WIŚNIOWIEC
Pre-1939: Wiśniowiec (Yiddish: Vishnivits), town, województwo wołyńskie, Poland; 1939–1941: Vishnevits, Ternopol’ oblast’, Ukrainian SSR; 1941–1944: Wischnewez, Rayon center, Gebiet Kremenez, Generalkommissariat Wolhynien und Podolien; post-1991: Vyshnivets’, raion center, Ternopil’ oblast’, Ukraine
Wiśniowiec is located about 45 kilometers (28 miles) north of Tarnopol. In 1937 there were 3,000 Jews in Wiśniowiec, and at the time of the German invasion there were probably about 4,000 Jews living in the town, including some refugees from central and western Poland.
German forces captured Wiśniowiec on July 2, 1941. Almost immediately, local Ukrainian police and other collaborators, with support from the Germans, began a reign of terror: plundering, abusing, torturing, and murdering Jews.
In September 1941, power was transferred to a civil administration. Wiśniowiec was a Rayon center in Gebiet Kremenez. The senior German official in the town was the German [End Page 1492] agricultural leader Steiger, who also exercised authority over the ghetto in Wiśniowiec. Steiger received his instructions from the Gebietskommissar in Krzemieniec, Regierungsrat Müller. The Ukrainian chief of the Rayon was Borisenko, and the head of the police was Bukovsky. The Ukrainian police was subordinated to the German Gendarmerie.1
On March 16, 1942, the German authorities ordered the establishment of a ghetto in Wiśniowiec within only three days.2 Several hundred Jews from the surrounding villages, including Świniuchy, Wyżgródek (Jewish population of 944 in 1921), and Oleśkincy, were relocated to Wiśniowiec around this time. Once the Jews had constructed the ghetto, more than 4,000 Jews were forced inside, and a Jewish Council (Judenrat) took charge of its internal affairs.3
In Wiśniowiec the Jews were ordered to choose their officials from among their own ranks; however, initially nobody agreed to serve. In the end, a few Jews drew up a list of candidates, and when the candidates did not consent, the Jews entreated them to accept the positions, lest the Germans punish the town’s Jews for not choosing representatives.
Among the members of the Judenrat were Shlomo Ayzenberg (the treasurer in charge of collecting the fines imposed on the Jews), Hershl Margoliot (who was in charge of the conscription of workers to meet the Germans’ demands), and Yaakov Markbayn (who ran the bakery). The chairman of the Judenrat was Koylnbrener, a refugee from Łódź who spoke German. According to the view of another Judenrat member, he was reportedly warmhearted and acted in the best interests of the community, which in turn offered him loyalty.4
The ghetto consisted of a narrow area of the town and extended along the length of one street—from the house of Alter Leyter to the house of the Mazurs. A high fence surrounded it, and any windows along the perimeter were blocked off. Every day the Judenrat had to send between 50 and 70 Jews for forced labor. At times the Jews were subjected to brutal and arbitrary beatings from the Ukrainian police.
The houses in the ghetto were always dark and very overcrowded. Tens of people lived in one room. Cleanliness was impossible to maintain, and everyone became infested with lice. Hunger was great, and there were few possibilities of getting food from any other sources. Initially, the Jews received 140 grams (4.9 ounces) of bread per day, some salt, and water. However, the rations were progressively reduced to 100 grams (3.5 ounces), then 60 grams (2.1 ounces). The children became swollen from prolonged hunger, and the women in particular got abscesses on their skin, which bled incessantly. Every day, there were four or five funerals—all for victims of hunger and disease.
The funerals were connected with mortal danger. The Ukrainian guards also came along to the Jewish cemetery, which was outside the ghetto, to further oppress and torture the few Jews who buried the dead, making sure that nobody escaped. The pallbearers also had barely enough strength left to carry the swollen corpses, but they still carried out this solemn obligation with great care. It was also necessary to bury the bodies to prevent the spread of epidemics.5
Jews working outside the ghetto were able to smuggle some food in, but they had to run the gauntlet of the Ukrainian guards, who took special pleasure in breaking any eggs they found and beating up the offender. Some Ukrainian guards also exploited the hunger of the Jews and made a vast profit by selling small amounts of food or accepting bribes.
