SHARGOROD (Pol. Szarogród; in Jewish sources Sharigrad), town in Vinnitsa district, Ukraine; until 1793 within Poland. An organized Jewish community existed there from the latter half of the 17th century. Both Jewish and gentile inhabitants of Shargorod suffered from continued assaults by the Cossacks. In this period the community erected a magnificent fortified synagogue. When the town was conquered by the Turks toward the end of the 17th century, the building was used as a mosque. During the 18th century the Jews of Shargorod played an important role in the trade with Turkey. In 1765 the community numbered 2,210, and was then the largest in Podolia. At the end of the 17th and the first half of the 18th centuries Shargorod was a center of Shabbateanism. The ḥasidic leaders Naphtali Herz of Shargorod and *Jacob Joseph of Polonnoye were active in the town, the latter holding rabbinical office until 1748. In the 19th century the Jews engaged in the trade of agricultural products, the manufacture and sale of alcoholic beverages, owned most of the 125 town shops, peddling in the villages of the region, and crafts. In 1881–82 the community suffered from pogroms. The Jewish population numbered 3,570 in 1847 and 3,859 (73% of the total) in 1897. By the beginning of the 20th century there existed a Jewish state school for girls and two private schools, apart from ḥadarim. In 1926 the community numbered 2,697 (55.9%), and by 1939 the number had dropped to 1,664 (74.6% of the total population). Between the wars there existed a Jewish town council and a Yiddish school. Most of the Jews worked in cooperatives and kolkhozes. Shargorod was occupied by the Germans on July 22, 1941, and annexed by the Romanians to Transnistria in September. A ghetto and a Jewish police were established. In October–November the Romanians added about 5,000 Jews – mainly from Bukovina, but also from Bessarabia – to the 1,800 Jews of the town and its environs. The crowding in the ghetto caused epidemics, and by June 1942 some 1,449 had died of typhus. The Judenrat fought the epidemics by opening a hospital, a pharmacy, and a sanitation station. With the help of the Aid Commitee from Bucharest it organized shops where food, medicine, clothes, and other essentials were produced. An orphanage and school for 186 children was opened. About 1,000 Jews were dispersed on June 30 into 10 nearby villages, and in May 1943 some 175 were sent to a labor camp in Trikhaty (near Nikolayev), where they perished. In September 1943 there were still 2,731 Jews from Bukovina and 240 from Bessarabia in the Shargorod ghetto. In 1979, 800 Jews (23% of the total population) lived there, but there was no synagogue. Most of the Jews left in the 1990s.
I. Schiper, Szieje handlu żidowskiego na ziemiach polskich (1937), 259f.; G. Loukomsky, Jewish Art in European Synagogues (1947), index; S.A. Horodezky, Le-Korot ha-Ḥasidut (1904), 7–11, 17–28; M. Teich, in: Yad Vashem Studies, 2 (1958), 219–54.
[Shimshon Leib Kirshenboim /
Shmuel Spector (2nd ed.)]
Source: Encyclopaedia Judaica. © 2008 The Gale Group. All Rights Reserved.