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

Pre-1941: Staraia Ushitsa, village and raion center, Kamenets-Podolskii oblast’, Ukrainian SSR; 1941–1944: Staraja-Uschiza, Rayon center, Gebiet Kamenez-Podolsk, Generalkommissariat Wolhynien und Podolien; post-1991: Stara Ushytsia, Khmel’nyts’kyi oblast’, Ukraine

Staraia Ushitsa is located about 48 kilometers (30 miles) east of Kamenets-Podolskii. In 1939, there were 753 Jews living in Staraia Ushitsa and an additional 354 Jews residing elsewhere in the Staraia Ushitsa raion, mostly in the village of Studenitsa.

Staraia Ushitsa came under German occupation in the summer of 1941, and the German authorities implemented a series of anti-Jewish measures. They registered the Jews, required them to wear distinguishing markings, and prohibited them from leaving the limits of the village. The Jews were also required to perform forced labor.

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Portrait of Ukrainian rescuer Piotr Gutzol and his wife, Anna Berman. Gutzol helped Berman escape the massacre of Staraia Ushitsa’s Jews in 1942 and was honored by Yad Vashem as Righteous Among the Nations in 1994.

USHMM WS #57656, COURTESY OF JFR

At some time before July 1942, the German authorities established a ghetto in Staraia Ushitsa. According to research conducted by Yad Vashem to honor the Righteous Among the Nations, a young non-Jew named Piotr Gutzol often brought food into the ghetto to help a young Jewish woman named Anna Berman. He offered to help her to escape, but at this time she was too scared.¹

On July 23, 1942, the German and Ukrainian police conducted an Aktion against the Jews in the Staraia Ushitsa ghetto. According to a former local policeman (Schutzmann), by then the Jewish population of Staraia Ushitsa had been ghettoized or at least collected together in a specific quarter of the village (an open ghetto). The Aktion was carried out with the participation of the head of the SD, the head of the Gendarmerie, Leutnant Reich, deputy Gebietskommissar Peters, German Gendarmes, and local Ukrainian policemen. The head of the Judenrat had to announce to the Jews that they were to gather at the square. Family members carried the sick and the old. Some people who did not move fast enough were beaten half-conscious, causing panic and weeping among those at the square. Men and women were separated, and all were forced to sit on the ground in silence. The head of the SD announced that the Jews would be taken to Kamenets-Podolskii, and some women were allowed to return home to collect some clothes, as they had left their houses without time to dress properly.

The German and Ukrainian police searched the flats, attics, and basements for Jews in hiding, discovering quite a few, mainly men, hiding in chimneys, in between double ceilings, in cellars dug specifically for the purpose, with stacks of food and clothing in them, in barns, and in heaps of manure. Those [End Page 1473] discovered were beaten, and some were shot. Along with the Germans, who zealously hunted down the Jews, the local policemen were instrumental in identifying Jewish homes and possible hiding places, as well as exposing Jews (especially those in mixed marriages) trying to pass as non-Jews. Regardless of their religious affiliation (being raised as Christians or atheists) or personal circumstances (marriages with non-Jews), everybody who had a Jewish relative up to the third generation was automatically considered Jewish and thus subjected to the same fate as the others. After all the Jews were brought to the square, the “specialists” among them—such as carpenters, tailors, and shoemakers—were told to take their tools and equipment with them and, together with their families, were escorted to Kamenets-Podolskii. The rest, approximately 300 to 320 people, were put in columns of 3, men first followed by women, with the carts carrying the sick and the old, and were taken down the old road from Staraia Ushitsa to Kamenets-Podolskii. As they marched, the head of the Gendarmerie ordered the Jews of Studenitsa (80 to 100 people) to be brought to join the Jews of Staraia Ushitsa.

Although the Germans kept assuring the column of the marching Jews that they were all being taken to Kamenets-Podolskii, the children and women started to weep as soon as they left the village. When the group turned towards the pit, the Jews recognized their fate and wept bitterly. Some people prayed, and children begged their parents to carry them in their arms; in response the Germans and local police beat and cursed them. The doomed people started to throw away any valuables, such as rings, watches, photographs, and letters. They tore up money, denying it to their tormentors. The pit measuring 12 by 6 meters and 1.5 meters deep (about 39 by 20 by 5 feet), had been dug by local peasants on the orders of Rayonchef Belokon’. During the shooting, the peasants were removed from the scene to prevent them from watching.

The Jews were ordered to undress and enter the pit in groups of five. The Germans, the Ukrainian police, and other locals who participated pushed the Jews into the pits, beating those who resisted. They were then forced to lie on the bottom of the pit, with their faces down, and were shot in the nape of the neck. The next group had to lie on top of the corpses, and they were shot in turn. A German official kept count of those murdered, making a checkmark for each group of five or more, in case a larger family refused to be separated and were shot together.

After the shooting the peasants who had dug the pit were ordered to fill in the mass grave. The Schutzmänner searched the clothing of the murdered Jews for valuables, which were sometimes sewn into the lining or hidden inside belts. Some items were taken by the Germans to be sent home as presents, given to local prostitutes in payment, or sold to the local population.²

The Jews of Studenitsa were murdered at the same time as those of Staraia Ushitsa. Estimates of the number of Jews killed vary from around 400 up to 700. The Jewish craftsmen and their families were transferred at this time to the ghetto in Kamenets-Podolskii.³ After the Aktion, local policemen and other local inhabitants looted the Jewish houses. When Piotr Gutzol found the ghetto empty, he went to Kamenets-Podolskii and managed to get Anna Berman out of the ghetto there with the help of fake identity papers. Then they went to live in a small village where nobody knew them until the Red Army liberated the area in 1944. Most of the other Jews transferred to Kamenets-Podolskii were murdered there between August 1942 and the spring of 1943.