On August 11, 1942, 10 SS men arrived from Krzemieniec and brought with them scores of armed Ukrainian policemen from the entire Gebiet. According to Zev Sobol’s account, one of the SS men, who stood close to Herr Steiger, the scourge of the Jews of Wiśniowiec, gave a brief speech: “Today, we are putting an end to all the Jews in the ghetto. Go and bang on every window and door, and say, ‘Get out, Jews, communists, traitors! Out of your houses!’ Beat with clubs and whip the Jews who do not want to come out. But pay attention not to kill them in the ghetto. Take them outside of the town, to the assigned place, and annihilate them there.”6
The Jews were beaten severely as they were gathered together and then marched out of the town under close escort. [End Page 1493] As they went along, a truck circled around them, and the elderly, infirm, and children were brutally loaded onto it, thereby separating children from their parents. The Jews were taken to the valley beneath the old city, in the direction of Zbaraż. The Germans used the valley as a grave—prepared carefully for this purpose. The Jews were led to the pit in groups. Two policemen ordered them to strip down to their underpants. The clothes were placed together in a pile on the side. The victims were made to lie facedown in the pit, where Ukrainian police fired on them with automatic weapons, shooting them in the head. At the end the police also checked to make sure everybody was dead. The Ukrainians carried out their work with dispatch and were rewarded with some of the clothes of the people who were shot.7
According to a German report prepared by SS-Untersturmführer Selm for the Commander of the Security Police and SD in Równe, during this first Aktion against the Wiśniowiec ghetto on August 11–12, 1942, the Germans and their Ukrainian collaborators shot 2,669 people (600 men, 1,160 women, and 909 children).8
Some Jews managed to hide in bunkers during the initial ghetto clearance, while Steiger selected a few others at the grave as useful craftsmen. However, according to the testimony of Ukrainian policemen, there were several follow-up Aktions over the ensuing weeks, in which the Gendarmerie and the Ukrainian police murdered several hundred Jews in the same manner. By November 1942 the ghetto itself was almost completely destroyed, and no more Jews were living in the town.9
Only a handful of Jews managed to escape the systematic murder campaign of the Germans and their Ukrainian collaborators. Sobol managed to escape twice: first by falling from the bridge into the river as the column of victims was being marched to the grave site. A non-Jew subsequently denounced him to the Ukrainian police after initially hiding him, but Sobol then also managed to escape from the synagogue where he was being held. After that he hid mostly on farms, taking food from the animals. He did not make contact with the Soviet partisans until shortly before the town was liberated. Unfortunately, his brother was tracked down by a German police dog and murdered just before the arrival of the Red Army.10
A number of local policemen from Wiśniowiec were tried after the liberation. Among those tried were Yakov Ostrovsky and the Poslovsky brothers, who were captured and handed over to the Soviet authorities by some of the few remaining Jewish survivors. Other Ukrainian policemen sentenced by the Soviets included Aleksandr Khomits’kii and Kyrylo Filyk. Most were sentenced to 25 years of hard labor but were then released during the 1950s.11
SOURCES
The yizkor book for Wiśniowiec, edited by Chaim Rabin, Vishnivits: Sefer zikaron li-kedoshe Vishnivits she-nispu be-sho’at ha-natsim (Tel Aviv: Irgun ‘ole Vishnivits, 1979), contains several survivor accounts relevant to the period of the Holocaust.
Relevant documentation can be found in the following archives: GARF; USHMM (RG-31.018M and RG-22.002M); and YVA.
NOTES
1. BA-BL, BDC, SSHO 2432, Organisationsplan der besetzten Ostgebiete nach dem Stand vom 10. März 1942, hg. vom Chef der Ordnungspolizei, Berlin, March 13, 1942; USHMM, RG-31.018.M (KGB Archives Ternopol’ oblast’), D-7719, case against Kyrylo F. Filyk, statement of Yakov Y. Ostrovsky (frame 8602).
2. “The Nazi Horrors in Wisniowiec,” by a survivor, in Rabin, Vishnivits, pp. 311–325.
3. The figure of at least 4,000 is given both by the Jewish survivor Zev Sobol and the Ukrainian policeman Yakov Ostrovsky. According to the ChGK report, the ghetto initially held about 4,000 Jews but then expanded to up to 6,000, as Jews arrived from the surrounding villages; see GARF, 7021-75-3, pp. 28–32. The anonymous survivor, who appears to have been linked to the Judenrat, also estimates more than 4,000 Jews in the ghetto, including some 1,000 from Wyżgródek; see “The Nazi Horrors in Wisniowiec.”
4. “The Nazi Horrors in Wisniowiec.”
5. Ibid.
6. Zev Sobol, “The Ghetto in Wisniowiec,” in Rabin, Vishnivits, pp. 298–310.
7. Ibid.
8. IPN, GKŚZpNP, Zbiór zespołów szczątkowych jednostek SS i policji, sygn. 77, pp. 2–3, transcription of a Security Police report dated Rowno, August 15, 1942, on the “special treatment” of Jews in the Krzemieniec district.
9. USHMM, RG-31.018.M (KGB Archives Ternopol’ oblast’), D-7719, case against Kyrylo F. Filyk, statement of Yakov Y. Ostrovsky (frame 8602); D-27414, case against Aleksandr V. Khomits’kii, ChGK report from 1944 (frame 9417); and reel 24, Arch. no. 33533, D-91, case against Aleksandr Ivanovich M’inzar (1984).
10. Sobol, “The Ghetto in Wisniowiec.”
11. Ibid.; USHMM, RG-31.018.M (KGB Archives Ternopol’ oblast’), D-27414, case against Aleksandr V. Khomits’kii; D-7719, case against Kyrylo F. Filyk.
