Time passes quickly. In childhood, a day seems like an eternity and you want to grow up faster. For many years I harbored the idea of writing a book about the history of, and life in the Jewish towns of Podillia where I was born, lived and worked. These towns are Murovani Kurylivtsi, Kopaihorod, Kamianets-Podilskyi, Mohyliv-Podilskyi, Vinnytsia and Bar, where Ukrainians, Jews, and Poles lived and got on well with each other. These are towns in which Jews greeted their Christian neighbors with the words, “Christ is risen!” These are towns in which a husband and wife could be buried in different cemeteries because they belonged to different religious groups. It was here, even in the most difficult times, that one could obtain everything a person needed.

I want to dedicate my story to the life of Jews in the 19th to 21st centuries in order to portray my vision of distant and recent times, because human memory has a tendency to forget. People cannot live without memory, without relatives and friends, without events and memories that are colored by a palette of different feelings.

Many times I heard the following words: “Do you remember? Why do we want to remember what happened many years ago? Why do we need it? Why do we hold on to this memory so much?' Thoughts, memories... There is no peace of soul and heart because of them. The flight of thoughts can only be compared to the clouds in the sky, floating in the highlands day and night, having neither beginning nor end. They pour down with abundant summer rain, turning into a rainbow that seems to say: “Look, people, enjoy life!” And people always want to rejoice and admire this seven-colored beauty. Yes, first you need to remember the story in your mind, and only then transfer it to paper. I don't know if my story will be true, but it is certainly sincere. Every adult looking back remembers the period when he was the youngest in his surroundings. Unfortunately, this wonderful time of childhood tends to pass quickly. Years fly by. And imperceptibly, a small child turns into an adult who suddenly realizes that something close is lost. A piece of heart or soul remains in the past. I long for childhood, my youth, that has disappeared forever.

Words call other words. They help to recall the memory of something that was long forgotten, yet still exists and can be resurrected!

What happiness it is to remember the language of your childhood, the traditions of your people, thereby feeling like an integral part of them.

My writing is merely a simple retelling of what I remember, what I heard and saw and read about.

I want my children to know and to love and remember their ancestors as I do, I want them to pass this love to their children and grandchildren and their future generations. I want our connection with the great past of our family and our people to remain unbroken or lost in the endless sea of time. This sacred bond must be strengthened. We should love our family, our people, fight for universal equality and happiness, and find our own happiness in all this.

“All of us in one way or another are from the shtetl”

Sholom Aleichem

To my relatives who experienced the joys and tragedies of the 20th century. Among the countless horrors that befell the Jewish people, one of the most terrible is the destruction of the small shtetl in which the majority of Jews used to live, but now are mostly gone. There were hundreds of such Jewish shtetls in Podil and Volyn, in Central Ukraine and other regions of the former Russian Empire in which cultural life in Yiddish, flourished. Places where they read Mendele Sforim and Sholom Aleikhem, where they knew about the fictional towns of Kasrylivka, Yegupets, Boyberyk, and Tuneyadivka.

The King granted a privilege, a special, legal right to create private cities, to the Polish magnates Radziwilla, Potocki, Sapiega and others. Residents of such places were required to pay a special land tax rent (from the Latin census) to the landowner. These privately owned geographical areas granted under this special status were called “towns'' in Polish. Before this, towns existed only under the jurisdiction of the central government. The word for town in Yiddish is shtetl. Over time, this word was integrated into the Russian and Ukrainian languages.

Magnates invited Jews living in Central Europe to migrate to their towns, to stimulate the economic development of their estates. Jews were often the earliest settlers in many of the cities and towns of Podillia founded by Polish magnates in the 16th and 17th centuries. The owner of the town issued special certificates to its residents which recorded their rights and obligations. Jews were allocated a plot of land for a cemetery on an indefinite lease, and granted the right to build a synagogue and operate their ritual mikvah. These institutions were necessary for the organization of Jewish community life. Until 1844, the shtetl was managed by a Kagal, an electoral administration, similar to a Polish magistrate, where only homeowners had the right to vote. The Kagal maintained a synagogue, invited a rabbi to the town, and most importantly, he was responsible for collecting taxes from the community. This is how Jewish communal self-government suited both local and central authorities.

Jewish towns arose after the divisions of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in 1772, 1793, and 1795, when the Russian Empire appropriated Western territories in which a large number of Jews lived. In 1791, a territory composed of Jewish settlements was created which lasted until the revolution of 1917. This territory was first defined by a decree by Catherine II on December 23, 1791 as the area of Russia where Jews were allowed to settle and trade. The rabbinical courts, Kagals and some part of taxes still existed in Jewish communities, but the reforms of Nicholas I simplified the Kagal administration. Rabbinical courts, cheders and special taxes remained, and starting in 1827, the shtetls were obliged to supply recruits to the Russian army. After the assassination of Tsar Alexander II, a wave of pogroms swept through the shtetls. Most of the young people tried to leave their traditional homes. They moved to large cities and many emigrated to the United States. Non-Jews began to settle in these Jewish towns. However, despite this, at the end of the 19th century, the Jewish population still made up almost half of the shtetl residents, 46% in the Right-Bank Ukraine.

In a typical Jewish shtetl, everyone lived as one mishpacha or family, always helping each other, sharing life and living in harmony with neighbors. Yiddish, the mame-loshn (mother-tongue), was the prevalent spoken language of the shtetl. The inhabitants of the town talked, laughed, joked, traded and quarreled in Yiddish, but reading and writing in Yiddish was not customary. There were, however, books written in Yiddish and many translations of literature into Yiddish. Non-Jews, who worked with Jews and helped them in the household or lived nearby could also speak Yiddish. One could get from one shtetl to another in a day. A traveler could stop in a nearby shtetl, eat kosher food there and spend the night. A villager could go to the bazaar and return home the same day.

In the shtetl of the 19th century, residential buildings consisted of one or two-story wooden and adobe buildings, buildings with wooden walls over a stone basement or made completely of stone. In the Podolye shtetl, the walls of basements and basement floors were made of limestone, plastered with a layer of clay and whitewashed. In the 18th century, roofs were covered with straw, and in the 19th century, mainly shingles or roof tiles were used. The style of the facades changed and the architecture of the shtetl, although oriented towards local tradition, also took into account the trends of the times. Houses were often rebuilt from the inside, but the stove was never destroyed. During these building restorations, people preferred not bricking up doors or windows in fear that sheydim or evil spirits who walked through doors and windows would harm the residents if they were unable to enter. There were basements in the houses, where stone vaults reached the height of three meters, and the area of the basement sometimes exceeded the ground part. In the towns of Shargorod, Sataniv, and Kopaigorod, cellars formed a kind of a network of underground streets which provided a method to escape or disappear in case of danger. Buildings above the cellars were two or three stories high.

