PERVOMAISK

PERVOMAISK, city in Odessa district, Ukraine. It was formed in 1920 by the amalgamation of three neighboring localities; Bogopol, the most ancient of them (Podolia), Olviopol, and the village of Golta, in the Kherson oblast. In 1799 there were 253 Jews in the first two localities. (In 1847 there were about 1,400 Jews in Bogopol.) The number of Jews in the three communities was 8,636 (40.8% of the total population) in 1897. Most of them (about 6,000, or 82% of the population) lived in Bogopol. There were pogroms on April 17–18, 1881, and on October 22, 1905; Jews were wounded and much property looted. In December 1919, when the soldiers of denikin retreated before the Red Army, they engaged in bloodshed and rioting. There were 9,896 Jews (31%) in Pervomaisk in 1926, dropping to 6,087 (18.5% of the total population) by 1939. There were two Jewish kolkhozes and children attended two Yiddish schools, one of them with high school classes. The Germans captured the town on August 2, 1941. The Golta part of the town was annexed to Romanian Transnistria, and the other two parts remained under German occupation. Hundreds of Jews were murdered in Bogopol, and on September 17, 1941 a ghetto was established. In October some 120 were killed, and in December 3,600 were murdered at the Fray-Leben kolkhoz. In February–March 1942, 1,600 Romanian Jews were executed. In the Olviopol part Jews were concentrated in the clubhouse and burned alive. In late 1942 Jews from the Golta ghetto (Romanian part) were sent to the Bogdanovka and Akmechetka, and most of them perished there. All together 5,469 people were murdered, most of them Jews. According to the 1959 census, Jews numbered about 2,200 (5% of the population). Most left in the 1990s. -BIBLIOGRAPHY: Reshummot, 3 (1923), 435–7. (Yehuda Slutsky / Shmuel Spector (2nd ed.)