Felshtin

Location (49°19' N, 26°43' E)
Hvardis'ke, Khmel'nyska oblast, Ukraine

Nearby Towns and Cities

Khmelnytskyy 15 miles ENE
Kosohirka 15 miles S
Kupyn 16 miles SSW
Solobkovtsy 18 miles SSE
Nikolayev 19 miles NNE
Sataniv 21 miles WSW
Kupil 22 miles NNW
Zinkiv 23 miles SE
Tarnoruda 23 miles WNW
Krasyliv 26 miles NNE
Smotrych 26 miles SSW
Chemerivtsi 27 miles SW
Tribukhovtsy 27 miles WSW
Husyatyn 28 miles SW
Horodnystya 29 miles WSW
Tovste 29 miles W
Volochysk 29 miles WNW
Dunayivtsi 29 miles S
Pidvolochys'k 30 miles WNW
Bazaliya 30 miles NNW
Vinkivtsi 30 miles SE

History

Destruction

Projects

Resources

History

History
A Russian almanac written in 1865 describes Felshtin as being near the origin of the Smotrich River, 22 versts from Proskurov (78 miles north-northeast of Chernovtsy and 186 miles west-southwest of Kiev). During the 16th century this area belonged to Mikael Gerburt, a Galician noble who lived close to the village Dobroshani. He built a wooden castle to protect the citizens from Tartar attacks. The castle was named after the birthplace of the builder, Felshtinom. It was given to him by King Stefan Batoriy. In 1584 he was given permission to establish weekly fairs and trade markets and freed the citizens from taxes for four years.
Felshtin was often attacked by marauders, especially in 1615, when tartars established their camp in the area and plundered constantly. In the first part of the 18th century, the shtetl came under the ownership of the Grabitsko family. The Jewish population in the 1847 census was 1,369 souls; in 1897, 1,885 out of a total of 2,002 people. Before the emancipation of 1861, the borough also belonged to land owners, the last was Charnetskaia (nee Grabianko.) (Information in the Russian State Historic Archives, Fond 577, inventory 29, file 1670.)
A chapter in the Felshtin Yizkor book by Shmuel Landau asked, “How old is the Jewish settlement in Felshtin?” He recalled that the oldest Jewish cemetery contained worn headstones, the earliest being 1696. However, a still earlier cemetery that they believed was Jewish (because the graves were dug two or three times deeper than was customary and unlike gentile graves had stone markers) contained bones estimated to be over 500 years old. Moreover, a mound that was two miles from town was thought to be a still earlier mass grave of Jews perhaps from as far back as the Black Plague. Landau also recalled that three hundred years ago the area was owned by a Polish nobleman named Maslovsky who lived in Felshtin. This man established a butchery nearby in the town that he called Naftolovka after the son, Naftoli, of a wealthy Jew of Felshtin that the nobleman wished to honor. Another nearby town, Gershonovke, was named after the Jew’s other son Gershon. The descendants of these Felshtin Jews included the families Lopatin and Soschin. (Etta Soschin was raped and mutilated in the 1919 pogrom and later was a witness in the Shwartzbard trial in Paris after Petlura’s assassination.)

Destruction

Destruction
During a brutal pogrom on February 18, 1919, an estimated 600 Jewish Felshtiners were massacred—about a third of the total Jewish population – and its famous wooden synagogue was destroyed.
On Yom Kippur, 1941, Nazis exterminated most of Felshtin’s surviving Jewish population. Today the town is known as “Hvardiyske.” A few Felshtiners absent from the town during the holocaust returned after the war.

Projects

Felshtiners who came to the United States established the New York-based First Felshteener Podolier Benevolent Society, which was organized in 1905 and incorporated in January 1906. The society provided relief to survivors of the 1919 pogrom, helping them settle in the U.S., Israel, and Latin America. The society also created and published a Felshtin Yizkor (memorial) book in 1937, sponsored social events, a memorial in Dimona, Israel, and maintained the Felshtin section of a Staten Island cemetery. By the late 1970s, many Felshtin-born Americans had passed away, and the Association grew increasingly inactive.
In recent years, the Society has become reinvigorated and its members are planning two major events to commemorate the centennial of the pogrom in Felshtin as well as the others in Ukraine and Belarus that killed over 200,000 Jews in the years following the Russian Civil War.

Resources

Information was taken from www.felshtin.org