Pyatka

The first Jews apparently settled in Pyatka in the early 18th century, and in 1765 the village was home to seventy-eight Jews. By 1897, its Jewish population had grown to 836, or around thirty-one percent of the total. While most local Jews made their living from carpentry and furniture making, a number of Jews were tailors and shoemakers. From the late 1920s, because of the ban on private commerce and the absence of local artisans' cooperatives, most of the local furniture was exported to larger towns and cities, and this industry gave employment to local Jews, especially to the men. The Jewish community of Pyatka lacked access to basic medical services. In 1926, Pyatka was home to 870 Jews, who made up roughly 26.5 percent of the total population. In 1929, there was only one teacher at the local four-year Yiddish school, which was attended by 100 students. The school was eventually closed down in the 1930s. As of 1929, there were still two cheders and a beth midrash open in the village. Pyatka was occupied by German troops on July 7, 1941. Shortly afterward, eleven Jewish men, most of them distinguished members of the local community, were arrested and sent to Chudnov, where they were apparently shot along with the local Jews. The remaining Jews of Pyatka were confined to a ghetto, from which they were sent on a daily basis to harvest sugar beets in the fields of the former collective farm. The ghetto was liquidated, and its population murdered, in late October 1941. Pyatka was liberated by the Red Army in early January 1944.