Putivl

Although the town of Putivl lay outside the Pale of Settlement, in 1897 it was home to 173 Jews, out of a total population of 9,955. The Jews became an integral part of the town, with a developed economic and communal life. Despite the pogroms of the Russian Civil War, the number of Jews in Putivl rose to 341, out of a total of 8,002 residents. By 1939, the number of local Jews had dropped to about 152 people, out of a population of 9,101 (i.e., approximately 1.6 percent of the total). German troops occupied Putivl on September 10, 1941. Putivl also became the center of operations of Sidor Kovpak's partisan unit, which engaged the German forces. In 1941 and 1942, the Germans murdered approximately 2,315 civilians, including some Jews, in Putivl and its vicinity. Other sources suggest that the Jews who had not been evacuated or mobilized to serve in the Red Army were killed by German soldiers, with the assistance of local policemen, in a pit near the town on November 4, 1941. The Red Army liberated Putivl on September 2, 1943.