Verkhivka, Ukraine
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by Lewis R. Baratz
I recall Bernard [Boruch] Weinstein, his wife Eva, and his sister Clara [Khayka] visiting my grandmother at her apartment in Brooklyn, New York, when I was a child in 1973. They were excited because they had brought a guest who was staying with them, an old friend from “Russia” who was my grandmother's first cousin. This was Avrum Dekhovne, a retired physician who had been evacuated to Baku, Azerbaijan at the beginning of World War II and who had served in the Soviet Army. His wife and daughter were not as fortunate. They were captured by an SS squad while fleeing east and shot on the road. After the war, Avrum married again and had a son, but the Soviets would not grant his wife an exit travel visa, essentially holding her hostage to guarantee his return.
Although not related by blood, as far as we know, Bernard, who we called by his Yiddish name Boruch, and his sister were landslaytn of my grandmother's, and to one of Stefani's grandfathers as well. Landslaytn were fellow travelers in life who came from the same shtetl. Their shtetl was a place called Verkhivka. By the early 1900s Verkhivka was considered a small town with around 800 inhabitants, including approximately 50 Jewish families. It lay between the Rivers Lyadova[ya] and Moshanka on land that was somewhat of a hill above the Ukrainian plain. I eventually came to realize as I became older that to the generation of immigrants born between 1870 and 1915, Verkhivka was more than a town. It was a mindset. It was who they were. They were tough and stubborn, hard workers, ingrained with a sense of right and wrong, an innate sense of irony about the hardships and bias they faced in life, and to preserving their families. They were Verkhivka, even after navigating a new life in the United States for 50 or more years.
Boruch—I shall refer to him by his birth name—was very proud of his Yiddish monograph, which he gave to his lantzmen and other members of the “Verchiefker Benevolent Society” (also known as the “Verchivker Benevolent Society.” “The Verchiefker,” as my parents and grandmother called it, was a social and charitable organization that sought to keep alive the memory of that shtetl. It did so by holding an annual meeting, fundraiser, and dinner for its members and their families. The Society also purchased burial plots at New Montefiore Cemetery in West Babylon, New York. Many of the people mentioned in this book, along with the author, his wife, and sister now rest there, as I and some of our readers will too, one day. Like the society itself, the pre-World War II immigrant generation is no more. Most of their children are also gone, and thus the first-hand knowledge and the family stories have all but disappeared. This makes Boruch's writing a uniquely important tool for remembering those who lived before us, in a place few of us can imagine.
As a music historian skilled in working with primary and secondary source materials, I am somewhat frustrated that Boruch wrote in a vacuum. He did indicate that he had intended to collaborate with his compatriot Philip Felberg [my great uncle by marriage] but Philip had passed away several years earlier and Boruch did not have another close friend or interested party to work with. As a consequence, there are names of people, relationships, and events he admits to having forgotten or never knew. Some last names are not given at all so we will only know them as “the midwife” or “the teacher.” Alas, he did not call up a friend or cousin and ask, “do you remember such-and-such's son's name?”, or “how exactly were Batya and Mendel related?”, or “what was your mother's maiden name?” The details important to the historian and genealogist were not pertinent to the purpose of his book. Boruch states “the main thing is that my intentions were good and were earnest.” He begs forgiveness for any misstatements that result from memory fading over time and for not being a professional writer. But he succeeded in sharing his personal memories and viewpoints on the people he knew as a child, many of whom perished in the Holocaust, and for this, we are deeply grateful.
Like many of the shtetls of the Pale of Settlement, Verkhivka was both a place and a way of life. Few written records remain; the majority that mention Verkhivka either date from before a strong Jewish presence or are lists of murder victims.
