Jews lived in Radomyshl since at least the 1500s. At the time, the city was part of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and was known as Radomysl. Little is known about this early community save that it was destroyed in the mid-1600s during the Khmelnytsky Uprising.
Jews started returning to Radomyshl in the first half of the 1700s. Radomyshl was attacked in haidamak revolts in the 1750s, with Jewish houses and shops ransacked and four Jews killed.
In 1793, Russia took Radomyshl as part of the Second Partition of Poland. It became part of the Kiev Guberniya and was made capital of the Radomysl Uzed. In the 1790s, 1,424 Jews lived in Radomyshl, more than half of the population.
In 1839, hairdresser A. Lazebnik was accused of killing a Christian girl in a blood libel. The trial resulted in Lazebnik's acquittal. By 1847, Radomyshl was home to 2,734 Jews, including 94 merchants, and there were seven synagogues in the city. The Radomyshl Synagogue, a great stone synagogue, was built in 1887.
By the 1897 Russian census, 7,502 Jews lived in Radomyshl, 69% of the population. By then, Jews had their own schools, hospital, printing houses, book stores, and multiple prayer houses. The Bund first appeared in Radomyshl in the early 1900s, organizing their first strike in 1905.
On November 2, 1904, Radomyshl was hit by a pogrom. This was part of a wave of pogroms that plagued the Russian Empire between 1903 to 1906. It isn't clear how severe the pogrom was, but around that time large numbers of Radomyshl Jews left Russia and moved to America or elsewhere.
In 1918, during the Russian Civil War, the Jewish community was forced to pay a large tribute to the local militia head. The Jews of Radomyshl then faced waves of pogroms in 1919. Units from the Provisional All-Russian Government launched pogroms on February 18 and March 12-13, while a gang under Hetman Sokolovski launched pogroms on March 23-31 and May. The latter pogrom killed around 400 Jews, including Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel Twersky, and thousands more fled the city. According to one estimate, 720 Jews were killed in the 1919 pogroms.
Radomyshl's Jewish community declined during the interwar period, with a number of its inhabitants moving to bigger cities. In 1926, there were 4,637 Jews in Radomyshl, 36% of the population. A fire broke out that year, destroying the Jewish vital records and damaging the Radomyshl Synagogue. The synagogue was torn down in the 30s.
In 1939, 2,348 Jews lived in Radomyshl, around 20% of the total population, and another 129 Jews resided in the villages of the Radomyshl raison. Nazi Germany first entered Radomyshl on July 9, 1941, although they didn't occupy until July 20. 70-75% of the Jewish population were still in the city at the time, with the rest either able to evacuate east or serving in the Soviet army. An open ghetto was established shortly afterwards, with Jews ordered to wear an armband with a yellow Star of David and forbidden from doing any business with the Ukrainians.
In August 1941, a unit of Sonderkommando 4a killed 389 Jews in two Aktions. Conditions grew worse in the ghetto, with Jews from the surrounding villages being sent to the ghetto and an average of 15 people living in a single room. On September 6, the Sonderkommando unit liquidated the ghetto and killed 1,107 adults while the Ukrainian auxiliary police killed 561 children. Six mass graves mark the places where Jews from Radomyshl and its vicinity were killed.
The Soviet Union liberated Radomyshl on November 14, 1943, after which some Jews returned there. They were forbidden from gathering at the six mass graves where Jews were killed since it would cause a "demonstration." They also weren't allowed to erect a monument to the dead.
Samuel Kipnis, a Radomyshl Jew who immigrated to America, visited the town several times from the 1950s through the 1970s and wrote about his experiences in travelogues (PDF, 410MB).
By 1970, 250 Jews lived in Radomyshl. By 2013, a few Jews, mostly elderly, still lived there.