Liublin

Liublin was a small Jewish settlement established in 1842 as an agricultural colony on the banks of the Dniester River. The main crop cultivated by the colonists was tobacco, but grapes, corn, and wheat were also grown on the colony lands. In the second half of the 19th Century, the colony grew, mostly thanks to the influx of immigrants from elsewhere in the Russian Empire. The census of 1897 listed 517 residents in Liublin, 512 of whom were Jews. In 1918, Bessarabia became part of Romania. In the interwar period, Liublin was officially named Liublin-Colonie. In the first three decades of the 20th Century, many Jews from Liublin immigrated to Palestine. According to the Romanian census of 1930, the colony was home to 300 residents, 274 of them Jews. In 1940, following the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, Bessarabia was annexed to the Soviet Union, and Liublin became part of Soviet Moldavia. On June 22, 1941, Romania joined Nazi Germany in its war against the Soviet Union. Over the summer of 1941, the Romanian Army managed to recapture the territory of Bessarabia. In the immediate aftermath of the invasion, some residents of Liublin fled into the Soviet interior, while Jews from elsewhere came to the village, seeking refuge. In early July 1941, non-Jewish residents of the nearby village of Nemirovka (Nimereuca) – some of whom had guns, but most of whom were armed only with clubs and hoes – raided Liublin, robbing and slaughtering the Jews they found there. Some local non-Jews, together with Romanian gendarmes, shot several dozen Jews in the central square of the village. Another seven Jews, who had been found hiding in Liublin, were taken to the Gendarmerie post in Nemirovka; their subsequent fate is unknown. According to a ChGK document, a total of 125-130 Jews (both residents of Liublin and Jewish refugees from elsewhere) were killed in the village in July 1941. Liublin was liberated by the Red Army in March 1944.