שעפעטיווקע

ציון רבי פנחס מקאריץ

Shepetivka — Kever of Rabbi Pinchas of Koretz

Jewish cemetery, Shevchenko street 44, Shepetivka, Khmelnytskyi Oblast, Ukraine

• Rabbi Pinchas Shapiro of Koretz, a close disciple of the Baal Shem Tov, passed away in Shepetivka on his way to Eretz Yisrael and is buried there.
• THERE ARE THREE JEWISH CEMETERIES IN SHEPETIVKA AND YOU WANT THE ONE ON SHEVCHENKO. The ohel of Reb Pinchas is in the ground at Shevchenko street 44 — the one opened in 1900. It is fenced, the gate locks, and entry is by permission; the caretaker is recorded as Lidiya Stanislavovna Diduk.
• HE DIED IN 1790 AND THAT GROUND OPENED IN 1900, which is not a contradiction but is worth understanding before you go. The old cemetery, on Kotika street 9, goes back to the seventeenth century and took its last burial in 1910 — and its stones were taken away to another place. The ohel stands in the newer ground.
• DO NOT GO TO KOTIKA STREET EXPECTING A CEMETERY. Nothing is visible there. It is a hillside with no wall, no fence and no gate, used as open recreational ground, and under threat from building.
• The third cemetery, on Pyasotskoho street, was opened in 1945 and is the municipal one — thousands of stones, a caretaker paid by the town, a gate that does not lock. It is not the one you have come for.
• Vegetation is a constant problem in the Shevchenko ground. Three kilometres north-west of the town is the mass grave of Shepetivka's Jews, dug in 1941, walled and marked.