# 16 – The former residence of R’Yisroel Zak, Krasilover Rebbe.

# 29  - Gleizer: Monya Gleizer, according to my father’s account, was a “financial  inspector” in 1920s – the early 1930s. He used to check the incomes of former “capitalists”, e.g. former well-to-do Jews (so-called “lishentsy”, which were deprived of their voting and some other crucially important and needed human rights; both my grandfathers were “lishentsy”). Gleizer put the highest taxes on them (“he strangled us with the taxes”, my father recollected).

# 36 - To the railway station. The station is in 3-4 km from the center of Krasilov. Two railroads have been crossed here. One was for Kiev-Brest directions, which passed through Polonnoe and Shepetovka, the other was Zhmerinka-Volochisk.

#  37  - To Starokonstantinov. It was the main Krasilov street, and also the road to Kuzmin.

# 63 - Moishe Katz was the only survivor among the Krasilov ghetto inmates, not to say about his wife, who immediately left Krasilov as soon as it was liberated by Soviet Army. They both spent about two years in the hiding place; after the end of WWII Moishe Katz gave the strong evidence, as the main witness, against the Nazis’ willing helpers and collaborators, natives Ukrainians and Russians, which chasing, hunting, and murdering Jews.

   # 65 - The market square: it was the cattle and horse market in 1910s (during my father’s childhood).

# 77 – This two-storeyed residential house, the first of the sort in Krasilov, was built after destruction of the Great Synagogue. “Prudent” municipal authorities ordered to use bricks, which the Synagogue had been built of, for erecting this ugly structure. The apartments of this house were distributed among the Communists and Municipal officials.

# 85 – “To the sugar plant”. The Krasilov sugar plant was built by then Krasilov owners of Polish descent, Idalia (b. Sapega) and Konstantin Tchorba, in 1842. Eventually, after Tchorbas’ death, the plant was acquired by Emerik Mankovsky, also Polish. It was one of the biggest sugar plants in this area. Mankovskys lived in the magnificent palace surrounded by the beautiful park. There came many Poles to Krasilov with them –the whole administration of the plant was Polish, Mankovskys invited the family doctor from Poland, etc. The Krasilov Polish Cathedral was the most magnificent in the area. The highest Catholic Hierarchs visited it from time to time being invited by Emerik Mankovsky and the family. Mankovskys gave a lot of charity donations for Krasilov residents; they also founded the hospital (#68 in the plan) in the house, which belonged to the family, and the Polish doctor worked in it. Also they built the orphanage , etc. After Bolsheviks’ rival of October 1917, Mankovskys and many other Poles left Krasilov for Poland …As far as I know the plant keep working now

# 101 - To the village of Chernelevka. It was also the way to Kul’chiny and a road to the new Jewish cemetery (in the distance of 3-4 km). There was the old cemetery on the South outskirts of Krasilov, on the road to Proskurov (#118), among the Gentiles’ small huts and orchards in this side of the shtetl. The old Jewish cemetery was closed for burials on the eve of 20^th century. The new one was demolished by the Soviet army when the troops approached the town to liberate it. Soldiers threw away tombstones and put there, on the cemetery plot, huge gasoline tanks. Later the military airdrome replaced the cemetery. Our relatives had been buried in this cemetery. There are no graves here now. The Jewish bones lie under concrete runways.

#126 - #127. The former market square, which was turned to the Public garden in 1930s. Before 1917, there were a lot of small stores in the square. It was surrounded by the rows of Jewish private houses, both wooden and brick, which used to be rented by sellers with horse and carts. Also there were a lot of inns around the place and on its approaches. There was the Ghetto here during the WWII. 

