History

Early History

The earliest report of Jewish settlement in the area was in 1288, but settlement may have started in the previous century. It was under czarist rule until annexed into Lithuania in the 15th century. In 1495, the grand duke of Lithuania expelled all Jews from the country, but then authorized their return. The area fell under Polish rule in 1569, and the Jewish community in the area grew as a result of positive conditions. Under Polish rule, Jews received legal status, and the area became a hub of Jewish culture. Jews were engaged in commerce and a variety of crafts. By the late 16th century, they increasingly engaged in inn-keeping, property leasing, and tax collection, which resulted in friction with the local population.

Conditions changed in 1648. At that time, the Cossacks, wanting to free Ukraine from Polish domination, began a rebellion led by Chmielnicki, which resulted in the killing of tens of thousands of Jews. The military success of the Cossacks culminated in the fall of the fortress of Polonnye, a town just a few miles from Shepetovka. Most of the remnant Jewish population fled the area.

The population began to recover in the late 17th century; in the late 1670s there were about 20,000 Jews in the province, while 52,000 were counted in 1765. The 18th century was marked by a series of rebellions and invasions of Cossacks, Poles, Swedes, and Russians, along with an outbreak of plague and a series of fires, and frequent blood libels.

Hasidism

Hasidism caught fire in eastern Europe in the late 18th century, and Sudilkov was involved in the movement. Hasidism is a branch of Orthodox Judaism that promotes spirituality and mysticism. It was founded by Rabbi Israel ben Eliezer (1698-1760), who became known as the Baal Shem Tov ("Besht"). He was from the Podolia region, an area about 100 miles southeast of Sudilkov. His fame as a healer spread among Jews and non-Jews in the area. The Besht settled in Medzbybizh Ukraine, about 50 miles from Sudilkov. He traveled extensively throughout the region and had numerous followers and disciples. Four of them are particularly relevant to this region.

Rabbi Dov-Baer ben Avraham, who was widely known as the Maggid (preacher) was born around 1710 in Mezhyrichi, about 30 miles northwest of Sudilkov. Dov-Baer was an independent thinker and had a powerful personality. He became influential in the Volhynia region. He became the successor to the Baal Shem Tov after the leader's death in 1760. Dov-Baer had many followers who came to study with him. By the 1730s, the majority of Jews in the Ukraine, Galicia, and central Poland were Hasidic. Physical limitations prevented Dov-Baer from traveling around the region, so his home became the center of pilgrimage for those seeking his counsel. He had numerous disciples, which he assigned to territories to spread the movement. Dov-Baer died in 1772 and is buried in Mezeritch.

Moshe Chaim Ephraim of Sudilkov was born in Medzhybizh in 1748 and died there in 1800. He was a grandson of the Baal Shem Tov. After the Baal Shem Tov's death, he studied under R. Dov Ber (see above) and under R. Yaakov Yosef of Polonoye. In 1780, he settled in Sudilkov where he served as Maggid until 1785. At that time, he returned to Medzhybizh and served as rebbe until his death in 1800. He is buried next to his grandfather.

Another leading rabbi was R. Pinchas of Korets. Korets is about 30 miles northeast of Sudilkov. Rabbi Pinchas was a disciple of the Baal Shem Tov. He lived in terrible poverty. People visited him regularly, seeking his guidance, requesting his support, asking for his prayers, and beseeching his blessing. The flow of visitors to this door became a daily flood of personal stories and requests for help. He determined to emigrate to Palestine, but died in Shepetovka in 1790 at the beginning of his trip. For more information on Rabbi Pinchas of Korets, visit this site.

Finally, there was Rabbi Shimshon of Shepetovka, a student of both Rabbi Dov Baer of Mezeritch and Rabbi Pinchas of Korets. He was a celebrated talmudist and served as rabbi of Shepetovka and other towns. His reputation for scholarship advanced the cause of Hasidism among rabbis and scholars. He moved to Israel in 1799 and settled in Tiberias, where he was buried after his death in 1801.

Other key leaders of the movement lived in Polonnoye, a few miles from Sudilkov.

Sources for this brief historical synopsis are the Encyclopedia Judaica and Wikipedia. Additions and corrections are welcome by this web page developer.

