Baranovka

Although the first Jewish settlers probably came to Baranovka in the first half of the 17th century, the earliest reference to the presence of Jews in the town dates to 1789, when there were two Jewish families living there. In 1910, Baranovka was home to two Jewish private vocational schools, one for boys and one for girls. By 1914, most of the local shops and businesses were owned by Jews. In 1925, four Jewish artisan cooperatives were operating in Baranovka. In 1939, there were 1,447 Jews living in the town, comprising 23 percent of the total population. Baranovka was occupied by German troops on July 10, 1941. Only some of the Jews managed to escape during the first weeks of the war. The Germans immediately forced the Jews into an overcrowded ghetto, which consisted of several houses on Zhaboritskiy Street. The inmates were required to wear a white Star of David armband. Starvation was rampant in the ghetto, and some of the Jews were marched to forced labor every morning. Religious observance and study were banned, and Jewish valuables were confiscated. Contact between Jews and the Ukrainian population was strictly prohibited. The Jewish population of Baranovka and its vicinity was liquidated in a number of operations, the first of which was the murder of several dozen Jewish men in mid-July 1941. Additional mass shootings took place in late July, late August, and (probably) October 1941. In November of that year, a group of Jewish men deemed capable of working were deported to the Novograd Volynskiy labor camp. The ghetto was finally liquidated either in early January or in February 1942. The Jewish employees of the Baranovka china factory, who had been kept alive up to this point (along with members of their families), were shot in January 1943. The remaining Jews of Baranovka, along with those of nearby localities, were burned to death, together with the surviving population of the village of Dermanka, in summer 1943. Baranovka was liberated by the Red Army in January 1944.