Pohrebyshche

Pohrebyshche is a small city in Vinnytsia Oblast in central Ukraine, situated near the sources of the Ros River. It was the administrative center of Pohrebyshche Raion until that district was abolished in 2020 and incorporated into Vinnytsia Raion. Written sources first mention the town in 1148, and a nineteenth century ethnographer reports that before the Mongol invasion it was called Rokitnya. The name means a big cellar in Ukrainian, though the origin of the name is not clear. For many years it belonged to the Kiev Voivodeship within the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, it was completely destroyed in 1653 during the Khmelnytsky Uprising, and in 1795 it became part of the Russian Empire. The town had a substantial Jewish population that was murdered during the Second World War. Ewelina Hańska, the Polish noblewoman who later married the novelist Honoré de Balzac, was born there in 1805. The population was 10,673 at the 2001 census and an estimated 9,209 in 2022.