SLAVUTA

SLAVUTA, city in N. Kamenets-Podolski district, Ukraine. Slavuta was annexed by Russia after the second partition of Poland (1793) and was in the province of Volhynia until the 1917 Revolution. In 1765 the poll tax was paid by 246 Jews registered in Slavuta. During the late 18^th and first half of the 19^th century, the community became known for its printing press, founded in 1791 by R. Moses Shapira, son of the ẓaddik R. Phinehas b. Abraham of *Korets. Later Moses' two sons, Samuel Abba and Phinehas, took over the administration of the press. Three editions of the Babylonian Talmud, an edition of the Bible (with commentaries), the Zohar, and many other religious works, especially ḥasidic literature, were all produced handsomely and with great care by the press. In 1835 the press was closed down when the owners were arrested for the alleged murder of a worker who had supposedly denounced them for printing books without permission from the censor. There were 1,658 Jews registered in the community in 1847 and 4,891 in 1897 (57% of the total population). Under Soviet rule the community's institutions were destroyed. The Jewish population numbered 4,701 in 1926 (44.9%). During the German occupation of the city during World War ii, those Jews who did not manage to escape were murdered. A mass grave marks the place where Jews were massacred by the Nazis in the vicinity of the town, with a monument erected to the memory of the dead and with inscriptions in both Russian and Yiddish. In the late 1960s the Jewish population was estimated at about 3,000. There was one synagogue administered by a rabbi. Most left in the 1900s.

bibliography:

Ḥ.D. Friedberg, Toledot ha-Defus ha-Ivri be-Polanyah (1950), 104–9.

[Yehuda Slutsky]