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Krasnostav
Ukraine

This web site is dedicated to the study of Jewish family history in the town of Krasnostav, now in Ukraine, but formerly part of the Volhynia Gubernia of the Russian Empire.

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Compiled by Michael Levin
(krasnostav@yahoo.com)
Last updated 01 December
Copyright ©2015 Michael Levin

Town Life
From the book

"Shall not make for yourself an idol"


  
   The author of this book, Peter Segal, was born in Krasnostav in 1920.
The most part of his Kaplun-Segal meshpucha was killed in Holocaust.
Peter immigrated from Ukraine to Israel in 1991
.

  compiled by  Leon Geyer, descendant of Reznik family from Krasnostav, is a resident of N.Y.

  artist Moshe Hemain, descendant of Kaplun family from Krasnostav, is a resident of Israel.

Compiled by Leon Geyer

Title page




      ....Krasnostav had Jewish, Ukrainian, Polish and German residents. The Ukrainians generally settled on the outskirts of town by their fields and worked in agriculture, while the Jews lived closer to the center of town around the large square where fairs took place every Friday in summer and winter. On regular days, a few dozens of craftsmen’s workshops open from dawn till dusk lined both sides of the square. A dozen of stores were doing brisk business there as well. On one side, the square faced an Orthodox church; on the other, there was a bridge that led to a Ukrainian school on the other bank of the river.  I still remember the fear I felt when the church bells tolled and people carrying icons came out of the church. There were two smaller squares to the left and right of the market square – that is where the big and the small synagogues were.  I was always awed by them, in a way.
246 Jews lived in Krasnostav in 1847, while 50 years later – in 1897 – their number increased to 1,222, which accounted for more than half of the town’s population.
   The streets where Jews lived extended radially away from the square. They were named after Ukrainian villages where they led: Manyatinskaya, Horitskaya, Yablonivskaya, and Khorovetskaya.  In between the four major streets, there were at least a dozen of smaller streets and lanes dotted by Jewish houses, workshops, sheds, and barns.
The town had a river and four ponds with fish. People were bathing and doing their laundry there in the summer, and skated in the winter using home-made wooden skates.
The terrain was flat; a forest was located about three kilometers away from the town by the village of Guta, on the way to Khorovets.
    Krasnostav is located 20 to 40 kilometers away from the cities of Slavuta, Shepetovka, and Novograd-Volynsk. They were accessible by horse-drawn carts. There were two to three Jewish cart drivers called balagulas that owned a pair of horses and a cart; they gathered five to six passengers and took them to these cities. And later on, when the railroad was completed, they took their passengers to the Maidan-Vila Station or to the Dubrovka (Radulino) Junction, which were 15-20 kilometers away.
The road was bad – an ordinary dirt road that turned into ? swamp in spring and fall. During these seasons, horses could barely pull their load; people had to walk alongside pushing the cart.

                                                                          I remember .... continue