Kherson

Kherson is a city and a region of Ukraine about 150 km east of Odessa on the shores of the Black Sea adjacent to the Crimea at the mouth of the Dnieper River. I happened to be on the Tel Aviv University campus and popped into the Diaspora Museum (Beit Hatfutsot) and found a small but interesting photographic exhibition about the Jewish history of Kherson: "By the Shores of the Black Sea: Jewish Farmers in the USSR, 1922–1941" (http://www.bh.org.il/Exhibitions/BlackSea/index.aspx).
Apparently the Czars started to send Jews from Russia to till the soil there since it was a desolate area. Under the Soviets, starting in 1922, this gathered steam, and Jews established farms and villages and gradually became a majority in the rural areas (the other region they sent Jews to was Birobidzhan, another remote and desolate area). With support from the Joint Distribution Committee, Jewish philanthropy funded tractors and other agricultural improvements. Their numbers swelled to ca. 200,000, and one town with a Hebrew name had up to 20,000 Jewish inhabitants.
But, there was dissension between the Zionists, the Bundists and the Communists. An organization called the Labor Brigades, which was both Communist and Zionist split in 1927, and those who had moved to Palestine but remained true Communists, returned to the USSR. In the late 1930's collectivization was imposed from Moscow, and many of the leadership were arrested and executed. Those who were not purged under Stalin were finally killed off by the invading German Army in 1941, who erased all trace of the Jewish presence in the region.
The only trace of the Jews' former presence are the ruins of villages and the place names, some still with the original Hebrew names that now have only Ukrainian inhibitants. Also saved were the photos and drawings of Meir Axelrod, who documented the life of the Jews in this rural area that lasted only from 1922-1941.