Stratification was noticeable in the social environment of the shtetl. Seats in the synagogue, choosing a partner for marriage, places in the cemetery and much more, depended on one's social status. Jews in the shtetl were divided into several groups: the Sheyne Yiddin, who were the highest class; the Balabustim, who were wealthy Jews, homeowners; the Balmeluches who were artisans, and the Proste Yiddin, the lowest class. The elite of the Sheyne Yiddin managed the shtetl, controlled its politics, and sat near the eastern wall in the synagogue. The middle class, Balabustim, owned their own shops or businesses. They were not very wealthy, but they were respected and had a certain influence on the life of the shtetl. Further down the social ladder were the Balmeluches, highly qualified craftsmen, such as jewelers, watchmakers and tailors who sewed expensive clothes. Then there were ordinary tailors and shoemakers. Water carriers and others belonged to a Proste Yiddin. Even lower were beggars and marginals who also inhabited every shtetl. Sometimes, wealth was valued less than religious education. Richer townspeople tried to marry off their daughters to talented yeshiva students, who in the future might become religious authorities and increase the yichus or the pedigree and well-being of the family.

My paternal grandparents were born and lived in the town of Sataniv and belonged to the Balmeluhes group. I assume that my great grandparents also lived in Sataniv. The family originated in the 18th century. There was a Pinkas, a record book about three hundred years old, that detailed the history of the Jewish community of the town in which you could have found information about one's genealogy, but this book was destroyed during the war. There are no photos of our grandparents as these too were destroyed during the war. I hope that the time will come when, in addition to the busyness of everyday life, my children and grandchildren will be interested in their roots as priorities change with age. Now, at my age, I regret that in my youth when my parents were still alive, I took very little interest in their past.

I did not know my father's parents as they died long before I was born. But I still have some impressions about them based on my father's stories. My grandfather Moisey Yakovych was born in 1884 and died on February 17, 1941. He worked as a tinsmith whose specialty was creating complex products without drawings. According to my father, my grandfather was a stout man of medium height with a lively business mind. He was a friendly person who enjoyed the respect of the townspeople. He owned a small workshop where he worked, and where he taught my father the craft of tinsmithing. When the Second World War began, Sataniv's Jews said that Moysha was lucky because he did not see the shooting and killing of Jews.

In Sataniv, the view of the village from the side of the Jewish cemetery. Somewhere in this cemetery are the graves of my grandfather and other relatives who died before World War II.

On the occasion of the “Soul of my Land” festival, local school children cleaning the old Jewish cemetery, 2011

“Jewish graves. Is there a country in the world where your stones would not stand guard for centuries. And are there stones where the names of the fathers told to the sons about the joyful creativity of the mind in the bitterest sorrows, about the boundless darkness and sunny distances. Unmelting snow has been laying gray for centuries, and the letters on the stones burn, calling out from the moss and dust. We were... we lived...” (Jewish poet Semyon Frug 1860–1916).

In Sataniv, 1913 where a large synagogue building can be seen in the distance. On the left is the fortress.

As the holiday of Hanukkah approached, grandmother selected fat geese and took them to the butcher after which the process of cooking lard began. The house smelled of goose lard for a long time. Ready lard was poured into jugs, covered with paper and tied. And on Hanukkah, traditional latkes were prepared with this lard. Fragrant greveleh melted in the mouth. Hanukkah was fun and joyful, especially for the children. They were given Chanukah gelt so the children were able to collect a small amount of money for themselves.

Jewish writer Marat Baskin tells how his grandmother made donuts in Krasnopol: “ Ikh ken in montik makhn donuts? (Can I make donuts on Monday?) grandmother asked everyone on Sunday morning. Why on Sunday? Because everyone was at home on Sunday. And the grandmother wanted to inform everyone that she would spend half a bottle of vegetable oil on this.”

Writer A. Golovkov, whose roots are from the city of Bar, describes the preparation for Hanukkah:

So my grandmother Moira, dissolving yeast in warm milk with sugar, vanilla and butter, called them exactly that: ponchikes, Yiddish for sufganiyot. And who did not like to get into this dough with a finger, and lick the finger? Grandmother slapped me on the back and said: go, mein katzele, to grandfather, let him read Sholom Aleichem to you. And she herself, when the dough came up, rolled up balls and fried them in a frying pan in seed oil. The smell broke out onto our First of May Street and flew to the neighbors. There it reached the noses of my bosom friends, Kadik and Lenka Trachtenberg, and they moved closer to our gate. And even before grandma had time to fill the balls with cherry jam - my gods, gods, what a super thing! Trachtenbergs appeared on the porch, “Has your grandmother already made the donuts?” Here's your Gutes Hanukkah! Everyone was fed! When I come to the confectionery on Midrakhov in Karmiel, my eyes run wide from magical sufganiyot with different fillings, doused with icing, chocolate, with multi-colored sprinkles! But lighting Hanukkah candles, I remember those balls, grandmothers!

The names of the children in the family were: the eldest, Lev (1906–1941), Tsilya (1913–1942), Boris, my father (1914–1994), Hanna (1911–1942) and Tetyana (Tuba) (1921–1942). All the children received a good education. Tsilya worked as an accountant in the town of Kupin where she was shot by the Germans in November 1942. Hanna also worked as an accountant, but in Yarmolyntsi. Tuba worked as a pharmacist in Yarmolyntsi. After the war, my father found this photo with friends in Khmelnytskyi. This is the only photo that has survived of the entire large family.

This photo is from Sataniv in February, 1935. My father is standing on the left. His brother Lev and three sisters are next to him. One the right is another relative.

Only men led an active social life. As children, their school was the local cheder. They attended synagogue from the age of 13, where they participated in the daily morning and evening prayers. Women did not go to cheder as children, and attended synagogue only on holidays and on the Sabbath. But my grandfather's family was open to women going to school so all of the children received a good education, even though in many Jewish families females did not.