The first step of this project was for us to confirm exactly which Verkhivka was our ancestral town. I knew from my grandmother that the closest city was Bar, about 14 miles away; that tiny “Pomashnitsa” was walking distance across the river to the east; that Mar'ynaivka was about an hour's hike to the south southeast, and Yaltushkiv was the closet sizeable town, a mere nine miles distant. From these clues, we determined that “our” Verkhivka is in the Bars'kyi district of the Vinnytsia Oblast, sandwiched between two rivers, with the hamlet of Prymoshchanytsya, most likely my grandmother's “Pomashnitsa,” a 10-minute walk away. The persons brought to life in this book would have said it was located in Podolia gubernia, but that system has long been abandoned. Some knew the town as Verkhovka, but most of the Jewish inhabitants would have said Verkhivka. We are now certain it cannot be any of the three other Ukrainian towns of the same name as these comprise one in the same oblast but 100 miles away, one in the Volyn Oblast, and one 12 hours distant by car (considering current driving conditions in that war-torn country) in the Zaporizhia Oblast near the decimated city of Mariupol. Thus far, our Verkhivka has been spared the horrors of an air assault because, to be frank, there is little there to destroy.
While everyday life in Verkhivka meant physical labor for most men and women, the children also worked from about the age of five. My grandmother was only five years old when she toiled at her uncle Leyb “Shokhet” Dukhovne's tobacco field alongside her sister and cousins. The children's hands became chapped and often bled from the nicotine of the tobacco leaves they gathered and strung on thread, and from the constant hand-washing. In addition, boys suffered through kheyder, where a slip of the tongue or forgetting a Talmud passage resulted in an agonizing slap or two. This kind of abuse was the unspoken norm, and as long as it was carried out in the name of learning, it was perfectly acceptable. Girls learned to cook, sew, milk cows, carrying in water from the well or pump on a yoke their backs, clean the house, and prepare for Shabbat and other holidays. The girls with a sympathetic parent might even have been taught to read a bit of Yiddish or Ukrainian.
Hunger, lice, disease, and death were not infrequent visitors. Children were most susceptible. For women, childbirth was a serious risk as was infection from a kitchen wound such as that which killed my great-grandmother when she was only about 40. Tuberculous was fairly endemic and during times of war, typhus and cholera killed swiftly.
The approximately 800 Jewish and Eastern Orthodox residents of the village in 1920 often interacted with one another in the fields, the tavern, and at the Thursday market. But they lived in separate, unequal worlds that could explode in open hostility at any moment, always to the peril of the much smaller Jewish community which had no protections in Tsarist Russia. The Jews and non-Jews of the Verkhivka, as throughout the Pale, could be cordial to one another when the need arose, and although individual friendships were not unknown, each considered the other as a potential enemy. Religious institutions as well as the official policies of the Russian Empire assured that discrimination was the norm. And thus the people brought to life in this monograph could not have imagined that a hundred years Ukraine would have a Jewish president and the two peoples would be sympatico with one another.
Verkhivka was not in the crossfire of World War I. However, soldiers were occasionally quartered there, food was scarce, and disease took hold. There was also the more immediate reality of being drafted into the Russian army, so most of the young Jewish men fled, never to see their families again. Many were eventually able to enter the United States. A few went to Palestine.
The Bolshevik Revolution brought its own perils. The anti-Revolutionary Ukrainian militias of Symon Vasylyovych Petliura accused the Jewish population of being Communists and thus responsible for the overthrow of the tsarist regime. True, most Jews suffered terribly under the old regime and had participated actively or passively in the creation of a “class-free” Russia. But the USSR turned out to be even more of a destructive force. Ukrainian partisans carried out pogroms that were as fierce and murderous as those of the tsars. Finally, with Operation Barbarossa's savage opening salvo on June 22, 1941, the Jews of the western territories of the USSR were doomed, for directly behind the German army were the Einsatzgruppen, the SS mobile killing units whose sole purpose was the murder of every Jewish man, woman, and child. It was Einsatzgruppe D that slaughtered the remaining Jewish inhabitants of Verkhivka. A few were concentrated in the larger town of Yaltushkiv so the Nazis could squeeze out their remaining strength through slave labor before they killed them, but many were simply rounded up from their cellars and other hiding places and shot by the river. Verkhivka was but one of thousands of shtetls where over one and a half million people died in the systematic murder campaign of “The Holocaust by Bullets.”
