Foreword

This section was translated by David Chapin and Mike Meiberg. It is included here with their gracious permission. Copyright, 2006, David Chapin. All rights reserved. Used by permission.

Finally, we bless the completion. It is due to being very careful to detail that prolonged the finish of this project.

The mission here was to record the history of a city and the Judaism in Russia from whence we came, especially after the Holocaust at the hands of the Germans and their helpers who killed upwards of 5,000,000 of our brothers and our sisters.

For the writing of the book, we had a lot of material at our disposal. We had thousands of book reviews, newspapers, and other material in the three languages: Hebrew, Yiddish, and Russian.

The Jews of Yeketerinslav were a group to themselves. Here grew a Jewish type that was special in its character. They were full of enthusiasm and did quite a bit to the forwarding and development of the city and its surroundings. It got a lot from the culture of the Russian people and together with that it kept its Jewishness in a very nice way -- in a proud manner as an individual and as a community.

The City of Potemkin from the very beginning of its establishment absorbed Jews that through 150 years grew to quite a number in comparison to the rest of the population. It was a commerce center with a lot of heavy industry and towards the end, there were two power stations that were erected on the river and they were the largest ones in the world. Until the end of the Holocaust, 1000,000 Jews lived out of 500,000 total population. Also today [1972] the population is growing a little bit and the populations now has a number of Jews that are returning. There is a Synagogue, a Shochet, and even a Jewish Cemetery there.

The City had Chaders and Talmud-Torahs and private tudors. It also had a Yeshiva where the Goan Rabbi Chaim Ozer Grodzinsky - the Chief Rabbi -- came from Vilna. He taught a weekly lesson and also started a seminar for teachers who taught religion, Hebrew, and Zionism.

There were alsoJewish High Schools and Chaders and private teachers for Hebrew and even the schools of the non-Jews taught religion to Jews and among the teachers were Dr. S. Levin Bregin. Here was established the institute of higher learning - the first one in the Diaspora.

Here articles, newspapers, and books are printed in three languages. There were Jewish artists here . . . . [translation ends]