About This Project
This project is being initiated to fund the complete translation of the 604-page Yizkor Book of Zvhil/Novograd-Volynskiy and surrounding towns. Most Hebrew chapters of the book have been translated into English and can be found on JewishGen. Much of the book is in Yiddish and requires translation. A Russian translation including photos and maps is also available as a PDF.
Historical Significance
Zhvil or Novograd-Volinskiy was fairly small during its first century of existence; taxpayer records from the mid-eighteenth century indicate that there were five-hundred-seventy-seven Jewish taxpayers. One-hundred-thirty years later, the community of Jews had grown to 9,378 people – more than half of the town's total population.
Zhvil was an important Hasidic center, and there were also followers of the Haskalah who studied secular subjects and tried to assimilate into European society.
Jews suffered during the civil war. In 1919 this conflict acted as a back-drop to wide-spread pogroms arising throughout Ukraine. The Jews of Zhvil sustained approximately one-thousand dead. Many other Jews were dispersed, and Zhvil was burned to the ground.
During the inter-war period, the Jews of Zhvil were engaged in the trades, the leather goods trade preeminent among them.
On the eve of World War II, Zhvil sheltered 6,839 Jews. German troops entered Zhvil on 8 July 1941. The Nazis herded the town's Jews into a ghetto, and one month later, one-thousand Zhvil Jews were murdered. Another short month later, four-thousand more Jews were killed. Only Jews who had useful skills were spared and sent to a labor camp. November 1942 saw the successful escape from the labor camp of the few remaining Jews, who made their way into the surrounding forest and joined partisan groups hiding in the woods.
(sources: The Encyclopedia of Jewish Life, Wikipedia, & the JewishGen Ukraine Research Division)
Project Details
As funds become available, Yiddish pages will be translated into English according to importance, by a professional translator. The project coordinator will review the translation and work closely with the translators. The project coordinator with solicit funds from family members, friends, genealogists, descendants of Zvhil / Novograd Volynskiy, Ukraine and the surrounding towns, as well as others interested in the history of this area.
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