Zhdanov
ZHDANOV
ZHDANOV (until 1948 Mariupol ), city in S. Stalino district, Ukraine. The Jewish community of Zhdanov was founded at the beginning of the 19th century and numbered 111 in 1847.
Owing to continuous Jewish emigration from the Lithuanian and Belorussian provinces to southern Russia, the Zhdanov community had increased by 1897 to 5,013 (16.1% of the total population). Seven Jewish settlements were founded in the surroundings of Zhdanov toward the end of the reign of Nicholas i, and by the end of the 19th century their population was estimated at over 3,000. Riots, which lasted three days, broke out in the city in October 1905. In 1926, 7,332 Jews lived in Zhdanov (18% of the city's total population). Jewish life was suppressed at that time. Immediately after the city's occupation by the Germans in October 1941, all the Jews were imprisoned in an ancient military camp outside the city and were shot on Oct. 18, 1941. In 1959 there were about 2,800 Jews (1% of the total population) in Zhdanov. A small synagogue was still functioning there in 1962. Most Jews left in the 1990s.
bibliography:
Die Judenpogrome in Russland, 2 (1909) 227–40.
[Yehuda Slutsky]