Like Boruch, Stefani and I wish to preserve these miniature portraits of real people, many of whom appear on our family trees as distant cousins of our grandparents, or as distant relatives through marriage, or by simple conjecture owing to shared traces of DNA between us and their descendants that may or may not have any meaning. And we once again thank Boruch for leaving these colorful vignettes behind, even if we spent many hours trying to make the connections that he undoubtedly knew but did not record. From him, we learn people loved to bicker in the town synagogue even coming to blows. That they looked in awe at those with “modern” clothing who presented themselves as “aristocrats.” And that Shmul Felberg loved to play opera recordings on his Victrola. We now know that Taube Kornfeld frequently borrowed household items and rarely returned them whole, and that most people eked out some sort of a living from various activities. A few had ample amounts to give away; some lived out their lives in great poverty.
Boruch's narrative tells us that men were often called by a moniker that referenced their wives, e.g., Shmul, the husband of Gisse, was called “Shmul Gisse's.” They could also be referred to by their occupation such as Leyb Shokhet (Louis the slaughterer) or Shmul Melamed (Samuel the teacher).
To realize this project, we thank also the Verkhivka descendants and others who donated to the project fund. We are especially indebted to Pamela Russ for creating the translation of the original typed text, which presented a number of stylistic issues. We could not have asked for a better or more patient translator. Pamela struggled along with us with some of the more poetic monikers indulged in by the author. Thanks also to Susan Iodone and other friends who proofread the English text.
Much gratitude is extended to Boruch's daughter Afrith Weinstein Wahba for granting permission to translate the monograph and make available it to the current generation of the living grandchildren, great-grandchildren, and great-great-grandchildren of Verkhivka. The copy of the monograph used for this translation was the one Boruch had given to my grandmother more than 50 years ago. Whenever Boruch introduces a new person, he “calls them up,” as one would be called up in synagogue for a Torah blessing honor. In essence, saying these names now metaphorically calls up their souls for the blessing of remembrance. As he had said, Let their names never be forgotten.
Ukrainian historian Mikhail Kupershtyn, who at the time of preparing this translation still resides in Bar, a city about 12 miles to the north of Verkhivka where we believe a few of the main Jewish families of Verkhivka originated from, very kindly provided some historical notes on the village to Stefani. It is highly unlikely that my grandmother or Stefani's grandfather knew much of the village's history. My grandmother, who was born in 1903 and lived in Verkhivka until 1909 before her family moved to Bessarabia, said the houses “were all already old; they were always there.” No one ever spoke of new construction or infrastructure. Daily life had not changed much from the 19th to early 20th centuries, as electricity, running water, and flush toilets (indeed, even an indoor toilet) were not part of their world.
Verkhivka is a village on a bit of a hill between the Lyadova[ya] and Moshanka [Moshchanytsia] Rivers in the Bars'kyi region. We learn from the account of Yanovich, a school teacher from Volodiyvetsky that the town began as a donation of land made in 1611 by the Bars'kyi head priest Golski to Jan Verhovsky. At that time, the region was part of the Kingdom of Poland. It is from Jan Verhovsky that the village takes its name. By 1651 the land grant, was designated as a village and sometimes appeared in writing as “Wierchivka.”
Verkhivka was on the road from Zarhorod to Bar. There was a tavern and an inn by the road. The building, which until 1966 served as the village hall, club, culture house, post office, and library, was built at the beginning of the 17th century. It is quite possible that this is the tavern managed by my great-great-uncle Leyb Kornfeld.
The beauty of the village is reflected in the works of Polish writer Juliusz Słowacki, who came there several times to visit his parents who lived in the larger “Christian part” of town. In the early 19th century “Wierchywka,” along with several neighboring villages, was passed on as a gift to the poor relations of an aristocratic family, and in 1822-1827 the village was leased by a Mr. Januszewski, an uncle of a Juliusz Słowacki. “I had two months of fun in the Kremlin,” the poet wrote in his diary, and “my mother and I went to Wierchowka to Mikhalsky. I felt good there”. It is known that Juliusz was buried there with his daughter Julia Mikhalsky. “Yulia's garden” was named after her.
