1 History of Kamenny Brod and its Faience Factory Life and Death of a Jewish Shetel Filled with Life and Tragedy Valentine Slovatshevsky 12/31/2000 This story is history of the inhabitants of Kamenny Brod, Ukraine and its’ the Kamenny Brod faience factory. The town residents were made up of Jews, Poles, Germans and Ukrainians. This history covers the period from the mid-1800’s to year 2,000. Although the fiancé factory is the major theme; it is also the story of the 1919 pogrom and the 1941 holocaust that occurred in Kamenny Brod. This history is presented as a memorial to those that lived and died there and their descendants of Kamenny Brod. In the addendum is a newspaper article on the 80th anniversary written by the author wrote about the events of the1919 Pogrom. 2 ACKNOWLEGEMENT We wish to thank the author, Valentine Slovatshevsky, for this manuscript on the history of Kamenny Brod and his newspaper article. A kind and gentle person we met during our family tree quest. His manuscript is the history of Kamenny Brod and its fiancé factory. It describes an eye witness account of one of two other major tragic events that occurred in Kamenny Brod. In 1941German soldiers murdered the Jews of Kamenny Brod over a several day period. In the appendix is the English translation of the newspaper article Valentine wrote on the 80 anniversary of the pogrom. The article describes the pogrom in Kamenny Brod on the 80 th anniversary of tragedy in the history of the wooded settlement Kamenny Brod, in Baranovka area. There are many tragic pages but the pogrom on July, 9, 1919 has gone down in history as one of two most tragic experience of this small village, the other is the Holocaust starting in September1941. We want to acknowledge his widow, Anna Slovatshevskya, for allowing us to publish her husband’s manuscript. We met Anna, after she was widowed, when we visited Kamenny Brod in 2009. Anna gave us her copy of the manuscript that was written in Ukrainian. We had it translated into English after first retyping the Ukrainian copy into MS-Word in Ukrainian, then into English using MS-Word. These copies were sent to Anna in 2009 as well as a MS-Word DVD. I returned Anna’s original copy during the course of this year long project. It should be noted that Valentine was not a Jew; he became a friend through correspondence over several years. His story is of the factory history and does not focus on Shetel life. Special thanks are to the Sacramento, California Ukrainian Heritage Societies Ola Oliynyk who retyped the manuscript in MS-Word in Ukrainian. Then Ola found Ukrainian translators in the Ukraine, and coordinated all their translation efforts in MS-Word. Since there have been multiple people involved in this translation, it is far from perfect in grammar and translation of certain words or names. Formatting became a problem as various versions of MS-Word were used; no attempt was made to rationalize the discrepancies mentioned. This publication is produce, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system to preserve a history of a small forest village with a tragic past. The manuscript is dedicated to the descendants of Kamenny Brod, Ukraine and those that lived and perished there. Allan B. Dolgow 02/28/2010 3 4 Contents Acknowlegement .......................................................................................................... 2 MEMORY DATES ...................................................................................................... 7 The Kamenny Brod faience factory............................................................................. 13 Forest Swamps Became the Building Site ................................................................... 15 Of the Future Factory.................................................................................................. 15 The New Owners of the Factory ................................................................................. 17 Signs of Decay............................................................................................................ 17 Fire ............................................................................................................................. 19 The Rise ..................................................................................................................... 20 For better fortune ........................................................................................................ 21 Stormy summer of 1905.............................................................................................. 23 Before a Hard Ordeal .................................................................................................. 25 The Plant in Kamenny Brod: to be or not to be ........................................................... 26 Reconstruction ............................................................................................................ 30 Kamenny Brod within the Polish District .................................................................... 31 Wave of Represessions ............................................................................................... 32 Life of other was passing as it used to ......................................................................... 33 People’s War .............................................................................................................. 34 In the area close to the front ........................................................................................ 37 And again: the plant – to be or not to be? .................................................................... 38 Hoping for the better ................................................................................................... 39 Poltava landing ........................................................................................................... 40 And once again: ‘the plant: to be or not to be’ ............................................................. 41 To hope with no hope left ........................................................................................... 41 S. К. Minbashyrov. Restoration of the faience plant in Kamenny Brod ....................... 42 Recalling about front men ........................................................................................... 47 Two jubilees of the sixties .......................................................................................... 49 Reconstruction ............................................................................................................ 51 Plant artist .................................................................................................................. 53 Rationalizer and skilled man ....................................................................................... 54 They will stay in the memory for long ........................................................................ 56 M. M. Rudnitskyy ....................................................................................................... 56 N. S. Mayzlin ............................................................................................................. 56 К. N. Shcherbakov ...................................................................................................... 57 H. N. Stul ................................................................................................................... 58 F. К. Pashkovskyy ...................................................................................................... 58 5 S. А. Kuchynskyy ....................................................................................................... 59 V. V. Shpakevych ....................................................................................................... 60 H. P. Korshunova ....................................................................................................... 60 І. А. Korniychuk ......................................................................................................... 61 Faience plant workers had to deal ............................................................................... 62 not only with reconstruction........................................................................................ 62 Beginning ................................................................................................................... 63 JUBILEE .................................................................................................................... 65 Forest fairy-tale .......................................................................................................... 66 It seemed that was going to last forever ...................................................................... 68 One more five-year plan with F. U. Retman ................................................................ 69 Labour dynasties of faience plant workers .................................................................. 72 Out of ‘Poltava landing’.............................................................................................. 75 ONE more hope for the local resident ......................................................................... 76 The first seven years with L. M. Mirutenko ................................................................ 77 The holiday of our street ............................................................................................