NOVAYA USHITSA

NOVAYA USHITSA, town in Khmielnitskii (Kamenets-Podolski district until 1954), Ukraine. The Jewish community in Novaya Ushitsa and its environs dates from the beginning of the 18th century. In 1765 there were 203 poll tax payers. From 1838 to 1840, 80 Jews of the Novaya Ushitsa region, including rabbis and community leaders, were tried in what became known as the Oyshits Incident. They were accused by the governor of Kiev, General Gurayev, of the murder of two Jews who had informed on "absconders" (unregistered persons who had avoided paying taxes and doing military service) to the authorities. Most of the accused were sentenced by a military court to flogging and exile to Siberia. The 1847 census records 725 Jews living in Novaya Ushitsa, with 1,235 in the communities of the district. The Jewish population numbered 2,213 in 1897 (34.5% of the total). After the Bolshevik Revolution and the civil war, their sources of livelihood were drastically curtailed. In 1926 there were 1,844 Jews in the town (28.4% of the total), and in 1939 they numbered 1,547 (55% of the total population). In the 1920s there existed a rural Jewish Council (Soviet). Germans entered the town on July 14, 1941. In September a closed ghetto was instituted and in spring of 1942 Jews from the environs were herded there. On August 20, 1942, an Aktion was conducted, and 3,222 were murdered. A group was taken to the labor camp in Letichev and perished there. Those remaining in the town ghetto were killed on October 16, 1942. After the holocaust the community ceased to exist. -BIBLIOGRAPHY: Perezhitoye, 1, pt. 2 (1908), 1–7; M. Kiper, Dos Yidishe Shtetl in Ukraine (1929); S. Ginzburg, Historishe Verk, 3 (1937), 178–9; Yidn in Ukraine, 1 (1961), 164–78; V.B. Antonovich (comp.), Arkhiv yugo-zapadnoy Rossii, 2, pt. 5 (1890). (Arthur Cygielman)