In the 1860s Verkhivka was confiscated from the Mikhalsky family as a consequence of the participation of Ludovik Mikhalsky in the anti-Tsarist rebellion of 1863-1864. Ludovik Mikhalsky was exiled to Siberia and later assassinated. An 1888 census indicates there were 123 houses and 853 people, of whom only 39 were Jews—certainly the number of Jews was larger as small children were most likely not counted. By that time, Verkhivka had officially been designated a small town.
The old wooden church was erected in 1754 but construction on the newer, larger church of St. Nicholas began in 1874. The completed building was consecrated in 1879. It had a small wooden bell tower. Undoubtedly, my great-grandparents could hear it ring. It also had a parish school with the 1888 census listing 12 students and one teacher, as well as two water mills, three shops, and seven craftsmen who sold their wares at the Thursday market held 26 times a year.
By 1901 the elevated topography of Verkhivka, the abundance of river and spring water, and its proximity to the forest made it a fertile area. The soil near the rivers was mostly clay with stone below. Most of the houses had floors that were made from this clay. The population was by then around 1,000 Orthodox Christians and 160 Jews. Of the latter, 48 appear on the list of victims of the Nazis who were murdered on the banks of the river. The Christians of Verkhivka were engaged mostly in agriculture while the Jews were a mix of laborers, small business people, tradesmen, teachers, and “have-nots.” And now we visit the lively characters who are our ancestors.
We have, wherever possible, attempted to standardize spellings of names using correct Yiddish transliteration practices. Thus, Verchiefker is presented as Verkhivka, Cheder as Kheyder, Leib as Leyb, Chaim as Khaim, Josef as Iosif, Yossel as Iosil, and so forth. The main exception is the author's name, which is presented as Boruch. Surnames have been standardized to the spelling used in the United States, where applicable, or with Yivo Unified Yiddish standards, so Reykh rather than Reich, and Vaynshteyn rather than Weinshtein. Place names have been normalized to modern Ukrainian usage. For the few places we could not identify, we retained the original spelling. Run-on sentences have been edited into two or more sentences. We sometimes replace the pronouns he and she with proper names to avoid any confusion.
The original pagination appears in brackets in the index of names and in the course of the text. The index itself has been moved to the front of this translation. Editorial comments appear in brackets. The editorial comments serve to aid the genealogist in clarifying family relations. Finally, Boruch often writes that a person “lives in Israel” or “lives in Florida,” etc. We retain this state of being as it was in 1973, unless we have a year of death for the person in question. However, we can safely assume there are no surviving contemporaries in 2024.
Compiled by Lewis R. Baratz
We found it fitting to conclude this memorial book translation with a comprehensive listing of the people of Verkhivka who were murdered during the Holocaust. Included among the martyrs are (1) persons who lived in the town at the time of the arrival of the SS Einsatzgruppen mobile killing units; (2) persons born in Verkhivka but who had moved elsewhere at the time of their murder. This includes some young men who were killed in the service of the Soviet Army as they fought against the German invasion; and (3) a few members of the extended Dukhovne family who lived in Bar but had come back to Verkhivka to spend their last days with their relatives.
Not included are the roughly 400 other men, women, and children who were concentrated in Verkhivka and its environs, mostly from the former provinces of Bukovina and Bessarabia that were then part of Romania, a close ally of the Third Reich. These persons had been deported by the Iron Guard and eventually murdered by Einsatzgruppe D, the victims of the Holocaust by Bullets.
The source is the Yad Vashem database. Undoubtedly, there are countless others who remain unknown, and we keep them in our hearts as we read the names of victims memorialized in the known testimonials.
Index of Profiles in the Original Text
Most of the profiles of people in the Boruch's original text are labeled by (the male) head of house, with wives and children mentioned incidentally. The following index includes all the people cited with each profile, beginning with the original heading of the main person of the profile. The page numbers in brackets refer to the original source pagination.
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