Bershad

Bershad is a city in Vinnytsia Oblast in central Ukraine, in the historic region of Podolia, and until 2020 it was the administrative centre of the former Bershad Raion. Its first surviving mention dates from 1459, when it was a private town of Poland held by the Zbaraski and Moszyński families; Piotr Stanisław Moszyński built a palace complex there, of which only the park and a family chapel remain. In 1648 Cossacks under Maksym Kryvonis took the town during the Khmelnytsky Uprising. Bershad had a large Jewish community that became known in the nineteenth century for weaving the tallit, the ritual prayer shawl, and in 1900 about 4,500 of its 7,000 residents were Jewish. During the Second World War Romanian forces allied with Nazi Germany turned the area into a ghetto within the Transnistria Governorate, and thousands of Jews died there of hunger and typhus. The town is home to the football club FC Nyva Bershad.