The family lived a peaceful life. They worked on weekdays and rested on holidays. The grandmother's general busyness turned into preoccupation with her holiday preparations. We always bought the most necessary and best things for the holidays. And during this period they forgot about everyday life, about heavy thoughts, about hard bread. The holiday that God commanded was about to begin. The house was clean and cozy, all the necessary dishes were on the table. Grandfather changed beyond recognition on Saturdays and holidays. He put on a festive shirt, and a new silk kippah on his head. All concern disappeared from his face. After returning from the synagogue the family sat down for a long meal. They ate so slowly that the Saturday meal sometimes ended after dark.

A large and friendly Kuperstein family lived in a house like this in Sataniv

At the end of the meal we sang familiar religious songs in Hebrew. They were the vintage tunes that echoed around, taking your breath away. Grandfather sang Kol mekadesh shvii keraui lo, and everyone sitting at the table picked up the melody and joyfully sang along Kol hashomer shabbat kedat mehalelo. Shabbat felt calm in the morning. It was not necessary to wake up at the crack of dawn to go to the fair, open a shop or do a craft. Everyone was at rest. The shops were closed. It wasn't only Jews who did not open their shops on Saturday. Even if there was some desperate shopkeeper who wanted the business on Saturday there wasn't anyone who would come to his store. After all, no Jews would go out to buy something on Saturday, and even Ukrainians knew that everything was closed on this day. At ten in the morning on Shabbos, the street where the synagogue was located was filled with men in frock coats and their wives in wigs. Everyone greeted each other with a hearty, gut shabbos, good Sabbath. The usual war of ambitions, jealousies, and insults and everything that separated Jews so much on other days seemed to disappear on the Sabbath, as the air was filled with friendliness and benevolence.

At the beginning of 1909, the villagers of the shtetl Dunaivtsi and surrounding villages (now Khmelnytskyi region) appealed to the provincial board with a request to move the fair day from Tuesday to Saturday. Their motivation was to prevent Jewish merchants from setting their own prices for goods. This request was granted. However, after six months, the peasants realized that their income had decreased since the Jews did not participate in commerce on the Sabbath. The peasants appealed to the authorities again, with a request to restore the fair day back to Tuesday.

Almost all the boys who went to the synagogue carried a tallis in one hand and held their father's hand in the other. Very few children stayed at home. Even in freezing weather the children were warmly dressed and taken out to synagogue. Upon arrival, the children remained with their fathers, or stayed in the women's section. My father, Borys, had completed seven years of Jewish school and then attended the Jewish technical school for mechanical woodworking in the city of Bils Tserkva but did not finish it due to illness. He returned to Sataniv and worked at the post office in the special communications department. During his time in the army, he served in the Far East where he took part in battles with Japan near Lake Khasan. For his active participation in the battles, he was prematurely retired. After demobilization, he worked as the head of the special communications office in Sataniv.

Sataniv has an interesting history. It is an urban-type village in the Horodok district of Khmelnytsky region and was the center of the Yurynetsky district after 1923. Since 1935, it has been the center of Sataniv district. In 1959, the Sataniv district was liquidated and its territory was assigned to the Horodok and Volochysk districts.

The exact date of the establishment of the historic city of Sataniv is unknown. The city has been destroyed a hundred times and rebuilt a hundred times. It is believed to be older than Moscow. There is a story about Sataniv, the events of which refer to ancient times. The Greek legion led by the centurion Tonilius was moving to the north. And on the bank of an unknown river with rocky shores, this governor raised his hand and said: Sat au non? (Shall we stop, or shall we go further?) Apparently, these soldiers who had gone more than one mile said, “Sat,” which means stop. (V.F. Babiychuk, born in 1946, Sataniv, Horodok district, Khmelnytsky region, 2001, recorded by O.V. Belov, V.Ya. Petrukhin).

This legend is known to many inhabitants of Sataniv. It was widely covered in local publications and popular literature in the 1980's and 1990's (Sokha 1991: 18). A 2001 article from the Local Chronicle about the history of Sataniv for the 14th to 20th centuries can be found in the village library and the museum of the sugar factory. The first written mention of Sataniv dates back to 1404, when the Polish king, W³adys³aw II Jagailo, gave this town, its surroundings and Zinkiv, to Peter Shafranz, obliging him to send a detachment of armed men to the royal service for the defense of the borderlands which included Sataniv. In 1611, Sataniv came under the protection of the Magdeburg Law which regulated trade.

Sataniv on the map of Boplan

The coat of arms of Sinyavskyi Leliva on the city gate of the town of Sataniv

Jews had lived in Sataniv since the 16th century. In 1528 and 1531, the Tatars raided the area, and as a result, the residents were freed from taxes and duties for a period of eight years. During that time, the Great Synagogue was built. In 1738, more than 1,000 Jews, more than 20% of the population, lived in the Sataniv Kagal. In 1765 there were 1,369 Jews in Sataniv; in 1775, 1,011 Jews; in 1789, there were 1,503 people, and 1,202 Jews lived in the town itself. This last census gave a detailed breakdown of the specified 1,202 people by categories: adult men - 420, women - 461, boys under one year old - 19, girls - 14, boys over one year old - 160, girls - 128.

In 1931, according to the Jewish Village Council, the Jewish population was 2,142. According to the 1939 census, 1,516 Jews lived in Sataniv, which was 48.08% of the total population.

The Sataniv City Gate and Great Synagogue. A drawing by the Polish artist Napoleon Horda, from the 1870's.

The Sataniv Synagogue-Citadel is one of the most outstanding monuments of Judaism and one of the oldest buildings not only in Ukraine, but also in the whole of Eastern Europe.

In 1901, at the regular meeting of the Nestor-Litopysets (Nestor the Chronicler)) Society in Kyiv, Yu.A. Sytsinsky spoke about the synagogue in Sataniv. “There is a Jewish stone synagogue in the shtetl. This is a capital structure that looks like a large 4-angle tower with a strong vault.” The synagogue was built in 1532. For its defense, it outwardly resembles a small castle with thick walls, massive buttresses, musket and cannon loopholes around the perimeter, and a cannon battery on the roof. At one time, it was central to the Sataniv fortification system. The synagogue has high walls and a strong vault on top. On one side there is an extension built for women.

The main building of the synagogue is 18 meters long and 16 meters wide. It was built by the architect Orlovsky. The building is surrounded on three sides by outbuildings which housed the library, women's gallery and office premises. The architecture of the prayer hall played an important role in the silhouette of the city in the 18th century. In the 19th century, the synagogue was the center of the shtetl, the market square was located next to it. The town's cathedral was located on the opposite side of the city, and in the 19th century it was outside the shtetl.

