CHRONOLOGY

1791	Czarina Catherine the Great establishes Russia’s Jewish Pale of Settlement, an area that eventually extends from the Baltic Sea to the Black Sea.
1795	The last of three partitions of Poland leaves Poland’s eastern lands, including Volyn province in which Trochenbrod will arise, in the hands of Russia’s Catherine the Great and the czars who follow her.
1804	A decree of Czar Alexander I permits Jews to live only in larger towns and cities of the Pale of Settlement. The decree also exempts from harsh taxes and other discriminatory laws Jews who engage in agriculture on unused land. In the years following this decree the first individual Jewish families settle in the marshy Trochim Ford clearing.
1813	The first baby is born in Trochenbrod.
1820	An organized group of Jewish families from cities in the surrounding area joins the earlier Trochenbrod settlers.
1827	Czar Nicholas I issues a decree that conscripts Jewish boys into the Russian army until age forty-five. Again, families of Jewish farmers on unused land are exempted. In response, there is a new surge of Jewish settlement at Trochenbrod and outright purchase of the land by the settlers. The United States is just over fifty years old.
1828	Approximately at this time a group of twenty-one families of Mennonites establishes the villages of Yosefin and Sofiyovka near Trochenbrod. They begin to abandon these settlements several years later.
1835	Another decree from Czar Nicholas I requires rural Jews to be in agricultural “colonies” and have passports and permits to travel. Trochenbrod is formally recognized as a Jewish agricultural colony and given the name of the former Mennonite village, Sofiyovka.
1837	Ignatovka, also known as Lozisht, is established near Trochenbrod as a sister Jewish agricultural colony.
1850	A new decree outlaws Hasidic dress. From this point on Trochenbrod is gradually de-Hasidized, though it remains strongly religious.
1865	Another Czarist decree allows Jews to change their status from farm villager to town dweller without giving up their land. The Jews of Sofiyovka petition for and are granted town status; Ignatovka remains a colony. America’s Civil War ends. Tolstoy begins publishing War and Peace in serial form.
1880	Trochenbrod begins a process of steady economic diversification, modernization, and growth, increasingly transforming itself into a real town and regional commercial center. This process continues until the First World War. The first Trochenbrod immigrant goes to the United States.
1882	Czar Alexander III enacts the “May Laws,” highly oppressive anti-Jewish regulations that restrict where Jews can live, how many can receive higher education, and the professions they are allowed to practice. These regulations remain in effect until the 1917 revolution, and are one factor encouraging massive Jewish emigration from Russia during that period.
1885	Heavy emigration from Sofiyovka begins and continues to 1940, except during the First World War. Trochenbroders immigrate to North and South America, and after the First World War also to Palestine.
1897	Trochenbrod and Lozisht have a population of close to sixteen hundred Jews. Trochenbrod begins to have light industry, begins to modernize, and begins to diversify into a larger array of economic activities. The economy of the entire Pale of Settlement becomes more dependent on industrial production.
1901	Theodore Roosevelt becomes president of the United States.
1904	The Russo-Japanese war spurs illicit emigration of many Trochenbrod men to avoid conscription.
1914	The First World War places Trochenbrod on the front between Austro-Hungarian and Russian troops, where it suffers pillage, rape, murder, famine, forced labor, and disease.
1917	The October Revolution establishes Soviet rule in Russian lands.
1918	The First World War ends; the newly constituted Soviet Union immediately embarks on a territorial struggle with Poland. Trochenbrod is further ravaged in the conflict.
1921	Trochenbrod is now located in eastern Poland. Its population is again roughly sixteen hundred Jews.
1925	Prince Radziwill begins building a Catholic church at the edge of Trochenbrod to serve Polish people living in villages in the area. Trochenbrod begins to recover and reassert itself with vigor as a regional commercial center.
1929	Sofiyovka is described in the Illustrated Directory of Volhyn and the Polish Address Business Directory in a way that suggests it has begun to reclaim its role as a robust regional commercial center.
1933	In this year and the next, many Trochenbroders who had settled in the United States return to visit their relatives in Trochenbrod.
1934	Hitler, as both chancellor and Führer in Germany, emerges as a major political figure in Europe. A Polish-German nonaggression pact allows for unrestricted Nazi propaganda in Poland. From 1934 on, Poland’s pogroms and repression of Jews are lesser echoes of those in Germany.
1938	The first military training course for Etzel officers is conducted in Trochenbrod. November 10: Kristallnacht.
1939	Spring: A ribbon-cutting ceremony is conducted for the first paved segment of Trochenbrod’s street. Trochenbrod has some electricity, telegraph and telephone, newspapers from Warsaw, bicycles, movies, and even an occasional visit by a motorized vehicle; the town is rapidly expanding and modernizing. August: Germany and the U.S.S.R. sign the Molotov-Ribbentrop Nonaggression Pact. September: Germany and the U.S.S.R. invade and divide Poland between them. The Second World War begins. Trochenbrod comes under Soviet rule.
1941	The population of Trochenbrod and Lozisht has swelled to over six thousand people as a result of economic growth in the interwar years and an influx of refugees from western Poland in the wake of the German invasion. June 22: Germany invades and the Soviets withdraw from eastern Poland, leaving Trochenbrod in Nazi hands. Trochenbrod is terrorized and brutalized by the Germans and their Ukrainian auxiliary police. December: Pearl Harbor is attacked; America enters the Second World War.
1942	August 11: The first Aktion. Most of the Jews of Trochenbrod and Lozisht are taken to pits prepared near Yaromel and slaughtered. September 21: The second Aktion. On Yom Kippur, everyone remaining in Trochenbrod’s ghetto, including many that had fled from the first Aktion and then returned to pray with their brothers on Yom Kippur, is taken to the Yaromel pits and murdered. December: The third Aktion. The last of Trochenbrod’s people, about twenty leather workers, are shot.
1950	A Trochenbrod survivor living in the nearby city of Lutsk reports having visited the site of the town and finding no remaining physical evidence of it.