Andrushevka

Jews appear to have first settled in Andrushevka in the early 18th century. In 1897, the town was home to 430 Jews, who made up sixteen percent of the total population. Before World War I, the Jewish community of Andrushevka played a major role in the local commerce. Most of the shops in the town were owned by Jews, as were a local pharmacy and turpentine factory. In 1939, there were 658 Jewish residents in Andrushevka, making up ten percent of the total population. Andrushevka was occupied by German troops on July 16, 1941. The local Jews, along with a number of Jewish refugees from elsewhere, were shot in two murder operations in August 1941 and the spring of 1942. In the period between the two massacres, the survivors of the first one – mostly women, children, and elderly people, as well as a small group of Jewish professionals – were locked in horse sheds next to a distillery near the village of Gardyshevka. They were shot either in mid-spring or in early summer 1942. Around June that year, a number of Jews from Andrushevka were taken to the Berdichev Ghetto, where they were later shot alongside the other inmates. Andrushevka was liberated by the Red Army on December 26, 1943.