Maintaining traditional life at that time was a deep inner and joyous need for all Jews. Although the synagogue could not protect the residents of the town from social stratification, unemployment and poverty, it still provided the feeling that people were not alone, that they had someone to rely upon during difficult times.

This is what the great synagogue in Sataniv looked like before the restoration. All of my paternal relatives attended this synagogue.

Interior view of the main hall of the synagogue, 2010

A local legend claims that the synagogue was not man-made. It was said to have existed since the creation of the world, but that it had remained underground. One day, people began to dig up a hill and unearthed a synagogue. It is interesting that this legend completely coincides with the legend about the famous Prague synagogue, the oldest one in Eastern Europe. Historians explain this oddity through the technology of ancient construction. Earth was piled around already built walls, and when the work was completed, mounds of dirt were removed.

The Great Synagogue existed for poor Jews. The New Synagogue was built for wealthy Jews in the center of Sataniv. For many years, pensioner Borys Andriyovych Slobodyanyuk, whose house was just opposite the synagogue, took care of the building. He worked for free and had huge tasks. A landfill had formed in the abandoned synagogue, and it took several dump trucks to remove the garbage. He regularly mowed almost half a hectare of adjacent weedy wasteland. Many thanks to him for this selfless work.

In the 1930's, like most religious buildings in the village, the synagogue was closed and turned into an ammunition depot and later a granary. It was used as a granary until the end of the 1980's. After that, no one took notice of the building, and over time the walls began to crack. It was in a terrible condition of disrepair and could have collapsed at any moment. Despite this, the only security provided was a cast iron security plate. However, the Jewish oligarchs were also in no hurry to make donations for the restoration of the synagogue.

Fragment of the layout of Sataniv, 1832 1. Synagogue. 2. City gates. 3. Jewish cemetery. 4. Shopping area. 5. Fortress. 6. Church.

In 1702, Sataniv's Jews were again attacked by the Cossacks. An independent Jewish community arose in the town again at the beginning of the 18th century. Jews settled on the territory from the Market Square to the castle along Horodetsky Street and along the street leading from the Mykolaiv Church. Jews owned about 220 houses. Jewish tenants of industries, taverns, shop owners, merchants, doctors, pharmacists, statesmen and rabbis lived in stone houses or wooden houses set on stone basements in the Market Square area. Jewish craftsmen were united in societies similar to guilds, among them were tailors and furriers, artisans including jewelers, glassmakers, blacksmiths, tinsmiths, printers, hairdressers, musicians, and bakers. Jewish merchants from Sataniv regularly traveled to major European fairs in Austria, Breslau, Leipzig and Frankfurt.

The first reconstruction of the Great Synagogue was carried out in 1754, as was evidenced by the inscription above the door. The full reconstruction of the Sataniv Great Synagogue was completed in 2014.

An epidemic of plague significantly reduced the Jewish population in 1770. At the end of the 18th century, the library of the Jewish community in Sataniv was the largest in Podillia. There were 754 volumes there in 1776. In addition to religious literature, the library contained many secular works, including those on mathematics, natural sciences, medicine, astronomy, and alchemy. In particular, there were works by the rabbi, mathematician and astronomer, Joseph Solomon Delmedigo, a student of Galileo Galilei, in the library.

In the 18th to 19th centuries, Sataniv became not only a kind of Jewish capital of Podillia, but also the main center of Jewish religious thought. The names of some of the most famous rabbis of that time are associated with Sataniv. Among them is the famous scholar and kabbalist Rebbe Mordechai Zeev, who in 1774 became the head of the rabbinic court of Sataniv, and in 1775 he became the chief rabbi of all Galicia. Later, the Sataniv community was led by Rebbe Oleksandr Sendr Margaliot, author of the book Teshuvot Heres. Sataniv also gave the world a large number of figures in the era of early Jewish education. Among them is Yitzhak Sataniv (1732–1805), a philologist, writer and religious philosopher. Later, he lived in Berlin, where he headed the publication of textbooks for Jewish youth, and contributed to the development of spoken Hebrew. The writer entertained his readers by styling his works after ancient Jewish authors and watched the heated discussions that raged among gullible readers after that.

By the end of the 18th century a community of Hasidism was formed in Sataniv. One of its first leaders was a disciple of the Baal Shem Tov, a magid from Sataniv, Yisroel Gelerenter. At the turn of the 18th to the 19th century, Rabbi Chaim, the grandson of the well-known Rabbi Ichla-Mihl from Zolochiv, lived in Sataniv. In the middle of the 19th century the rabbi of Sataniv was Hanoch-Henoch, who later founded the Hasidic court. By the end of the 19th century the most influential in the town were the Hasidim of Husyatyn and Zinkovets, who had their own synagogues.

There were stories about cholera in the town in 1830.

People bypassed all of Sataniv and went to the river, but it was impossible to go any further. The border of Poland was a barricade as at that time the border of Poland passed through Zbruch. Everyone went out and watched as they carried an icon and sang religious and church songs all across Sataniv and along the river. They reached a small bridge, placed the icon on the bridge, and immediately the cholera stopped. When they brought this icon to the church, it was as if it were alive; the icon was breathing. Such a cheerful, elegant icon and the cholera stopped. Everyone came out, Jews too, and everyone prayed.

There is a cemetery located behind the Jewish cemetery which is called the cholera cemetery. Many people who died of cholera in Sataniv are buried there. In the days of the greatest mortality from cholera, the leadership of the Jewish community of Sataniv decided to conduct a protective ritual. They hired a random Russian man, a foreigner, in the role of a ritual gatekeeper, a Charon of the world of the dead. According to the plan, he was supposed to stand in the way of each funeral procession and not let it into the cemetery, and call out, “Enough already! There are no more places for graves!” During the supposed quarrel with the gravediggers, the ritual guard would repeat the key words over and over, “Enough dying! Enough deaths! No more room for cholera!” After a long quarrel, the gatekeeper had to look away, and in exchange for a silver ruble, would let the procession to the cemetery pass, saying at the end: “You are burying the last one. There will be no more deaths from cholera in Sataniv, because there is no more room left in the cemetery!” Charon did everything as agreed. Even better! For this, the organizers of the ceremony gave him a gold coin instead of the promised ruble. It is said that the watchman could not even utter a word from such unexpected generosity, and then exclaimed: “No way! But I will put all the Satanivs here for such money!” In a word, he ruined everything, after which all the magic “went under the cat's tail” (a Russian idiom for saying the money was wasted). Humor is a normal protective reaction of people to a horrible experience, but there is a grain of truth in this. This rite was carried out, as evidenced by the fact that this story is known in different versions in other towns. In reality, the guard would never say such a thing. In those days, anti-choleric magic was taken very seriously.

