Pereyaslav-Khmelnitski
PEREYASLAV-KHMELNITSKI
PEREYASLAV-KHMELNITSKI (formerly Pereyaslav ), city in Kiev district, Ukraine. A Jewish community is known to have existed in the city as early as 1620. It is also known that Jews in Pereyaslav-Khmelnitski suffered greatly during the *Chmielnicki insurrection. In 1654, on the occasion of the union of the Ukraine and Russia, Czar Alexis Mikhailovich maintained the limitation of Jewish rights of 1620. From that time until 1800, no information on Jews in Pereyaslav is available. In 1897, the city listed 5,754 Jews (40% of the total population). Pereyaslav suffered heavily from the Zielony bands; a pogrom in July 1919, which lasted four days, caused the death of 20 Jews and considerable damage to the community. The number of Jews in 1926 was 3,590 (27% of the population), dropping by 1939 to 937 persons (11.3% of the total population). At the beginning of the Soviet regime there were eight batteimidrash, six shoḥatim and 26 kosher butchers in the city. The town was occupied by the Germans on September 17, 1941, and soon the Jews who remained were murdered by them. Pereyaslav was the birthplace of *Shalom Aleichem; his house was reconstructed in the local museum, and his books and theatrical posters are displayed, some of them in Hebrew.
bibliography:
J. Slutsky, in: He-Avar, 9 (1962), 18; I.Z. Diskin, ibid., 14 (1967), 220–8; E. Tcherikower, Di Ukrainer Pogromen in 1919 (1965), index.
[Shmuel Spector (2nd ed.)]