SHCHEDRIN

SHCHEDRIN, town in Polesie district, Belarus. In 1841 Ḥayyim Golodetz, a timber dealer, established a Jewish colony on the estate of Shchedrin. By the end of the 19th century some of the settlers engaged in general agriculture and some in the timber business of the Golodetz family. In 1897 there were 4,022 Jews in Shchedrin (95% of the total population of the town), about 40% of them engaging in agriculture. A decline in the timber trade in the area and the subsequent departure of the Golodetz family resulted in a general emigration from the town. In 1926 there were 1,759 Jews (91 percent of the population) in Shchedrin. The Soviet government attempted to develop agriculture and in 1930 over half of the 380 remaining Jewish families were engaged in that occupation, about half of them living on the kolkhoz Sotsialistishe Veg. About 30 percent were engaged in crafts. A local Jewish council operated until the 1930s, as did two Yiddish schools, one for the kolkhoz children. The Germans arrived in July 1941, and in March 1942 they murdered the 1,500 Jews living there. -BIBLIOGRAPHY: Y. Hershnboim, Shchedrin (Yid., 1931); J. Slutsky (ed.), Sefer Bobruisk, 2 (Heb. and Yid., 1967), 806–24; L. Golodetz, History of the Family Golodetz (1954). (Yehuda Slutsky / Shmuel Spector (2nd ed.)