Bilohorodka (Volhynia)

Coordinates: 50°00'N 26°38'E
Modern Region: Khmelnytski (Khmel’nyts’ka Oblast’)
Country: Ukraine

Town History

• Early 1600s: Jews in small numbers were present. Belogorodka then in the Kingdom of Poland.
• 1747: Blood Libel court case in Zaszlav regarding a murder that took place at the Zachaliska Inn, located on the main road between Belogorodka and Mishnow (now Mykhniz). One of the defendants was a resident of Bilogorodka .
• 1765: 100 Jewish residents
• 1793: Second Partition of the Kingdom of Poland; Belogorodka is now part of the Russian Empire.
• 1897: 1846 Jewish residents, 5,429 total residents.
• 1912: Yosef ben Gedali’ Trastinetski (born 1865) was Rabbi
• 1913: 6,310 total residents. Per the 1913 Vsia Rossia, the town had a post office and telegraph office, and was about 28 miles from a railway station. There was also one-grade rural school, a clinic with 15 beds, a dentist, two midwives, and a pharmacy. Other business listed: drug store, groceries, distillery, wine shops, haberdasheries, hardware, credit union, lumberyard, manufacturies ( artisanal workshops rather than big factories?), cloth factory, bread or grain (literally grain bread). There was a market every other Monday. Belogorodka was the capital of its volost’, a subdivision of an uezd. (Many thanks to Alan Shuchat for the translation to English from Russian.)
• 1918: Pogrom at Easter: 18 Jews murdered, many injured
• 1926: 1,194 Jewish residents
• 1941, July 4: Germans entered town

Links:
JewishGen records include the following:

• Family Tree of the Jewish People: 35
• Family Finder: 79
• Vsia Rossiia 1895 Business Directory: 2
• Birth Records: 1 Ukraine Special Interest Goup Belogorodka Town Page includes potential projects of interest to Bilogorodka researchers.

Kremenets Shtetl Co-Op includes many records for Belogorodka residents.

Same name, different town: Bilohorodka, Kievsky Region/Oblast, Ukraine (near Kiev) at 50°23'22.6"N 30°13'39.5"E is a different town with a very same or similar name. (There may also be a third town with the same name.) I've seen the English and Ukrainian spelling used interchangeably. If it is unclear which town your family came from, you may wish to examine additional source documents for references to Kiev, which would indicate Bilohorodka. References Volhynia, including alternate spellings like Vohlin, Wolen, Volyn, etc. indicate Bilogorodka. See the webpages above for additional information about the town and its name history.

Belogorodka Bibliography:
Cohen, Chester G., Shtetl Finder (Bowie, Maryland: Heritage books, Inc., 1989), 6.

Shmuel Spector, editor, The Encyclopedia of Jewish Life Before and During the Holocaust, Volume 1 (New York, New York University Press, 2001), 104.

Jacek Proszyk and anonymous, translators, A 1747 Court Record of a Trial of 14 Kremenets-Area Jews Accused of Ritual Murder (Kremenets Shtetl CO-OP / Jewish Records Indexing – Poland, date unknown), 8-11. Blogorodka is mentioned several times in the text. Full text here, see Item 12. Note that this is an explicit and gruesome account.

Jewish Cemeteries, Synagogues, and Mass Grave Sites in Ukraine,' United States Commission for the Preservation of America’s Heritage Abroad, 2005. Bilogorodka not included in survey.

Vsia Rossia, 1913