David
Chapin
Austin,
Texas
dchapin@earthlink.net
Scharogrod
is "Shargorod", a town in Litin District, Podolia Province. I
had the pleasure of visiting this
town in 1995. Because of its unique geographic
history, it is one of the best preserved towns in all of Podolia.
At one time, it was nearly 90%
Jewish, and all the Jewish houses from the turn
of the 19th-20th century are still preserved. In addition, it has one of the
oldest Jewish synagogue buildings still standing in Ukraine, built probably in
the 1400s. The cemetery is also quite unique, with burials starting from the
1600s and going on thru to the modern day. In fact, it never lost its Jewish
population. Several photos of Shargorod and references are in my book, "The
Road from Letichev".
One of the
reasons it was so well preserved is that the battles of WWII passed it by. The
Nazis quickly occupied it in 1941, but then they gave it to their Rumanian
allies as part of a newly formed territory called "Transnistria". Jews
were not slaughtered during the war here as they were in adjacent occupied parts
of Ukraine. When it was liberated in 1944, the Rumanians fled rather than fight,
so it stayed in a relatively pristine state. Even today, it is one of the very
few places in Ukraine where you can get an understanding of how Jews lived
before the Russian Revolution.
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