  # 115 - Platform for speeches (local authorities gave the official speeches for the mass public from the platform during Communist festivals)

# 140 – Kikhman – Aizyk Kikhman was Chavele Gutman’s husband. There also lived in the house their talented teenaged son, Levochka (Arye-Leib, named after his grandfather, Arye-Leib Gutman, Krasilover Rebbe’s Gabbaj), and Chavele’s mother, Sheva, b. Preigerzon (Pregerson). Aizyk was arrested and evidently executed in 1937, all the rest were murdered by Nazis in 1941 or 1942;

# 141 – Gimelfarb . The close neighbors, Gimelfarbs and Gutmans, were also close relatives: Nathan Gimelfarb’s grandmother was born Frida Preigerzon and Sheva Gutman’s sister. Nathan’s father, Moisej Gimelfarb, the farmacist, used to work in local pharmacy. He died from hunger in the beginning of 1933. His wife, Dora, also died a couple of years later, leaving after her 4 orphans, 3 boys and a girl. Two older Nathan’s brothers were killed in the battles of WWII, Nathan, the third brother, also fought against Germans and was severely wounded. Polina, the youngest child, was hidden by Ukrainian women in Nemirov, and survived the war.

# 143 – “Hassidishe Shul”, where my paternal grandfather, Duvid der Husid, used to pray;

# 144 – Handcraftsmen’s Synagogue;

# 150 – Merchants’ Praying House;

# 155 - Shoichet Moishe was the head of Judenrat in 1941. He went in the front row of the column of Jewish inmates of the Krasilov ghetto, which proceeded to the place of mass-shooting in fall of 1941.

        # 26. Tzvaygboim – there used to live here, in this house, a couple, Zusja Tzvaygboim and his wife and my aunt, Basja  Sheinman Tzvaygboim, with their three children, Motl (b. abt 1922-23 ), Manya (b. abt 1924) and little Eli (he was of the early  teen age in 1941). All of them perished during WWII. Motl had been enlisted in the Red Army and was killed in the Kerch area; all the rest were murdered in Krasilov Ghetto. Basja  Sheinman Tzvaygboim (1893-1941) was my father’s half-sister. Zusja Tzvaygboim (1890-1941), her husband, was Kul’chin native. His occupation was called as “flower merchant” by his nephew who submitted the POTs on Zusja and Basja to the Yad-Vashem Archives in 1957.

        # 72. David Sheinman was my paternal grandfather and Basja  Sheinman Tzvaygboim’s father. In this part of Krasilov, there was a huge estate with great orchard originally owned by the Polish aristocrat.  David Eliovich Sheinman (1863-1942), or Duvid der Husid, or Duvid der Skovorodker, bought a part of this property in the first half of 1890s. There he got settled, with his family. His first wife, Malka Shoichet, died in the very end of 1890s leaving after her three orphans. David soon got remarried with Freida Drel(l) from Polonnoe, and got 5 more kids with her. So, in one of the 2 houses on the territory of their half of estate, the Sheinmans (parents, grandparents and 8 kids) once lived. The second, bigger, house was rented by the Zemstvo Hospital. Grandparents (David’s old parents) died in 1910s. Later, David’s three elder sons emigrated to the USA and Argentina, and his daughter, Basja, got married with Zusja Tzvaygboim. Soon after that, the younger children left their parents’ home. Their mother Frida died in 1930. Besides, David Sheinman was dispossessed in the early 1930s as a bourgeois, and hardly avoided the exile to Siberia. There was arranged the Jewish collective farm (“kolhoz”) and the Animal Hospital in this area. Nevertheless, the old (70+) gentleman survived, married again and was full of energy up to the terrible moment when Nazis entered and occupied Krasilov.

 # 94 Barack / Pharmacy. Avrum-Aba Shulimovich Barack (1882-1957) was my maternal grandfather. He was a native and, until the beginning of 1920s, a resident of Novograd-Volynskij (NV), Volhynia Gubernia, nowadays – Zhitomir District. He had to leave NV because of strict persecutions from the Communist authorities, which treated him as the former “capitalist”. He and his family (his second wife, Feiga Tovbin, and their son Michail) settled in Krasilov in the end of 1932 or in the very beginning of 1933. Both Avrum-Aba and his wife were licensed pharmacists and worked in a small Krasilov pharmacy. They lived in the back part of the same building (it was the former inn which was originally belonged to the Majzlish and was rented from them after no customers needed this inn). I know that Baracks lived that tiny apartment and ran the pharmacy until 1940 (and I lived for a part of this period with them) when they had to leave for Teofipol’. There they were soon caught by the war breaking news and got evacuated.

Copyright © 2008 Barry Chernick