1500s
In order to strengthen the defense of the southeastern outskirts of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, King Stefan Batory granted Jan Zamoyski, Chancellor and Supreme Crown Hetman, in 1579, an uninhabited wasteland on the border of the Podolsk Voivodeship with Bratslav, between the Murashka and Kolbasna rivers. According to the king's plan, a fortified castle was to be built here, which would be able to ensure the defense of the region, depopulated due to the constant raids of the Tatar hordes. The king exempted new settlers from paying taxes for a period of twenty years. In 1583, Chancellor Zamoyski expanded his possessions on the eastern border of the Podolsk Voivodeship, acquiring the Karczmaroaska Volost, located in the upper reaches of the Murashka, from the Kamenets Bishop. On a high cape at the confluence of the Murashka and Kolbasnaya rivers, he founded a castle that was to control the crossings that had long existed here. In 1585, it was named Shary Gorodok, and the entire region adjacent to the Murashka River began to be called Shargorod Volost.
Shargorod was located at the crossroads of important trade routes of the Podolsk Voivodeship.
The Polish King Sigismund III, taking into account the strategic and commercial importance of the Shargorod castle and the needs for the development of the settlement, granted Shargorod town rights on January 26, 1588.
The small border settlement soon occupied a key position in the defense of the region. In addition to Shargorod, Zamoyski also owned other border fortresses: Rashkov, Yampol, Krasnoye, but it was Shargorod, much better fortified than them, that became the capital of the chancellor's Ukrainian possessions.
The town defensive fortifications included a fortress-type synagogue. The Zamoyski princes, having experience in business contacts with Jews, apparently tried to support the development of the Shargorod community: it is unlikely that without their help the Jews could have erected such a large stone structure already in 1589, on the southeastern outskirts not far from where the Kolbasnaya flows into the Murashka.
During the Cossack attack in 1595, the entire community took refuge behind the two-meter thick walls of their synagogue.
1600s
During the Cossack attack in 1595, the entire community could take refuge behind the two-meter thick walls of their synagogue.
In the 1640s, the Jewish community of Shargorod became one of the largest in Podolia: some authors mention a thousand Jewish houses, others - three hundred. The Jews lived compactly on the territory of the Old Town.
In the martyrology of the Jewish communities destroyed during the Khmelnytsky period, "Tit Gayaven" ("Impenetrable Mud"), this is what is said about the Shargorod massacre: "And there were about three hundred rich householders there, diligently studying the Torah from morning until evening, and they were all killed."
Between 1672 and 1699, the Shargorod volost, together with the entire Podolsk voivodeship, belonged to the Ottoman Empire. Occupied by the Turks in 1674, Shargorod was called by them Little Istanbul - "Kuchuk Istanbul". Probably, at the same time, the Jews began to call the place Istanbul Zuta - "Little Istanbul".
The Turks took care of the restoration of the town buildings and fortifications, the settlement of the town and the restoration of the town economy. One of its most beautiful buildings - the synagogue - they occupied for a mosque. It is known that the Turkish authorities, traditionally tolerant of the Jews, preferred them to the Poles and Ukrainians as the town population, especially in view of the ongoing attempts to conquer the town during the 1670s by Polish and Cossack troops. In 1699, the Ottomans, forced to leave Podolia under the terms of the Treaty of Karlowitz, also left Shargorod.
1700s
The Shargorod jewish community was formed anew in the first decades of the 18th century.
It is known that in 1710 a community already existed in Shargorod, which had its own rabbi. At the beginning of the 18th century, Jews, who apparently constituted the majority of the population, also took leading positions in the economic life of the reviving town.
In 1734, Shargorod suffered from a pogrom, which was carried out by one of the Haidamak gangs that participated in the anti-Polish uprising of the Cossacks under the leadership of the Shargorod centurion Verlan.
The census of 1765, in which Rabbi R. Novak Mikhalovich participated, registered 2,219 Jews registered in the Shargorod community - at that time it was the largest Jewish community in Podolia.
From the end of the 1730s, the Jews of Shargorod found themselves in the sphere of direct influence of the founder of the Hasidic movement, R. Israel Baal Shem Tov (Besht), who repeatedly came here to preach.
After the partitions of Poland during the formation of the Podolsk Governorate, Shargorod was included in its Yampolsky district. According to the description of the land surveyor, made in 1799, in Shargorod there were already 283 Jewish houses, as well as in the trading rows of "stone shops 36, small 38."
1800s
In 1884, the merchant B. Soroker built a two-story stone building, the upper floor of which was intended for the beit midrash, and the lower for the talmud torah.
In the early 1890s, a private Jewish school for boys opened in Shargorod, where they taught Hebrew and Russian literacy, Jewish history, the Law of God, the Bible, and general subjects.
1900s
In the years preceding the First World War, with the general revival of the economy, the situation of the Shargorod Jewish community, which already numbered about 5,000 people, also improved. Jews owned almost all of the trading establishments in Shargorod, they owned four pharmacies and six timber warehouses, a warehouse for agricultural machinery and tools, four hotels, a mead factory, a mill in Sloboda Shargorodskaya, and a printing house.
During the Civil War, Shargorod experienced all the hardships that befell most Jewish shtetls in Podolia. In the summer of 1919, military units of the Directory carried out a pogrom here. According to a report from the head of the department of national autonomies of the Ukrainian People's Republic, E. Bograd, on September 3, 1919, about a hundred Jews were killed during the pogrom in Shargorod, and many of those who escaped died of hunger, hiding behind the hills surrounding the town.
In the spring of 1920, Soviet power was established in the town. In 1923, when Shargorod became a district center, only 2,450 people lived there (including 1,918 Jews). In 1925, a Jewish shtetl council was created here, the paperwork of which was conducted in Yiddish, and various artisans' artels were organized.
From the mid-1920s until the beginning of the fascist occupation, the Jewish collective farm "Red Plowman" operated in Shargorod.
In the 1930s, the authorities closed all the Shargorod synagogues one after another, and the minyan began to meet in a private home.
Before World War II, in 1939, 1,664 Jews (74% of the whole population) lived here.
The occupation of Shargorod lasted from July 22, 1941 to March 20, 1944.
After the war and famine of 1947, until Stalin's death in 1953, anti-Semitic campaigns took place in Shargorod, as well as throughout the country. In 1947-1948, the last two functioning synagogues in the town were closed. In 1957-1964, campaigns were held to combat Zionism and "theft of socialist property", which were openly anti-Semitic in nature. In 1964-1982, under Brezhnev, the pressure on Jewish communities eased, and life became easier.
In 1967, Israel won the Six-Day War; resulting in the strife for the right of USSR Jews to emigrate. In 1970, mass emigration of Shargorod Jews began.
In 1989, 400 Jews were registered here. Emigration continued, and in mid-1990 about 160 Jews were registered, in November of the same year - less than 80.
In 1991, the USSR collapsed, Ukraine became sovereign.
The below video is about Shargorod, although it is in Russian, there are English subtitles available in the settings.