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

1930–1941: Ostropol’, village and raion center, Kamenets-Podol’skii oblast’, Ukrainian SSR; 1941–1944: Ostropol, Rayon center, Gebiet Starokonstantinow, Generalkommissariat Wolhynien und Podolien; post-1991: Ostropil’, Starokostiantyniv raion, Khmel’nyts’kyi oblast’, Ukraine

Ostropol’ is located 88 kilometers (55 miles) west-northwest of Vinnitsa. By 1897, the Jewish population had grown to 2,714 (36 percent of the total population). According to the 1939 population census, 1,063 Jews lived in Ostropol’. An additional 256 Jews lived in the villages of the Ostropol’ raion.

Units of the German army occupied the village on July 9, 1941. During the two and a half weeks since the start of the invasion, part of the Jewish population fled to the east, and some Jewish men were conscripted or enlisted voluntarily into the Red Army. About 70 of the Jews who attempted to flee soon became trapped by German forces in the town of Liubar on the main road towards Zhytomyr, where they shared the fate of the Jews there. Around 650 Jews remained in the village at the start of the occupation.

In July and August 1941, a German military commandant’s office (Ortskommandantur) controlled the village. The occupying forces appointed a village elder and formed an auxiliary police squad. In September 1941, authority was transferred to a German civil administration. Ostropol’ became a Rayon center in Gebiet Starokonstantinow. Regierungsrat Schröder became the first Gebietskommissar; he was later succeeded by SA-Standartenführer Curt Rolle. Leutnant Otto Gent was named Gendarmerie-Gebietsführer in the spring of 1942. There were only about five or six Germans based in Ostropol’, including several members of the German Gendarmerie who supervised the local Ukrainian police.

In the summer and fall of 1941, the German authorities implemented a series of anti-Jewish measures in Ostropol’. Jews were ordered to wear white armbands bearing a Star of [End Page 1439] David and were not permitted to leave the limits of the settlement. A Jewish Council (Judenrat) was also appointed. In August 1941, local police from Ostropol’ arrived in the village of Khizhniki and ordered the 12 Jews residing there to move to Ostropol’, where they moved in with other Jewish families already living there.¹

Living conditions deteriorated over the following months. In the fall of 1941 or in early 1942, the German authorities established an open ghetto in the village. A number of Jewish houses were demolished, and all the Jews were moved together into the remaining Jewish dwellings. The ghetto, however, was unfenced and unguarded. By the spring of 1942, there were as many as 20 people sharing one room. Some Jews died of illness and starvation.²

All adult Jews had to report to the local administration each day and perform various forced labor tasks, including excavation work for the men and cleaning for the women. Only a few were lucky enough to receive some food in payment. Others had to survive on potato peelings or whatever they could find.³

The Germans liquidated the Ostropol’ ghetto on May 20, 1942. On May 19, members of the Jewish Council passed on German orders for all Jews to assemble at the school at 6:00 a.m. the next morning. Once the Jews had assembled, a German accompanied by an Alsatian dog gave a speech and ordered the Jews to form a column 4 abreast to march to Starokonstantinov. On the road to Starokonstantinov, in the village of Ladygi, around 40 elderly and infirm Jews were put onto carts, ostensibly to convey them the rest of the way. Instead, they were shot in the village once the main column had moved on. On that day, more than 400 Jews were conveyed to Starokonstantinov, guarded by German and Ukrainian police.

According to Anna Nasarchuk, on their arrival they were placed into the empty ghetto in Starokonstantinov, which had just been cleared by the shooting of most of its inhabitants.⁴ Almost all of the Ostropol’ Jews in the Starokonstantinov ghetto were shot over the ensuing months. At the time of the liquidation of the Ostropol’ ghetto, the Germans selected a number of craftsmen to remain in Ostropol’ to work. These Jews were also shot in turn sometime later.⁵