Among the Jewish population of Sataniv at the beginning of the 19th century, rent was almost the most reliable form of income. In 1833, the mill was leased to the merchant Zeidman for a period of five years. A border crossing point was opened in Sataniv in 1877 which resulted in active Jewish engagement in exporting, importing, and the smuggling of goods. During the 19th century the population and development of trade and industry increased in Sataniv.

In 1873, the population of the town was 4,677, and at the end of the 19th century there were 5,000 inhabitants. In the town were two Orthodox churches, a church, a synagogue, three water mills, blacksmith workshops, a butter factory and a brewery. In 1899, Sataniv was a fairly significant town with 6,000 inhabitants, 2,000 of whom were Jews. The town then had a justice of the peace and a court investigator, a parish council, a border post, a crossing point and a sugar factory (which was built on the site of the destroyed castle). There was a large rolling mill in Zbrucha, brick and tile factories, a quarry, and two tanneries. Sataniv became a prominent market of Podillia. Around the turn of the 20th century nine fairs were held here each year. There was a bazaar every two weeks in which eighty-one shops set up their wares. In 1889, there were nine synagogues and a mikvah in Sataniv. At the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th centuries the Jews were engaged in soap-making and rope production, lime burning and trades, but the main occupations of the Jewish population were skinning, tailoring and selling coats, harvesting and selling agricultural products.

At this time, there was a girls' school with two classes, several cheders, including an illegally formed one under the leadership of Becker and R. Lederwerger. In 1910, a Talmud Torah, a school for the poor, opened in Sataniv. In 1911, a private Jewish printing house was operating. A mutual credit society was active, and a savings bank began in 1914. At the same time, Jews owned all three drugstores, all seven forest warehouses, a honey factory, seventy shops and nineteen stores which included twenty-one groceries, twenty-one manufacturing stores, one furniture store, one shoe store and two wine stores.

But not everything was so good as evidenced by a protest letter signed by 813 rabbis in the Russian Empire in connection with the Baylis case, which unfolded in 1911.

Once again, the precious heritage of our fathers, our holy faith, is subjected to a serious insult. The vile, bloody monster rears its head again and spreads malicious accusations against the Jews for using Christian blood. This monster, which arose in the darkness of the beginning of the Middle Ages, contradicts the spirit and foundations of the Jewish faith, the faith that first proclaimed murder as a mortal sin, which forbade the consumption of even animal blood for food; the one of faith in the One God, who was the first to write in fiery letters the divine words, love your neighbor as yourself, now again serves as a means to incite enmity against the Jews among their fellow citizens. At present, the accusation, repeatedly refuted by learned theologians, the highest hierarchs of the Christian churches, and monarchs from the height of the Throne, is modified and turned against the supposedly existing Jewish sect. In their ignorance or dishonesty, the accusers point to the Hasidim, referring to them as some sect that consumes Christian blood. We, the rabbis, who have devoted our lives to the comprehensive study of the Jewish faith, its written and oral traditions, protest with deep indignation, and indignation against the blasphemous charge and accept the sacred duty before the Almighty God, the God of Israel, and before the whole world solemnly declare: Nowhere, either in the Scriptures, or in the Talmud, or in the commentaries to them, or in the Zohar, or in the Kabbalah, or in any of the works that have even the remotest relation to the Jewish faith, or even in oral folk traditions - nowhere is there the slightest hint that would give rise to such an accusation. With the same indignation we reject the accusation of the existence among the Jews of sects or individuals who use Christian blood for ritual purposes. The Jewish law, in its entirety, is immutable and indivisible, and has no varieties. There are no sects in Judaism. Jewish religion does not and could not give grounds for bloody fanaticism. The Hasidim, like the Misnagdim opposed to them, do not constitute a sect. The same law applies to the Hasidim, as well as to the Misnagdim. For them, the same, down to the smallest details, religious prescriptions and rites are obligatory. They all read the same Holy books known to the whole world; there is not a single part of Judaism in which any secret religious books are read. What is forbidden by our creed is forbidden for all Jews. Precepts of religion are obligatory for all Jews. Much Jewish martyr's blood was shed as a victim of spiteful slander against the Jewish law. Our present solemn declaration before the Lord God, the God of Israel and before the whole world, may it serve to enlighten those in whom the conscience has been preserved and the spark of truth has not died out in the soul. In hope for the help of the Most High and in fervent faith that the truth will prevail, injustice will be destroyed and evil will disappear like smoke, we pray to the Lord God, the God of Israel, that He may send peace to all mankind and mutual love between the peoples of the earth. Six spiritual rabbis signed from the Podillia province, who expressed in this letter everything that the entire Jewish people wanted to say. From the town of Horodok, which is near Sataniv, the spiritual rabbi H. Kharif signed.

Along with the collapse of the Russian Empire the old monetary system also collapsed. The economy needed a money supply, and everyone started printing their own money, from city authorities to cooperatives, private shops, and even theaters and church parishes. Jewish communities also printed their own money. However, not all Jewish bond issues had pronounced national features, for example, the bonds of the Ravenstvo cooperative from the town of Sataniv in Podillia. Although the cooperative was Jewish, there is no mention of it on its notes in the 1919 issue.

Bond of the Zinkiv Jewish community, 1919

After the Kishinev pogrom at the beginning of the 20th century and during the revolution, many Sataniv Jews left for America. The Jews were mocked by the Reds, the Whites, and the Poles, the followers of Anton Denikin, and the followers of the Cossack leader, Symon of Petlyura, numerous local Atamans and the peasantry. The First World War, and later the civil war, led to the complete degradation of the government, the demoralization of society and the lumpenization of the peasantry, and it was very easy to provoke people who were degraded and also had weapons to use for violent actions.

