Skvyra

Skvyra is a city in Bila Tserkva Raion of Kyiv Oblast in central Ukraine, and the seat of the Skvyra urban hromada. It had an estimated population of about 15,165 in 2022. Until 18 July 2020 it was the administrative centre of its own Skvyra Raion, which was merged into Bila Tserkva Raion in that year's administrative reform. The older town was destroyed at the end of the sixteenth century, and by 1736 it appears as a village leased by a Jewish lessee. After it fell inside the Pale of Settlement its Jewish community grew to 8,910 people by 1897, almost half the town, and it had seven synagogues by the end of that century. Pogroms in 1917 and 1919 killed 191 people, and German forces shot about 850 Jews on 20 September 1941. The Twersky Skver Hasidic dynasty came from here, and its American branch founded New Square in New York. The writer Asher Ginzberg, known as Ahad Ha'am, was born in the city.