Emigration

By 1880, a large-scale Zionist movement had developed in Volhynia with the organization of the Bund and Zionist (Hovevei Zion) parties. This was at least partly in response to a series of pogroms that broke out across the Pale of Settlement in these years. The pogroms were brutal and violent campaigns that featured the burning of synagogues, businesses, and homes, as well as assaults and murders. There is no record of pogroms in the immediate area of Sudilkov, but they did occur in towns as close as Zhitomer and other nearby communities.

Jews also became subject to compulsory military duty, with conscription periods of up to 25 years. Jews were more likely to be conscripted than others, and were treated harshly in the Russian army. World War I, the pogroms of 1915, the Russian revolution, and the Polish-Soviet War of 1920 brought more violence to the Jewish population.

Population growth, forced relocations, and government restriction on Jewish occupations caused very difficult living conditions for Jews in the Pale. All these factors led to an increasing desire to emigrate. Most emigrants came to the United States, initially because of help provided by American relief agencies, and later to reunite with relatives and friends. Each wave of pogroms prompted a new flight from the Pale to the U. S., Israel, and western Europe. Annual emigration numbers from Eastern Europe looked like this:

Period Number of Emigrants Per Year

1830 - 1870 1,000 - 4,000

1871 - 1880 8,000 - 10,000

1881 - 1890 50,000 - 60,000

1901 - 1914 150,000 - 160,000

In all, about 2.5 million Jews left Eastern Europe, of which 2 million went to the United States. Sizable numbers also went to Canada, Israel, England, France, and Argentina. Controversy existed between the Hovevei Zion (Lovers of Zion), who believed that independent existence of the people was only possible in their ancient homeland, and the Am Olam (Love the World) group, who felt that emigrating to the US and other free countries was the best way to go.

The Interwar Years

During the years immediately following World War I, there was series of anti-Jewish riots, or pogroms, across the area now known as Ukraine. According to Jeffrey Veidlinger, a researcher and professor of History and Judaic Studies, there were over 1,000 pogroms between 1918 and 1921, which involved thievery, assault, destruction of Torah scrolls, rape, torture, and murder. Estimates of the number of deaths vary, but are likely about 100,000. According to Veidliner, about two-thirds of Jewish homes and half of all Jewish businesses were looted or destroyed.

The context was a power struggle between Ukrainian nationalists, the Russian White (anti-Communist) Army and Russian Red (Bolshevik) Army which had somewhat different goals, and a Polish army that hoped to reclaim its former territory. Jews were often considered to be affiliated with one side or another, leading to assaults which were perpetrated by both neighbors and organized military units.

The town of Proskurov, not far from Shepetovka and Sudilkov, saw a Bolshevik uprising in 1919, which was opposed by the Ukrainian Army, which in turn massacred about 1,000 Jews in that town. The White Army took control in June 1919, bringing organized pogroms to the region, resulting a Jewish affiliation with the Red Army, which opposed pogroms.

A JDC report on Sudilkov from this time frame describes Sudilkov as “a thriving town before the pogroms as it had numerous industrial establishments and primitive workshops which gave employment to all the people. The pogroms dealt a heavy blow to the Jewish population, which suffered untold butchery at the hands of Denikin’s troops and other ‘pogromchicks.’ About 40 persons were murdered and 60 families robbed of all their property.”

Emigration from Sudilkov and other parts of the Pale of Settlement continued in the early interwar years, but slowed significantly by 1925 due to restrictions on both emigration and immigration. In 1924, the United States enacted the Immigration Quota Law which severely restricted the number of immigrants. It also established a "National Origins" system, dictating that the distribution of immigrants be distributed to people of nationalities in proportion to the number of their landsmen residing in the US in 1890. The result was to slow immigration from eastern Europe into the United States to a trickle.

Communication between immigrants and their relatives in eastern Europe indicates a time of difficult conditions and significant hardships. If you have letters from Sudilkov during this time period that you would like to share, please contact this web page developer.

The American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (the JDC or "the Joint") provided assistance to numerous Jewish communities in the Soviet bloc during the interwar years and beyond. Often they worked with Landsmanschaft, or emigrant communities in the United States who wished to help their brethren in the old country. During this time, landsmen from Sudilkov and Shepetovka living in the United States, particularly in the Boston area, worked through the JDC to raise funds for poverty relief and for various projects in the community.

