Doybany

Nowadays, the name "Doybany" designates two separate villages, Doybany I and Doybany II, both of which lie on the banks of the Iagorlâc River. In 1792, after the Second Partition of Poland, the original village of Doybany became part of the Russian Empire. At the time, it was home to ninety-two people. By 1906, the population of Doybany I had grown to 1307. In 1928, natives of Doybany I founded a new village, which became known as "Doybany II", across the Iagorlâc River. In the interwar period, both villages lay inside the borders of the USSR, being part of the Moldovian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic, an autonomous republic of the Ukrainian SSR. Prior to World War II, several Jewish families resided in the village of Doybany I. Following the outbreak of the Soviet-German War on June 22, 1941, some of the Jews of this village tried to evacuate into the Soviet interior. Romanian troops occupied Doybany I in late August 1941. On September 3, 1941, a German murder squad shot twenty-seven people – seventeen Jews (both locals and non-locals) and ten former Communists and Soviet activists – in an anti-tank trench on the outskirts of Doybany I. Shortly afterward, most probably on September 12 or 13, several members of another Jewish family were shot by Romanian forces in the area of the village. Doybany was liberated by the Red Army in early April 1944.