1918–1940: Khotyn under Romanian rule

1918–1919: From Imperial collapse to Khotyn under Romanian rule

Romanian administration followed the collapse of Russian power in Bessarabia. Residents encountered Romanian courts, schools, language requirements, and citizenship rules while military control along the Dniester remained unsettled.

The January 1919 Khotyn uprising brought violence to the border region. Accounts emphasize varying combinations of peasant grievances, Ukrainian national aspirations, Bolshevik influence, cross-border support, and opposition to Romanian rule. Jewish residents faced the dangers of the revolt and its suppression alongside other townspeople.

1920–1926: A Jewish city under Romanian institutions

Under Romanian rule, Khotyn became the seat of Hotin County. Jewish schools, charities, prayer houses, and community organizations continued their work while residents dealt with new administrative and citizenship requirements.

The Bessarabian historian Ștefan Ciobanu’s 1926 regional survey describes the town’s streets and schools and records seventeen Jewish prayer houses.

1927–1929: Elected community government and organized welfare

The communal pinkas, a register of minutes and community affairs, records elections and welfare work. In 1927, reported turnout reached 92 percent of eligible voters. Candidate lists represented craftsmen, business interests, democrats, Zionists, independents, and Mizrachi, a religious Zionist movement. Women served on committees within a largely male-led administration.

Community budgets supported schools, charity, religious services, the cemetery, and health care. Interest-free loans helped small merchants, craftsmen, and village peddlers. Former residents abroad contributed funds.

1930: Population, fire, and the scale of Jewish Khotyn

About 5,800 Jews lived in Khotyn in 1930, more than a third of the town. In May that year, a fire left fifty families homeless. The community raised money and arranged relief; another fire in February 1932 displaced fifteen poor families.

1931–1933: Schools, youth, charity, and political engagement

The community supported schools, a library, and youth activities, including Tarbut, a Hebrew-language educational network. In 1932 it purchased land to enlarge the cemetery. The following year, its existing registry office improved the recording of births, marriages, and divorces.

In 1933 the community also joined the boycott of German goods after Hitler came to power.

1934–1937: Antisemitism, professional restrictions, and civic defense

Romania’s political climate became increasingly hostile to Jews during the mid-1930s. Nationalist movements demanded restrictions in universities and professions, while antisemitic rhetoric entered mainstream public life. Khotyn’s Jewish lawyers and communal activists responded through organized protest. Community material records participation in a democratic attorneys’ front opposing discriminatory professional measures.

Zionists, religious movements, businessmen, craftsmen, and cultural activists competed in local elections and cooperated on community work. Their minutes record disagreements as well as joint responses to antisemitism.

Welfare work continued. A 1937 account describes summer camps for poor children, supported with help from the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee. Read more about community institutions and charity.

1938–June 1940: Authoritarian Romania and approaching catastrophe

King Carol II’s authoritarian regime, citizenship revisions, and antisemitic legislation narrowed Jewish civic security before the Iron Guard ever entered government. Economic discrimination and political uncertainty intensified. Yet local institutions continued to feed children, maintain religious life, operate welfare programs, and support education.

On 26–28 June 1940, after a Soviet ultimatum, Romania withdrew from Bessarabia and northern Bukovina. Khotyn was incorporated into the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic (Ukrainian SSR). For the second time in a generation, residents changed states without moving. The communal structures recorded so vividly in the 1920s and 1930s were immediately exposed to Soviet policies that rejected independent religious, political, and charitable organizations.