RADOMYSHL

RADOMYSHL, city in Zhitomir district, Ukraine. The Jewish community of Radomyshl was established in the 18th century. In 1792 it numbered 1,424 (80 percent of the total population), in 1847 2,734, and it increased to 7,502 (67 percent) in 1897. There were 161 Jewish artisans out of a total of 198. The community maintained a talmud torah and three secular schools. The district of Radomyshl included the communities of chernobyl near korosten (4,160), Brusilov (3,575), Malin (2,547), and others. The entire region was influenced by the teaching of the ḥasidic rabbis of Chernobyl. In May 1919 bands of peasants of the hetman Sokolovski organized pogroms in the Jewish communities of Radomyshl and neighboring towns. Hundreds (more than 400) of Jews were massacred and many others fled to the big cities. Under the Soviet regime, Jewish community life stopped and the town declined. In 1926 there were 4,637 Jews (36 percent of the total population) in Radomyshl, their number declining by 1939 to 2,348 (20 percent of the total population). The Germans entered the town on July 9, 1941, and established an open ghetto, where 15 persons were crowded per room. In August they killed 389, and on September 6 a unit of Sonderkommando 4A murdered 1,107 adults, and the Ukrainian auxiliary police murdered 561 children. Six mass graves mark the murder of Jews in the vicinity. Later, Jews were prohibited from gathering at the graves, since the militia claimed that for them to do so was to cause a "demonstration." Jews were also forbidden to erect a monument to the dead. In 1970 the Jewish population was estimated at about 250. -BIBLIOGRAPHY: Yidishe avtonomye un der Natsyonaler Sekretaryat in Ukraine (1920), 176, 180; E. Tcherikower, Di Ukrainer Pogromen in Yor 1919 (1965), 220–3. (Yehuda Slutsky / Shmuel Spector (2nd ed.)