The first extant mention of Bershad appears in 1459. It was a private town of Poland, owned by the families of Zbaraski and Moszyński. Polish noblemanPiotr Stanisław Moszyński built a palace complex in Bershad. The only remaining parts of the complex are the park and the chapel of the Moszyński and Jurjewicz families.
In 1648, during the Khmelnytsky Uprising under the Cossacks, Maksym Kryvonis conquered Bershad and slew many of the Catholics and Jews there. Before World War II, the city had an important Jewish community.[2] Bershad was famous in the middle of the nineteenth century for its Jewish weavers of the tallit, a ritual shawl worn by Jews at prayer. By the end of the century, the demand decreased, and the industry declined, leading many weavers to emigrate to America. In 1900 the Jewish population of Bershad was 4,500, out of a total population of 7,000. The Jewish artisans numbered about 500. The community possessed synagogues and several houses of prayer. One synagogue survived World War II and was not closed during Soviet times. It is still active. Many Jews worldwide bear a "Bershidsky/Bershadsky" surname referring to the town.
During World War II, Romanian forces allied with the Nazi Germans transformed the Bershad area into a ghetto as part of the Romanian-occupied Transnistria Governorate. Many of the ghetto victims were Jews brought in from Bessarabia. Thousands of Jews were starved to death in the ghetto during the Holocaust, including the writer and poet Mordechai Goldenberg.[3][4]
^Kessler, Arthur (2024). Spitzer, Leo (ed.). A Doctor's Memoir of the Romanian Holocaust: Survival in Lager Vapniarka and the Ghettos of Transnistria. Rochester studies in East and Central Europe. Translated by Robinson, Margaret. Rochester NY: University of Rochester Press. pp. 135–153. ISBN978-1-64825-093-4.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: date and year (link)
External links
(in Ukrainian)Bershad RADA - Bershad Local Council
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