Chortkiv

Chortkiv (, ; ; ) is a city in Chortkiv Raion, Ternopil Oblast, western Ukraine. It is the administrative center of Chortkiv Raion, housing the district's local administration buildings. Chortkiv hosts the administration of Chortkiv urban hromada, one of the hromadas of Ukraine. Population:

Chortkiv is located in the northern part of the historic region of Galician Podolia on the banks of the Seret River.

In the past Chortkiv was the home of many Hasidic Jews; it was a notable shtetl and had a significant number of Jews residing there prior to the Holocaust. Today, Chortkiv is a regional commercial and small-scale manufacturing center. Among its architectural monuments is a fortress built in the 16th and 17th centuries as well as historic wooden churches of the 17th and 18th centuries.

History

The first historical mention of Chortkiv dates to 1522, when Polish King Sigismund I the Old granted an ownership order for Jerzy Czortkowski over the town and allowed him to name it after himself—''Czortków''. The small community, numbering at 50 families, were almost all massacred during the Khmelnytsky Uprising of 1648–9. Jewish leadership opposed the resettlement of Jews in Chortkiv until 1705. During that time, the town was also granted Magdeburg rights. However, Chortkiv would later decline in the second half of the 17th century during Ottoman Expansion of central Europe. The town was taken over by Ottoman Empire, whose rule lasted 27 years. It was part of the short-lived Turkish Podolia Eyalet, which lasted from 1672 to 1699. During this period, it was nahiya centre in Yazlofça sanjak as ''Çortkuv'' (Spelled as ''Chortkoov'' in Turkish). After First Partition of Poland Chortkiv came under Austro-Hungarian rule which lasted from 1772 to 1918, during the time of which it was the center of the Chortkiv Bezirk except brief Russian rule between 1809 and 1815 as part of Tarnopol Governorate. On June 8, 1919 the Ukrainian Galician Army broke for couple months through the Polish front at Chortkiv and began the Chortkiv offensive. Soon afterwards, the town was seized by the Poles. It was ceded to sovereign Poland in the Peace Treaty of Riga between Poland, Soviet Russia (acting also on behalf of Soviet Belarus) and Soviet Ukraine, and remained part of the Tarnopol Voivodeship of the Second Polish Republic until the Soviet invasion of Poland in September 1939.

In 1931, the town had 19,000 inhabitants, 46.4 percent of whom were Polish Roman Catholics, 30 percent of whom were Ukrainian and Polish Jews, and 22.8 percent of whom were Ukrainian Greek Catholics.

Chortkiv was an important garrison of the Polish Border Defence Corps Brigade "Podole", whose commandant from 1935 to 1938 was General Stefan Rowecki. Furthermore, it was home to the 36th Reserve Infantry Division.

The town was annexed by the Soviet Union from September 17, 1939 until June 1941. Its Polish inhabitants, particularly students of the local high school, organized a failed uprising in January 1940, which would serve as the first Polish uprising of World War II. In the last days of June 1941, following the German invasion of the USSR, the Soviets executed an estimated 100 to 200 prisoners held in the local prison. The remaining prisoners were evacuated further east, either by train or on foot, while hundreds died due to the inhumane conditions of transport or at the hands of guards.

From 1941-1944 Chortkiv was annexed to Nazi Germany. The Jewish residents were persecuted and deported as part of the Holocaust. When the Nazis arrived, they proceeded to execute many of the local Jews, including the family of Charles Schumer, American Senate Majority Leader. The surviving Polish residents of the town were transferred to the Recovered Territories in the immediate postwar period (see Polish population transfers (1944–1946)). After the defeat of the Nazis by the Red Army in 1944, the town returned to Soviet control until in 1991 it became part of independent Ukraine.

Due to heavy destruction of Ternopil, in 1944 Chortkiv served as a regional seat.Snitovsky, O.
Five centuries of Ternopil. The city of Hetman Jan and mason Leontiy
'. Ukrinform

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