Report on Sudilkov. NY_AR2132499-505NY_AR2132_01055, retrieved from JDC Archives on 7 Sep 2022.pdf

Pogroms and Jewish Persecution in Ukraine - Tablet Magazine.pdf

World War II and the Holocaust

Germany invaded Russia on June 22, 1941 in Operation Barbarossa. The invasion was swift and forceful, leaving many residents trapped and overcome. Sudilkov and adjacent Shepetovka were occupied in early July 1941. The situation quickly became very grim. Hundreds of people were shot to death over the summer of 1941. The Germans murdered people, destroyed many homes and businesses, and set the synagogue of nearby Sudilkov on fire. The remaining Jews from Shepetovka and Sudilkov were then confined to an overcrowded ghetto in the central part of Shepetovka. These grim and often fatal conditions persisted until June or July of 1942. At that time, the Germans formed Einsatzgruppen, or killing squads, to carry out German orders to execute communist officials, Jews, politicians, and other categories of people. Einsatzgrup C was deployed to Volhynia, where they conducted mass murders, including the slaughter of 33,000 Jews at the ravine of Babi Yar in Kiev. In Shepetovka, there were three mass shootings in the surrounding forests, killing nearly the entire Jewish population of those towns. This devastation was echoed in hundreds of other communities in the Soviet Union. By the spring of 1943, when Germans began their retreat from Soviet areas, the Einsatzgrupen had murdered an estimated 1.25 million Jews and hundreds of thousands of others in western Russia.

In the early chaotic days of the German invasion, the Soviet Union conducted a massive relocation effort, moving millions of people (along with critical resources and manufacturing facilities) to relative safety. More than a million Jews from western Russia were evacuated or escaped on their own to central Asia, especially to Uzbekistan. Tashkent was one of the most sought-after refuges. The total number of people who migrated to safer harbors (the Urals, Siberia, Middle Volga, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kazakhstan) within the Soviet Union was 16 million, making this the largest organized movement of a civilian population in history. In addition, whole industries were moved to these regions. To review a partial list of Jews from Sudilkov who were evacuated to Tashkent, go here.

Shepetovka was an important rail junction considered of strategic interest in the war. As the Soviet and Ukrainian armies pushed the German army westward in the winter of 1944, Shepetovka proved to be a stubborn target. Its capture by the Soviet army was attained on February 11, 1944. According to the Manchester Guardian (February 12, 1944 "Blow on New Sector of the Ukrainian Front"), Stalin's Order of the Day described Shepetovka as "a large railway junction and an important German Defence Position" and said that it was captured by an outflanking movement and frontal attack. The Los Angeles Times (February 12, 1944 "Ukrainian Rail Center Captured by Red Army") described Shepetovka as a distributing point for German reserves. It described Shepetovka's strategic importance as being "the last main line from Berdichev to Warsaw " connecting to "two other lines that lead into Rumania and Hungary. It's less than 60 miles north of the last main German supply railroad to the Dnieper bend - the Odessa Lwow line." The article cited a Russian war correspondent's account that Shepetovka was a large German supply base. The Baltimore Sun (February 12, 1944 "Reds Occupy Rail Hub of Shepetovka") reported that Shepetovka was bitterly defended by the Germans for many months, and that the capture provided a new base to threaten Rumania, which had been defended by concentrated German counterattacks. The article states that "many prisoners were taken as the exhausted and hungry Germans gave up. Large quantities of war material were taken by the Russians, including 150 guns, 1,070 trucks, and 6 stores of supplies." The article quotes Red Star, a Russian army newspaper, as saying that the Germans, refusing to surrender, were being "slaughtered like sheep on the open steppes." Russian army successes during this time included re-capturing numerous towns, squeezing the German army into an ever-smaller corridor, capturing equipment, and killing or capturing tens of thousands of Nazi troops.

To review the ever-growing database of Jews from Sudilkov killed and persecuted in the war, visit the Yad Vashem website here.

After the War

It is unknown whether any Jews returned to Sudilkov after the war. Most survivors likely remained in Uzbekistan or settled in other Soviet cities. Some Jews did re-settle in adjacent Shepetovka.

Landsmen in the United States continued to organize fundraisers, although more often the projects being funded were now in Israel. Organizations such as the "Sudilkov-Shepetowka Relief Society of Chicago" were active until at least 1968. In August 1991, Ukraine became an independent state, and Sudilkov became part of that state.

Compiled by Miriam Kirshner

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