Abstract

This study is a profile of the Jewish community of the shtetl (rural market town) Kitaigorod in the Podolia region of the Ukraine. The project is based upon the personal memoirs of a former resident of Kitaigorod. In order to place the memoirs into their proper historical perspective, the history of the Jews of Russia is presented, followed by a detailed analysis of the particularities of life in the rural market towns of the Pale of Settlement. The third chapter presents a history and description of Kitaigorod. An analysis of the tensions that arise in the use of primary and secondary source literature in historical research is presented in the next chapter. The value of the memoirs and their contribution to the understanding of pre-World War I Jewish communal life in the Ukraine is addressed as well. Finally, the last chapter contains the memoirs, along with two unpublished oral histories, a translation of an archived deposition on the pogrom in Kitaigorod as well as a translation of a lengthy article on the history of Kitaigorod, written by a former resident. The issues and problems involved in documenting and verifying information on Kitaigorod is addressed in an appendix.