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

Pre-1941: Brailov, town and raion center, Vinnitsa oblast’, Ukrainian SSR; 1941–1944: Brailow, Rayon center, Gebiet Litin, Generalkommissariat Shitomir; post-1991: Brailiv, Vinnytsia oblast’, Ukraine

Brailov is located 27 kilometers (17 miles) south of Vinnitsa. In 1931, there were about 2,400 Jews in Brailov and its environs. Comprising 96 percent of the inhabitants, they formed an overwhelming majority of the town’s population.

Units of the German 17th Army occupied Brailov on July 17, 1941. A number of Jews were able to evacuate or were called up to the Red Army, but the majority remained behind. On the first day of the occupation, 15 Jews were killed. The German authorities appointed Mikhail Baranchuk as the chief of the Ukrainian police, and in this position he demonstrated extraordinary cruelty to the Jewish population. The German authorities ordered the Jews to wear a yellow six-pointed star on their backs and chests. They were explicitly forbidden to leave the settlement and to trade or have any contact with the Ukrainian population in the surrounding villages.¹

After a short time, all Jews were relocated to a ghetto. A monthly “contribution” was demanded of them in money and valuables. In July 1941, at the demand of the military commandant, Jews had to hand over 800 pieces of fabric, 120 pairs of boots, and 500 silk scarves with Nazi swastikas sewn on them, all within 24 hours. They also had to hand over 300,000 rubles in cash.

In the fall of 1941, Brailov came under the control of a German civil administration. Brailov was a Rayon center in Gebiet Litin, under the authority of Gebietskommissar Traugott Volkhammer. In Brailov there was a local post of the German Gendarmerie, commanded by Hans Graf, which assumed control over the local Ukrainian police. Probably on Graf’s instructions, Jews were permitted to shop in the market for only 10 minutes every day, signaled by a policeman blowing his whistle.²

In November 1941, Jews had to hand over 10 women’s gold watches, 12 gold bracelets, a grand piano for the officer’s club, two cars, and three drums of gasoline. Orders for the collection of these goods were passed on via the Jewish Council (Judenrat), which was under the leadership of Iosif Kulik. On a daily basis, about 1,000 prisoners were taken out of the ghetto for various forced labor tasks, which included bricklaying and repairing the roads. The guards shot many of them for working too slowly. A few families opened a leather-making shop in the ghetto and worked there. A linen shop was also in operation. The bulk of the production created by the artisans went directly to the Germans and local policemen.

In the early morning of February 12, 1942, a squad of the Security Police and SD from Vinnitsa, reinforced by Gendarmerie and Ukrainian police from the entire Gebiet Litin and by men of the local German customs post (Zollstelle), gathered more than 1,000 prisoners from the ghetto in the market square, outside the church. After this, searches were carried out in the homes of the Jews in the ghetto. Jews who were ill or who were found in hiding places, including children, were shot immediately. However, the German and Ukrainian forces were unable to find nearly 200 ghetto inhabitants. In contravention of German orders, some Ukrainian policemen plundered Jewish property from the ghetto.³

The Germans began a process of selection, and several hundred Jews were selected out according to those professions that were deemed necessary. These Jews were allowed to take their families and return to the ghetto. Gendarmerie chief Graf demanded that the remaining 800 Jews put their gold, silver, and money into a briefcase, which he had placed beside him. Then they were lined up and driven to the killing site, 2 kilometers (1.2 miles) from Brailov, not far from the Jewish cemetery, at the side of the road leading to the village of Demidovka. During the convoy, there were a few daring attempts to escape, but most of the runaways were shot on the spot. When the transport arrived at the killing site, the German forces drove groups of Jews down into a ditch that had been dug for them a few days earlier. The Germans and Ukrainians ordered the Jews to undress and lie facedown in the ditch. Then the men of the Security Police shot them with automatic weapons. The next group laid down on top of the previous one. Iosif Kulik, the aforementioned head of the Judenrat, was permitted to return to the ghetto with his wife. But he refused to do so, and they were both shot during the course of the Aktion.⁴

The territory of the ghetto was then reduced considerably. The prisoners lived in terribly overcrowded conditions. Ghetto inmates faced the death penalty for leaving the ghetto or being found in possession of butter, eggs, or meat. By a special order, Jewish families in the ghetto were threatened with death if they gave birth to any children.⁵

In March or April 1942, the Germans shot 300 more Jews after another selection. Among those murdered in these Aktions in early 1942 were some 200 Jews from the nearby village of Mezhirov.⁶ On June 8, 1942 (according to another source, April 25, 1942), Graf gathered all the remaining Jews in the market square. On the orders of Gebietskommissar Volkhammer, all those incapable of work (around 100 Jews), mainly children under 16, were selected. They were then led down into a cellar, and the German forces shot them there. Some Brailov Jews escaped the selection and managed to find hiding places. According to new instructions, the dead were to be buried in the ghetto.

In late June or July 1942, the ghetto was liquidated and the German commandant ordered a sign to be hung at the entrance to the settlement, which read in Ukrainian and German: “Brailov, cleansed of Jews [judenrein].” At that time, the Germans shot 503 Jews, including 286 Jews who had been returned to Brailov after escaping at different times to Zhmerinka, which was in the Romanian zone of occupation. On the [End Page 1520] eve of the Aktion, a squad of German Gendarmerie headed by Hans Graf arrived in Zhmerinka from Brailov and demanded from the Romanian administration and Adolf Hirshman, the head of the Zhmerinka Judenrat, a list of all the Brailov Jews in the Zhmerinka ghetto. Then, under the pretext of required anti-typhus vaccinations, the Brailov Jews were taken back to Brailov from Zhmerinka. Meanwhile, Hirshman hid a small number of Brailov Jews in the Zhmerinka ghetto. This bold act ultimately saved their lives. After the liberation, however, the Soviet authorities tried Hirshman for his role in the fate of Brailov’s Jews.⁷

In the late summer and fall of 1942, the Germans and Ukrainian police continued to shoot any Jews they found in hiding, but a number managed to escape to the Romanianoccupied zone, including about 12 Jewish families who were hidden by kolkhoz workers in Kopystirin (in the Shargorod raion). Some of the escapees later became partisans. A squad of the German Criminal Police in Vinnitsa arrived in Brailov in October or December 1943 to organize the shooting of the last Jews remaining in Brailov: 17 tailors who worked in a sewing workshop.⁸

The Red Army recaptured the town from the Germans on March 20, 1944.