The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos, 1933-1945

Pre-1939: Orinin, village and raion center, Khmel’nitskii oblast’, Ukrainian SSR; 1941–1944: Rayon center, Gebiet Kamenez-Podolsk, Generalkommissariat Wolhynien und Podolien; post-1991: Orynyn, Kam’ianets’-Podil’s’kyi oblast’, Ukraine

Orinin is located 16 kilometers (10 miles) northwest of Kamenets-Podolskii. According to the population census of 1939, 1,508 Jews lived in Orinin, or 25.3 percent of the total population. There were 115 additional Jews living in the villages of what was then the Orinin raion.

After the German invasion of the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941, a small number of Jews were able to evacuate to the east or were inducted into the Red Army. Around 1,300 to 1,400 Jews remained in Orinin at the start of the occupation.

In early July 1941, troops of the Hungarian army occupied Orinin. In August 1941, a few hundred Jews arrived in Orinin, having been deported from Hungary for being of alleged questionable citizenship. They found refuge with the Jews of Orinin, who had been living since before the war in a section of the village apart from the non-Jewish population. The Jews of Orinin worked as shopkeepers and artisans, and there was also a Jewish kolkhoz nearby. The Hungarian Jews tried to support themselves by working mainly as laborers in agriculture.

After only a few weeks, the Hungarian Jews were assembled, having been told they would be allowed to return to Hungary. They were escorted in a column to an earthwork, which had been prepared before the war as a form of defensive entrenchment. Then a number of armed Germans arrived in vehicles and quickly surrounded the Jews. A few of the younger Jews attempted to flee, but most were recaptured or shot. A local peasant working in the fields nearby was also killed by a stray bullet. Then the Germans shot all the remaining Hungarian Jews in the entrenchment, and the grave was filled in by local non-Jews. There were probably about 250 victims of this Aktion.¹

In September 1941, authority passed to the German civil administration. Orinin was included in Gebiet Kamenez-Podolsk, within Generalkommissariat Wolhynien und Podolien. Regierungsrat Reindl became the Gebietskommissar in Kamenets-Podolskii. Leutnant der Polizei Albert Reich was appointed as the Gendarmerie-Gebietsführer in the spring of 1942.² A German Gendarmerie post was established in Orinin, to which the Ukrainian auxiliary police was subordinated.

In the late summer and fall of 1941, the German authorities implemented a series of anti-Jewish measures in Orinin. The Jews were ordered to wear distinctive marks in the form of a yellow patch on their chest and back. The Jewish elder was required to collect a certain sum of gold and other valuables from the Jews and deliver it to the Germans. The Jews were prohibited from leaving the limits of the village, and they were forbidden to have any contacts with the non-Jewish population.³ As the Jews already lived apart from the non-Jews, these regulations established a form of “open ghetto” in Orinin. The Jews were also required to perform forced labor tasks, which included clearing snow from the main roads in the winter.⁴

At some time during the summer of 1942, the Germans liquidated the open ghetto in Orinin. The Jews of the village had an idea of what would happen, as a few days before they received news that the Jews of the neighboring village of Liantskorun’ had been shot.⁵ First the village was surrounded by Ukrainian and German policemen early in the morning. Then the Jews were driven out of their houses and assembled. With the aid of the Jewish elder a number of skilled workers and their families were separated out and permitted to remain in Orinin. The main group of Jews, composed mainly of women, children, and the elderly, was formed into a column and escorted out of the village, having been told they were going to Kamenets-Podolskii. When after a short time they turned away from the direction of Kamenets-Podolskii, the Jews realized that they would be shot, and they started to tear up their money. They were led to a large pit that had been dug by local peasants about 2 kilometers (1.2 miles) outside of Orinin. There they were made to strip naked and were shot in the pit. One Jew who was naked managed to flee during the Aktion and was given some clothing and shelter for a time by local non-Jews who lived nearby. In total, up to about 1,000 Jews were shot. The Jews who were spared from this Aktion, about 250 people, were escorted to the Kamenets-Podolskii ghetto about one month later.⁶ The mass murder was carried out by a detachment of the Security Police and SD from Kamenets-Podolskii, with the assistance of the German Gendarmerie and the Ukrainian police.