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

Pre-1941: Snitkov, village, Murovannye Kurilovtsy raion, Vinnitsa oblast’, Ukraine; 1941–1944: Snitkoff, Rayon Murowanny Kurilowzy, Gebiet Bar, Generalkommissariat Wolhynien und Podolien; post-1991: Snitkyv, Murovani Kurylivtsi raion, Vinnytsia oblast’, Ukraine

Snitkov is located 82 kilometers (51 miles) southwest of Vinnitsa. According to the 1926 census, there were 1,181 Jews living in Snitkov. The Jewish population decreased significantly in the 1930s, owing to the Holodomor famine of 1932–1933 and the resettlement of Jews to other areas.

After the German invasion of the USSR on June 22, 1941, there was no organized evacuation from Snitkov, but some Jews were able to escape to the east. Men of eligible age were drafted into the Red Army or enlisted voluntarily. About 500 Jews remained in the village at the start of the German occupation.

Snitkov was occupied on July 19, 1941. In July and August 1941, a German military commandant’s office (Ortskommandantur) controlled the village, and it appointed a village elder (starosta) and set up a Ukrainian auxiliary police force. In September 1941, authority passed to a German civil administration. The village was incorporated into Rayon Murowanny Kurilowzy, in Gebiet Bar, within Generalkommissariat Wolhynien und Podolien.

Shortly after the occupation of the village, the German military authorities appointed a Jewish Council ( Judenrat), consisting of 12 people, which was headed by a Jewish elder. Then one day a force of 25 Germans (or possibly Hungarian soldiers) arrived and conducted a roundup, taking a number of Jews as hostages. These Jews were only released once a large monetary “contribution” had been raised. This procedure was repeated shortly afterwards by the Germans, this time to induce the Jews to surrender all their gold and silver items and any other precious metals, such as copper.¹

In the summer and fall of 1941, Jews in the village, as elsewhere in Ukraine, were subject to persecution through the implementation of a number of anti-Jewish policies. The Jews were ordered to wear distinguishing marks initially in the form of a white armband bearing a blue Star of David and later in the form of yellow patches on their chests and backs.² They were forced into heavy labor, mostly without pay, and forbidden to leave the village. Young Jewish women were rounded up and held in the police station overnight, where they were beaten and raped by both German and Ukrainian police.³ Forced labor tasks performed by the Jews included cleaning the streets, carrying water and wood, washing horses, and performing odd jobs for the commandant. [End Page 1471]

At some time in the fall of 1941 or the spring of 1942, a ghetto, or “Jewish residential district,” was created in the village. All the Jews were concentrated on one side of Snitkov, away from the school building, where the Germans were based. The ghetto included the center of the village. It was guarded by Ukrainian police, but the Jews continued to barter their remaining possessions to obtain food from the local peasants. One survivor states that Jews were permitted to leave the ghetto for just one hour each day, which was when the bartering took place. Another, however, describes how food was passed through a wire fence, but this is not corroborated by other accounts.⁴

From early 1942 onward, a group of Jews from Snitkov was taken to the labor camp in Letichev, where they were put to work doing road construction and repair.⁵ Other Jews arrived in the Snitkov ghetto, including dozens of Jewish families from Bessarabia, who moved in to live with the local Jews.

The ghetto was liquidated on August 20, 1942, when the Jewish population was resettled into the ghetto in Murovannye Kurilovtsy. Children and the elderly were transported by horse and cart, and people were instructed to take enough food for two days. On arrival they were forced into a few buildings, each holding 50 or 60 people.⁶ The Murovannye Kurilovtsy ghetto was liquidated the next day, when the majority of the Jews, including those from Snitkov, were shot and killed.⁷ On the evening before the shooting, about 300 able-bodied Jews were selected out, including some from Snitkov. These Jews were employed to clean up clothing from the Jews who had been shot and to work at a tobacco factory for another few weeks, before they too were shot. During this period some Ukrainian inhabitants of Snitkov came to Murovannye Kurilovtsy to see if any of their Jewish friends were among those who had survived. Everyone knew about the massacre of the Jews, and people reported that the earth on top of the graves continued to move for at least three days.⁸

A few Jews from the Snitkov ghetto survived by escaping across into the Romanian-occupied zone, some paying bribes to be transferred to the Kopaigorod ghetto from the remnant ghetto in Murovannye Kurilovtsy.⁹