Romny

The earliest reference to the presence of Jews in Romny dates to the early 19th century. The Jewish community of Romny grew in the course of the 19th century; thus, despite a pogrom in 1881, Jews made up approximately twenty-eight percent of the local population in 1897. By 1910, the number of Jews in Romny had grown to 13,401, or about forty-one percent of the total population of the town. Jews played an important role in the local economy; they owned, or were employed in, various businesses, such as bakeries, factories, and butcher shops. Romny was the birthplace of several prominent Zionists leaders, including Chaim Arlozorov and Pinhas Rutenberg. During the Russian Civil War, Romny was wracked by pogroms, which claimed the lives of many local Jews. The principal perpetrators of these pogroms were White Army soldiers and Petliura's Ukrainian nationalist troops. Although the number of Jews in Romny shrank in the aftermath of the Civil War, it remained fairly high. In 1926, the town was home to 8,593 Jews, comprising about thirty-three percent of the total population. By 1939, their number had declined to 3,834 (about 14.8 percent of the population). German troops occupied Romny on September 10, 1941. The local Jews were ordered to wear armbands with the Star of David, and later also a black hexagon with the word "zhid" ["kike" in Russian] on their chests. They were forced to perform forced labor. Local non-Jews were forbidden to give the Jews any food or money, and they were actively encouraged to betray their Jewish neighbors. The German authorities offered a bottle of vodka and a sum of about 1700 rubles for every denounced Jew. The Jews were also subjected to a daily curfew from 8 PM. In early November 1941, the German administration, in cooperation with the mayor of Romny, moved the Jews into a ghetto on Voroshilov Street, in the southwestern section of the town. The ghetto was surrounded with barbed wire and declared an epidemic area. Sometime later, the Jews were told to prepare for an evacuation and take their valuables and clothes with them. Most of the ghetto inmates were murdered in November 1941 in a ravine near the village of Zasulye. After this murder operation, the police launched a hunt for the Jewish survivors, and later murdered them. According to some Soviet reports, a number of Jews from Romny were shot together with non-Jews, as Soviet and Communist activists. However, no further details of this massacre are known. The Red Army liberated Romny on September 16, 1943.