Before the war, the last rabbi of Sataniv was Rebbe Samuel. The synagogue in which he was a rabbi was closed by the Soviet authorities. There were also fewer Jews living in Sataniv. Some were killed by Petlyura or other Atamans' soldiers, the youth were absorbed by the revolution, and many young Jews stopped believing in God. The old people still prayed, still celebrated Jewish holidays, fasted on Yom Kippur, and baked matzah for Passover. The youth repeated the Marxist mantra that religion was the opiate of the people. So Rebbe Samuel was left without his business. Only God did not leave him. Every morning he donned his tallis and tefillin, faced Jerusalem and rocked back and forth, his back straight, hands lying on the table as he muttered the prayers. The neighbors said that old Samuel left this world with the Torah in his hands.

In 1914–1915, several Sataniv Jews were arrested on suspicion of espionage for Austria-Hungary. In July 1915, during the retreat of the Russian army, the military authorities evicted the Jews from Sataniv over the course of three days, and allowed them to return only after a year. During the revolutionary events of 1917, the Bund organization, a branch of the Tzeirei Zion, He-Halutz party, was active in Sataniv. The Zionists opened the Ivri school in Sataniv. The school was oriented towards high school courses in Eretz Israel. The charitable societies Bikur Cholim, Linas ha-Tzedek, and Hekdesh, which were active even before the First World War, resumed their activities. The popularity of Zionist organizations in the town can be explained by their real, active and useful work. In Sataniv, immediately after the February revolution, they opened Hebrew evening courses, organized concerts and performances, opened a library with books in Hebrew and Yiddish and operated a printing house. Thanks to their support and influence, there was a savings bank, a cooperative, and charitable organizations.

In 1918, the Central Council issued an order on the creation of bodies of Jewish self-government and the necessity of holding elections. Such bodies were created in towns where Jews lived close to each other. They were created in Sataniv, Kopaigorod, Murovani Kurylivtsi, Yaltushkov, Bar and other towns.

Invitation to the elections to Sataniv Jewish Community Council, 1918. Rudia Leizerov Averbukh, lives in Sataniv.

The community invites you to come to the Jewish committee on January 17,18,19, 1918 from 8 a.m. till 8 p.m. to get the envelopes with the note about choosing the members of Sataniv Jewish Community council. The Head of the Commission.

In 1919, eighteen young Jews were drafted into the ranks of the Ukrainian Directory army. Four of them were killed by fellow soldiers. In the summer of 1919, parts of the Directory incited a pogrom in Sataniv. The Jews organized a self-defense unit and three fighters from this unit died in clashes with bandits.

After banning the teaching of Hebrew in schools in the 1920s, teacher Weinstein organized daily classes with children after school. The Loshn Koydesh club for studying Hebrew was active. The activity of the Tzeirei Zion party was banned in 1925, and in 1926, several dozen young Sataniv Jews left for Palestine. A new brick building for the Jewish school was built in 1927. In 1925 some of the local Jews wanted to move to the area of the Kherson District in order to engage in agriculture. Among the fifty-eight families of this group was my grandfather's brother Moisei Duvydovych Kuperstein, also a tinsmith. He was forty-three years old at that time, and his family consisted of six people.

A segment of the list of those wishing to move from the city of Sataniv to land in the Kherson district, 1925

A list of those Jews of Sataniv and Yurinets district who wanted to move to Katerinoslav and Kherson gubernias in order to grow wheat

Fragment of a letter written by the Sataniv municipal administration, June 1918

In the Management of the Ministry Dealing With Jewish Issues We are excusing ourselves that it has been 6 months in which there exists a Jewish communal leader, so we haven't had any relations with the highest Jewish amshtalten (institution). But we are not to blame. The besingegen [not a Yiddish word] by which it _ [word is cut off at the edge of the line] to us tsarbyten [?] in our shtetl, which lies on the border between Ukraine and Austria, which was completely rianeert [ruined] two times are very unarmaleh [not Yiddish but might mean “not normal.” And much has transpired. But this is not the place here to spread out [tseshpreikhen] the details regarding our work. I just want to draw your attention to the main reason for our reticence up to now. Immediately after the founding and organizing of the communal leadership a band of robbers attacked our shtetl and robbed the social cooperative [gezelshaftlichten kaaperateev], which was located in the house of the leadership. And then all the business conduct relating to voting in the leadership was lost and trampled [ferloiren un tsetroiten]. The only thing that was left unscathed were some voting ballots and a copy of the protocols of the voting commission, which was brought into the protocol book for the leadership [sic]. The second reason is the unnormal mail-commerce [pust-ferkair], which was only set up about a month ago. Taking this into consideration we ask that upon receiving a copy of the protocols from the election committee and forms of the voting ballots which are being sent to everyone [sic].

Jewish demonstration in Sataniv, 1917 Photo from the synagogue museum

Telegram to the Ministry of Jewish Affairs of the Ukrainian People's Republic from the Sataniv Jewish Community on the government's oppression of Jews, July 1918

Telegram. Immediately. Kiev. Ministry on Jewish Affairs. 03 July 1918 from Sataniv. Elections in the community were held half a year ago. All the documents of the elections were destroyed by the Bolsheviks. The copy of the protocol that was left, has been sent this week. The local head of the police made a list of all the members of the community threatened with the arrest. He wants to take away the office of the community. He reports to the authorities of the Uzed that the community deals with smuggling and Bolsheviks. We ask them to take some actions to suppress such violence and lawlessness.

Letter from the Jewish community of Sataniv to the Minister of Jewish Affairs about pogroms in the town, July 20, 1919

The response of the Ministry of Jewish Affairs to the Sataniv Jewish community and the head of the city guard on ensuring the fulfillment of public duties without obstacles, 1918

Sataniv. To the head of the guard. Copy – to the head of the Jewish community Leydervargerov. In connection with the complaint that came to the Department of National self Governing of the Ministry of Jewish affairs, we inform you that Jewish Communities are elected and function on the basis of the Law from December 22, 1917. They are the legal institutions and should function according to the law. That's why the Ministry of Jewish affairs suggests you not to make any obstacles to the Jewish Community in its activity. Head of the department, Revutsky.

From the report note of 1922 of the Proskuriv district committee about the Jewish school in Sataniv.

First, a military unit was placed in the school, then a hospital was placed there. Then parents of the students decided at the request of the local leadership, to use the synagogue for the school. At the same time, the parents demanded that prayers be held in the morning, and that the school be open in the afternoon. Two commissions were sent from the center to render a decision. The second commission decided that using the synagogue as a school was wrong and not according to communist protocol. As a result, the local head of the village was dismissed from his post. Still, the issue of the Jewish school was resolved positively.

