and on the back of their clothes, and were mobilized for various kinds of forced labor. In September 1941 several dozen male Jews of Yustingrad were shot on the town's outskirts. The rest (about 150) of Yustingrad's Jews, were murdered in early 1942 in a forest near the village of Konelskaya Popovka. The few Jewish skilled workers who were spared then were murdered in the summer of 1943. The Red Army liberated Yustingrad in January 1944. Today the town of Yustingrad no longer exists.