THE JEWISH HERITAGE OF ZOLOTONOSHA

How do people leave a memory of themselves?

What places are the most evidences about the lives of people who lived there before?

What was the Jewish past of the town of Zolotonosha?

Today, these questions unite indifferent citizens of all ages to preserve their roots, history and cultural heritage.

We invite you to take a trip to the modern town of the Middle Dnieper region in order to explore the Jewish history and heritage of Zolotonosh .

Zolotonosha has been known since 1576. Since 1781 - a town. Since 1932, it has been the district center.

At the beginning of the 20th century Zolotonosha was a small industrial and prominent trade center. In 1913, an iron plant, a brick factory «Vulkan», a brewery, vinegar and soap factories, a fizzy fruit water plant, a confectionery factory, 2 steam and 2 simple mills, 2 oil mills, 3 grain mills worked in Zolotonosha. There were 6 weekly fairs and 3 weekly bazaars. By 1912, all shops belonged to Jews.

Numbers say: 1847 – 1001 Jews, 1865 – 1864, 1897 – 2769, 1920 – 6434, 1923 – 6022, 1926 – 5180, 1939 – 2087, 1998 – 100, 2001 – 37.

Jewish pogroms: 1905, 1919

According to the projects of the engineer of the Zolotonsha

Zemstvo Balavensky, the following buildings were built in Zolotonosha:

The building of the female gymnasium (1902)

According to the projects of the engineer of the Zolotonsha

Zemstvo Balavensky, the following buildings were built in Zolotonosha:

(1908)

The building of a private pharmacy

According to the projects of the engineer of the Zolotonsha

Zemstvo Balavensky, the following buildings were built in Zolotonosha:

The building of the Zolotonosha Private Theater (1910)

According to the projects of the engineer of the Zolotonsha

Zemstvo Balavensky, the following buildings were built in Zolotonosha:

The building of the male gymnasium (1910)

According to the projects of the engineer of the Zolotonsha

Zemstvo Balavensky, the following buildings were built in Zolotonosha:

1911)

The building of the Zolotonsha Zemstvo

(1909 -

Oleksii Bach was born in Zolotonosha in 1857. The founder of the school of biochemistry. He was "The Composer" in the field of biology. Zolotonosha has a park named after Bach, Bach street and the bust monument to the famous scientist

Yakiv Kostiukovskii was born in Zolotonosha in 1921. He was the playwright, screenwriter of feature and cartoon films, the creator of the comedy masterpieces

Isaak

Boleslavskii was born in Zolotonosha in 1919. He was the chessplayer, honored master of sports (1948), grandmaster (1950), candidate for the world championship, chess theorist and coach

Until 1941, Zolotonosha was the Jewish town with three synagogues. The synagogue had a great value in the life of Jewish families. They visited the synagogue to pray together. After the war, only one saved.

In 1949, the authorities closed the synagogue and deregistered the Jewish community. There is the inactive synagogue in the center of the town nowadays.

Not far from the town of Zolotonosha there is a place of mass execution of Jews.

In November 1941, the Nazis shot about 3,500 Jews in the Yarky tract. There is a memorial monument on the mountain outside the town. This is Zolotonosha «Babyn Yar»

The Jewish cemetery in Zolotonosha is an important part of the Jewish history of Zolotonosha. The cemetery is active. The entrance gate is painted, the side columns are whitewashed, the cemetery is swept. It is large in size.

The entrance clearly points to the Jewish cemetery: the Menorah with a Star of David. At the entrance there is the information about the European Initiative for the Preservation of Jewish Cemeteries (ESJF). The cemetery is cleaned up and preserved.

The further from the center of the cemetery, there are more older tombstones, the more are damaged. The inscriptions are indistinct, difficult or impossible to identify.

There are approximately 100 horizontal tombstones and up to 100 vertical tombstones in the cemetery. Those, the oldest ones that were found, point to the burials of the second half of the 19th - beginning of the 20th centuries. The symbols that dominate on the tombs are a Star of David. The inscriptions are written in Hebrew, Ukrainian and Russian.

The most recent burial was in 2016. This is the grave of the talented photographer Volodymyr Braginskii. The tombstone of Yakov Braginskyi (1919-2007), a member of the Society of Jewish Culture, the author of the monument to the shot Jews in the Yarky tract, is also made in the modern Ukrainian style.

The monument to the victims of the Jewish pogrom of 1919 is being destroyed.

In the center of the cemetery is a Soviet-era monument with the inscription:

«

memory of the citizens of the town of Zolotonosha, who died during the Nazi occupation of 1941-1943, is immortalized here. Wherever you go or ride, stop here, near the grave along this road, bow with all your heart».