Portion of a note from a report with information about the Sataniv Jewish School, 1922

List of professions and the number of Jewish artisans in the town of Sataniv as of April 1. 1929, according to Ukrkomzet data

Before the Germans entered Sataniv, Ukrainians led by Roman Shukhevych entered in an operation to liberate Podillia from the Soviet authorities. At exactly six AM, the Ukrainians crossed the Hrymailiv Bridge near Sataniv. Their first objective was to take over the building of the NKVD and the district committee of the party. The Chekists (members of the Soviet secret police) there, had just started brewing samovars. Twenty-five bags of documents were seized; sixteen Chekists and twenty-three employees of the Sataniv District Party Committee were captured. The Sataniv patriots split into several groups. The first group went to Horodok-Yarmolyntsi, the second to Dunaivtsi. The main part went to Viytivka, where it turned toward Proskuriv. They had already reached Proskuriv on the evening of July 11, and on the morning of July 16 they left for Bar. (VO “Svoboda”, Khmelnytskyi).

On July 6, 1941, the German army entered Sataniv. The premises of the former Jewish school were occupied by the gendarmerie. The Nazis converted the synagogue into a prison. The chief of the police was Mykhas Klymenky, a local resident who had hated Jews since pre-war times. On August 5, 1941, the first execution of Jews took place. In the fall of 1941, the Germans deported several hundred local Jews to the ghetto created in nearby Yarmolyntsi. My father was among them. Prior to that, people were kept in the old synagogue without food, or water for almost a week as the fascists carried out their sadistic plans. The synagogue had functioned as a fortress, so it was impossible to escape from there. On May 14-15, 1942, two-hundred-eighty-six Jews were stoned alive in the basement of an old building on Rynkova Square. The old-timers recalled that terrible screams could be heard coming from the underground for a whole week. So that none of the locals could free anyone, German guards waited at the walled entrance. It was said that not only Jews died in the basements, but also Ukrainians and Poles from mixed families who did not want to leave their husbands, wives and children. When Sataniv was liberated, the cellars were opened. The remains were reburied in 1953. Based on the number of skulls found, probably 286 people died there. From the documentation at Yad Vashem we know that 240 of the dead were Jews. Perhaps the remaining 46 murdered were Ukrainians and Poles who shared this terrible death with their relatives.

Memorial plaque installed at the site of the death of 286 Sataniv Jews 286 residents of Sataniv who were brutally murdered by German-Fascist occupiers in May 1942, are buried here

These shoes were found in the basement of the place where Jews were killed

A letter to Tonkonogiy, who was evacuated to Tashkent, from liberated Sataniv, 1944

Dear comrade Tonkonogiy, We received your letter and we can answer that from all the Sataniv residents only 6 people are alive. The others were killed by fascists, including your family. Those who were left alive are Boris M. Kupershtein, Volodia Ikhilev Lintsen, Mitia Ayzekov Landa. You don't know the others. Sincerely, Your Countrymen

If one day all the human remains are recovered, including those from undiscovered areas, the dungeon will most likely become a museum. If this is not possible, then a grave will be built over the place of execution, where many remains have been preserved.

In the Act of the Regional Commission for Investigating the Crimes of Hitler's Capturers in the City of Sataniv dated June 20, 1944, it is written:

An attempt to excavate the basement from the side of the entrance did not lead to success because the entrance was filled with corpses of people. Then we managed to open the basement from the side of the hatch. The corpses of more than 200 people were found just at the entrance. There were larger piles of corpses lying closer to the exit where it was apparent people were trying to escape. All of the corpses of men, women and children, are dressed in civilian clothes. The people were forcibly driven into the basement, after which it was tightly closed. Air access was cut off, slow, suffocating death was taking place.

One of those frightening basements was found and opened in 2019. Seventy large containers of remains were collected within one week of careful work. Those containers were reburied according to Jewish traditions, in the old cemetery. The Act referred to two underground rooms, but only one was found at this time. The second basement was discovered in the summer of 2020. The exhumation work carried out in this dungeon was complicated by a large layer of washed-out soil, which resulted from the ingress of water into the underground system. In the lower parts, these layers were almost a meter thick. It was almost impossible to separate the human remains from the soil. Therefore, it was decided to collect absolutely everything, after which both the earth with the remains and the large bones were reburied as per Jewish law.

One of the buildings in the military town in Yarmolyntsi, where the fascists established a concentration camp in which Jews were held. During the German occupation there was a concentration camp in this building. In 1942, all the prisoners were killed. Eternal memory to them.

The shootings began on the fourth day. The victims did not want to die meekly. During the last days of the Yarmolyntsi ghetto, the Black Book author I. Ehrenburg testifies:

In Yarmolyntsi, the Jews have been resisting for two days. The weapons were prepared in advance in a military part of the town. The Jews killed the first policeman who entered there and threw his corpse out of the window. A shootout started, and several more policemen were killed. The next day, police trucks from neighboring districts arrived. Only by evening, when the Jews ran out of ammunition, did the besiegers enter the town. The execution lasted for three days. During the resistance, 16 policemen were killed, including the chief of police and five Germans.

In total, almost 24,000 people were exterminated in the Yarmolyntsi ghetto and concentration camp. According to other sources, more than 26,000 were killed. Huge graves can still be seen on the territory of the military unit today.

After the liberation of Sataniv, several dozen Jews returned to the town. In the 1960s, about a dozen Jewish families lived in Sataniv. In 1989, there were seven Jews among the inhabitants of Sataniv. By the mid 1990's, only one remained. At the beginning of the 21st century, there are no Jews in Sataniv. But a synagogue was restored here, and it is currently active.

The restored synagogue, modern view, 2015

Most of the tombstones, or matzevot, in Hebrew, date from the middle of the 18th to the beginning of the 19th century. The stones exhibit works of art in the stone carving. The carvings are filled with deep symbolism. Each image of an animal is an expression of a certain idea. The most common are images of lions, deer, birds, squirrels, bears, candlesticks and ornaments with plants. One can see a bear with a bunch of grapes, a bear hugging a sprout, and three-eared hares in a circle. There is a stone carving of a wolf carrying prey, an analogy of an evil spirit trying to steal a soul, and commonly, a wolf on the matzevah of men with the name Zeev or Wolf (Zeev is wolf in Hebrew). The images on the matzevot reflected the character of a person, his occupation, his righteous deeds and more.

