Yagorlyk

The village of Yagorlyk lay at the crossroads of several empires. In the 18th century, it was part of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Following the Second Partition of Poland, it was assigned to the Russian Empire. In 1802, Yagorlyk had thirty-four households (with a total population of 115), fifteen of which were Jewish ones. There were two flour mills in the village, and it hosted a bi-weekly fair, with merchants from nearby areas coming to buy and sell grain, cattle, and industrial goods. Some of the local Jews sold vodka, both in Yagorlyk itself and in other towns. In the years 1924-1940, the village was part of the Moldavian ASSR, an autonomous republic of the Ukrainian SSR. In 1926, Jews made up thirty-three percent of the total population of the village, which stood at 999. In 1940-1941, Yagorlyk was part of the Moldavian SSR. Following the outbreak of the Soviet-German War on June 22, 1941, some of the local Jews managed to evacuate into the Soviet interior, while others remained in the village. By the end of August 1941, the area came under Romanian and German control. On September 6, 1941, forty Jews from Yagorlyk, along with one local Communist Party member and a Moldovan woman from the nearby village of Doybany, were shot by a German unit at an anti-tank trench outside the village. Yagorlyk was liberated by the Red Army in early April 1944.