GOLOVANEVSK

GOLOVANEVSK, town in Odessa district, Ukraine. Jews settled there in the middle of the 18th century and numbered 456 in 1790. Their number rose to 1,974 in 1847, and 4,320 (53% of the total population) in 1897. In 1910 a Jewish school for boys opened. During the civil war of 1918–19 the community formed a strong self-defense organization which deterred the peasants of the surrounding region from pogroms, and 2,000 refugees from neighboring localities found refuge in Golovanevsk. At the end of 1919, however, armed bands of peasants led by the hetman Sokolowski broke into the town, overcame the self-defense units, and carried out pogroms in which over 200 Jews lost their lives. There were 3,474 Jews (86% of the population) living in Golovanevsk in 1926. Many Jewish families were occupied in farming. A Yiddish school operated there. By 1939 the number of Jews had dropped to 1,393. Golovanevsk was occupied on August 1, 1941, by the Germans, who soon executed 100 Jews. In September the Germans with help of the Ukrainian police murdered 776 Jews, raping young girls and hurling infants alive into the burial pits. On January 3, 1942, they murdered 36 children from a nearby children's home and in February 1942 they killed another 168 Jews, including 49 children. -BIBLIOGRAPHY: I. Klinov, In der Tekufah fun Revolutsye (1923), 157–210; A.D. Rosental, Megillat ha-Tevaḥ, 2 (1931), 3–16. (Yehuda Slutsky / Shmuel Spector (2nd ed.)