Tarutino
TARUTINO
TARUTINO, village in *Bessarabia, Ukraine. Tarutino was founded as a German colony at the beginning of the 19th century. As a result of Jewish emigration to Bessarabia in the first half of the 19th century Jews began to settle in Tarutino despite the fact that after 1839 the law prohibiting Jews from settling in border regions applied there. The *May Laws of 1882 forbidding Jews to reside in rural areas also applied there. Occasionally Jews were expelled on the grounds that they were living there illegally. Nevertheless, the Jewish community continued to grow and in 1897 there were 1,873 Jews (36% of the total population) in Tarutino, most of them engaged in business. In 1925 the 285 members of the local loan fund included 17 farmers, 57 artisans, and 172 tradesmen. There were 1,546 Jews (26.7% of the total population) in 1930. The community was destroyed in 1941 when the Germans and Romanians entered Bessarabia during World War ii.
[Eliyahu Feldman]