Investigation trip to Ukraine

Dates : May 19, 2011 – June 2, 2011

Regions : Administrative districts of Vinnytsia ans Tcherkassy

A Yahad In Unum has ended their 24th investigation trip to Ukraine. This 13 days mission took place in the regions of Vinnytsia and Tcherkassy. It completes previous missions led along the DG IV, a strategic road leading to Caucasus via Dnepropetrovsk. Its construction, which was undertaken by the Germans when they occupied the zone in the summer 1941, was made possible thanks to an important Jewish workforce imprisoned in labor camps spread along this road. Here are the important points of this research trip that we would like to put forward.

Labor camps and shootings

During the trip, the team led investigations in different localities, most of which being villages or small towns where labor camps had been settled in order to receive a Jewish labor force. More often than not, our team found out in these localities the trace of camps of Soviet POWs who also worked on the DG IV construction site.

Like the previous missions led along the former DG IV in the same region, we found the same characteristics concerning the dire fate of the Jews – men, women and children alike, forced to work on the different sites along the road. Hence, when the camps were set up, existing structures like farms were used again as they were generally enclosed with a fence or barbed wire and kept by local policemen most of the time. These sites of enclosure are sometimes left to abandon and nothing hints at what occurred at that time. Our activity on the field enabled us to find several of these sites of martyrology.

In most of the cases, there was not, originally, a substantial local population in the visited locations. The Jews who were shut in the camps generally came from the surrounding cities. Many of them also came from nearby Transnistria or even from more distant regions like Bukovina which was then under Romanian occupation. The extermination process of the Jewish populations of those camps was set up gradually: the weaker ones were generally led to death very quickly after selections and the stronger ones could survive until 1943. Shootings were operated by German Death squads that were very often assisted by local policemen.

For instance, in Tarassivka – a small village where there was originally no Jewish population – a camp had been set up in two former kolkhoz buildings, one for the Romanian Jews and one for the Ukrainian Jews. Our team met Dmytro (born in 1928). He was interviewed 100 meters from the site of one of the shootings he saw and which took place behind one of the kolkhoz buildings. Dmytro can still see the German death squad coming up by truck at dawn during the winter of 1942-1943. Then he recalls a chilling scene when a German officer, holding a gun in his hand, walked behind Jews who were lined up at the edge of a pit and shot them with a bullet behind their neck. Between each group, he was smoking a cigarette and he was getting drunk with schnaps. Afterwards, upon an order from the Starost , Dmytro was requisitioned to carry the clothing of the victims on his cart to the Gaisin kommandantur.

In the small village of Naraievka, a camp had been set up in a stable where about 150 Jews from other regions were imprisoned in 1942 and were guarded by policemen. Our team has found many witnesses who give testimonies about the interaction between the local population and the Jews. Leonid (born in 1931) still remembers the glances he exchanged with an old Jew who went out of the camp to bring water from the well which was next to his house.

There were a few hundreds of Jews in the small town of Sobolivka. Some Jews were sent to a camp in Gaisin. But 300 of them were killed in a forest not far from Sobolivka. Andrei (born in 1929) remembers a very deep pit, about ten meters long. When the shooting started, he hid in the forest and saw with dread groups of Jews be shot three by three by an Ukrainian policeman in a black uniform. After the shooting, Andrei went close to the pit and heard the whimpering of the victims who were wounded.

The case of the Mikhailvka camp

When the war broke out, Mikhailvka was a small village, ethnically Ukrainian and located next to the DG IV. At the beginning of the occupation, young local Ukrainians worked mostly on the section of the road passing along the village. But in 1942, they were sent to Germany to work. From that summer on, a Jewish workforce from Ukraine and Romania was brought over. At the beginning, the Jews were shut in two stables of the kolkhoz. Jews were regularly selected and shot in a pit in the forest. When winter came, the Jews were transferred to the village school – their conditions of detention became, so to speak, more comfortable – they slept on bunk beds instead of straw. In 1943, the camp was attacked by partisans, yet most of the Jews refused to leave. Afterwards, they were transferred to the Tarassivka camp.

Thanks to the help of the inhabitants, the Yahad team found an exceptional witness of the events of Mikhailovka. Fedir (born in 1924) was a local policeman who had been enlisted by the Germans in order to guard the Jews in the stables, at school and on the road. He shows no reluctance to tell us about his doings at that time and to take us to the sites, even if he assures that he did not take part directly to the selections and the killings organized by the Germans, as he always managed not to be on duty at the wrong place at the wrong time. Thus, he revealed:” I was a polizei.  It was something shameful but I had to work so as to avoid going to Germany.” Thanks to his explanations we understand better not only the sequence of the tragic events of Mikhailovka but also the local mechanisms of the repressive apparatus and of the related command chain. Fedir could continue to live at home, he had a weapon and a uniform. He says he was complacent with the Jews, as he sometimes let them out to take and bring food. After a shooting, he had also allowed a little group of Jews to get to a mass grave in the forest in order to pray and to mourn. When the Jews went to work in columns, they took their children with them so that they would escape the selections that took place during the day. Fedir allowed the parents to leave their children to the care of Ukrainian families during the work. After the school’s camp attack by the partisans, Fedir joined the latter and was to be discharged for his actions in favor of the Jews.

And…

The Yahad team met Melnik (born in 1924), a Ukrainian inhabitant from the village of Adamovka, who was sent to Auschwitz. He remembers that a group of Jews went into a building of the camp before disappearing beneath a trapdoor. Next to the building, a man in a small cabin was at the same time operating this ghoulish system with a crank.

In Graniv, there was a tiny Jewish community. Many of them managed to run away or to join the partisans. The others were shot near the brickyard. The Germans kept two families of specialists alive. Micha (born in 1930) remembers the incongruous scene – to say the least – of their conversion to Catholicism. It was actually a contrivance set up by the Nazis to try to bring back the Jews hidden in the forest. The specialists were eventually killed as well.

In Vapniarka, a small town which was then under Romanian occupations, there was a sadly renowned camp which was located in former military barracks. The Romanian did not carry out many mass shootings; they let Jews die away. Thus, in Vapniarke, many Jews were poisoned by food. Today the camp buildings have almost been turned into stylish apartment buildings and absolutely nothing bears witness of what occurred there.

During this mission, our team found and interviewed 49 witnesses and located twelve sites of extermination of Jews, two-thirds of these sites having no memorial.