Mykhailo Nosonovsky, a researcher of Jewish cemeteries, visited many cemeteries in Western Ukraine. He wrote about the cemetery in Sataniv:

While documenting the old Jewish cemetery in Sataniv (Khmelnytskyi region) in 1993, I noticed a richly ornamented tombstone of 1775 belonging to Abraham David Babad in grave #32. Babad is a rich and branched family from Galicia, which had extensive family ties in Western Europe. Many rabbis came from this family. The surname Babad itself represents the acronym “bnei av bet din”, i.e. “descendants of the head of the rabbinical court.” Let me remind you that the position of the head of the rabbinic court is actually the position of the chief rabbi, and, indeed, many representatives of this family headed communities in different cities and towns. The Star of David is engraved in the upper part of the richly decorated, baroque monument and is flanked by two figures of lions. The four letters in the center of the star denote the year 5536 according to the Jewish calendar (1774–1775 AD). This is one of the first depictions of the Magen David on a tombstone from Ukraine and, apparently, the earliest case in this region when a six-pointed star appears not as an ornamental element, but as the central motif of a tombstone. Work on the improvement of the Jewish cemetery began in the fall of 2020 by the Jewish community of Horodok. At the same time, some of the monuments were destroyed during the construction. This Jewish necropolis looks similar to a military cemetery. There are rows of tombstones on concrete pedestals at equal intervals, which gives an unnerving look. Boris Khaimovich, who holds a doctorate in art studies at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, commented on this situation: “The most beautiful cemetery in Ukraine and, perhaps, in Europe has been mutilated. I consider it to be a crime.”

“Whatever his intentions were, rabbi Israel Meir Habay moved the tombstones of Sataniv Jews from their real graves,” commented Serhiy Kravtsov, an employee of the Center of Jewish Art in Jerusalem and one of the best specialists in the field of Jewish necropolises. With this, he left the promise given by the prophet to those buried here: “And I will give them in My house and among My walls an eternal memory, better than sons and daughters; I will give them an eternal name that will never fade away.” (Yeshayagu (Isaiah), 56:5). This is exactly the verse where the expression Yad Vashem, monument and memorial sign, appears. But this work in the cemetery also has a positive result. Hundreds of tombstones with very interesting ornaments that fell or grew into the ground were found and placed erect. Somewhere among these mutilated gravestones is the grave of my grandfather.

After escaping from the Yarmolyntsi ghetto my father managed to get to the territory occupied by the Romanians where there were no reported mass shootings of Jews. That is how my father ended up in Kopaigorod, in the Vinnytsia region. During the years 1941–1944, my father was able to escape from four pogroms and two concentration camps: from Sataniv, Horodok, Kupin, Yarmolyntsi, Mykolaiv (Trykhaty), Kopaigorod. He suffered through so much, but he persevered.

My father said that they were sent from Kopaigorod on a freight train to a labor camp at the Trikhaty station near Mykolaiv to work on the construction of a railway bridge. A work camp for Jews was created where several thousand people from various ghettos gathered, together in a place that was much more terrible than Pechora (a concentration camp). Prisoners of the camp built a bridge across the Southern Bug and defensive fortifications on the river bank. The bridge was 1400 meters long. The work day at this prison lasted 15-16 hours. The barracks they inhabited were former cowsheds. Gradually, everyone built a bunk from materials lying around on the construction site. From time to time, the German commandant of the Trimpler camp conducted searches with the aim of finding gold or money.

We were divided into brigades. All construction was carried out under the strict control of the German administration. The work for the Germans was very difficult. We were required to carry heavy sleepers up a slope to a height of almost 20 meters. The sleeper weighed 40 kilograms. A German was walking behind with a sledgehammer and was making us go faster. We also built warehouses and fences. We were fed in such a way that only the soul was kept in the body. They gave 200 grams of bread and a bowl of prison food per day. Many boys died here, from beatings, from lifting heavy objects, and from disease.

My father decided to run away. The escape from the Trikhati concentration camp was the last one before the liberation. Dad escaped with another man. They had to figure out a way to cross the railway station where the Germans were stationed. They saw a wagon on the side. Nearby was a primus stove and a fire, but no person was there tending the fire. They ran to the wagon, threw the stove and burning wood into it, which caused the cartridges in the cart to begin to explode, which caused a commotion and allowed them to cross the station unnoticed. This is how my father managed to escape and reach Kopaigorod again. Dad worked as a blacksmith and a tinsmith in Kopaigorod. During the war he took any job he could find. .

All of our relatives, about fifty people, who did not manage to evacuate or were not at the front, died in these towns. There were none left in Sataniv after the war. Father's relative Semion Shilman returned from the front, lived in Chisinau, and left for the United States in the 1990's. My father was mobilized in the first days of the war. He told me that they were poorly armed with one rifle for two soldiers, and thrown into battle. Of course the Germans defeated them. Many were captured. My father was able to avoid capture and managed to pass through the German outposts and return to Sataniv.

Memorial plaque at the place where my father's sister Tsila was shot

Residents of the village of Kupin, who were killed by the Fascist occupants in September 1942 rest in this mass grave. There are 78 men, 95 women, 118 children. 291 – Jews, 3 - Ukrainians. The monument was erected with the help of Gorodok district authorities and Khmelnitsky regional charity, “Hesed Besht.”

And here is a small fragment from Revizskiye Skazki (revision list) from March 1875 in the town of Sataniv on Kupershtein family, provided by I. Kupershtein:

Family ties of the Kupersteins, 1875 (DakhmO, f. 226, item 80, file 1186)

View of the town from the side of the Jewish cemetery, 2010

Grave of Israel Khorif, rabbi from Sataniv, 2010

Remains of the ohel of the tzaddiks Chaim Sataniver and Menachem Mendel from Sataniv, 2010

Grave of Rabbi Alexander Sandr Margaliot, 2010

In 1932, the collective farm, Veleten, was created (295 yards, united mainly Jews.)

A group of youth from Sataniv decided to go to Birobidzhan to build a Jewish region. They made a plan with the local people left behind, that if everything was good, they would write in black ink. If things were bad they would send a letter written in red ink. A month later, a letter arrived in town that stated something like: “Dear parents, everything is fine with us. We have housing, plenty of work, and food, but there is no red ink in the shops.”

Sataniv was a kind of Jewish capital of the entire Podillia and partly of the Bratslav region. Today, this village is almost the only shtetl that survived in the entire post-Soviet era. At present, only in Sataniv can one can see a complete set of monuments that are characteristic for a classical town. Come, see and you won't regret it!

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