NOVOSELITSA

NOVOSELITSA (Rom. Nouaˇ Suliţa or Suliţa), town in the Khotin district, region of Bessarabia, Moldova. As a result of the large emigration of Jews to Bessarabia, Novoselitsa developed in the first half of the 19th century from a rural into an urban community. There were 3,898 Jews living there (66% of the total population) in 1897 and 4,152 (86.2%) in 1930. Among the 875 members registered in the loan fund in 1925, were 461 merchants, 213 craftsmen, and 65 farmers. Prior to World War II, community institutions included a talmud torah, a kindergarten, and a school, all belonging to the tarbut network, and an old-age home. The town was annexed on June 29, 1940, to the Moldavian S.S.R. (Eliyahu Feldman) -Holocaust Period The town was captured by Romanian forces on July 2, 1941. On the same day, 800 Jews were murdered on the pretext that Jews had shot at the Romanian troops. Sixty Jews were arrested and taken to the local spirits factory, where they were shot to death. The surviving Jews, as well as others gathered from the entire district, were rounded up and put into the factory. On July 5, the old men, the women, and children were forced into a ghetto in the town. On July 20, all the Jews were put on the road to transnistria . En route they were exposed to constant brutality, and the old and weak among them were put to death. They reached ataki , on the banks of the Dniester, on August 6, by which time the Germans had closed the Ukrainian border, and the deportees were sent back to Secureni. In a report by the gendarmerie commander at Cernauti, dated August 11, 2,800 Jews from Novoselitsa are mentioned among the prisoners of the Secureni camp. Their fate was the same as that of the other Jews in that camp; many were killed and others buried alive. Only 200 returned from Transnistria after the war. In 1959 the authorities closed down the community's two synagogues, one of them being converted into a club. In 1970 the Jewish population was estimated at about 1,000. (Jean Ancel) -BIBLIOGRAPHY: M. Carp, Cartea Neagra, 3 (1947), index; N. Kahn in: Eynikayt (Sept. 11, 1945); BJCE. ADD. BIBLIOGRAPHY: Pinkas Hakehillot, Romanya, vol. 2 (1980).