DZHULINKA
Pre-1941: Dzhulinka, village and raion center, Vinnitsa oblast’, Ukrainian SSR; 1941–1944: Dshulinka, Rayon center, Gebiet Gaissin, Generalkommissariat Shitomir; post-1991: Dzhulynka, Bershad’ raion, Vinnytsia oblast’, Ukraine
Dzhulinka is located 125 kilometers (78 miles) southeast of Vinnitsa. According to the 1939 census, there were 212 Jews living in Dzhulinka, accounting for 4.68 percent of the population.
German armed forces occupied the village on July 28, 1941, five weeks after their invasion of the USSR on June 22. During that time, some of the Jewish men were drafted or volunteered for military service in the Red Army, and a small number of Jews were successfully evacuated to the eastern regions of the USSR.
In the period July through October 1941, a German military commandant’s office (Ortskommandantur) located in Gaisin was in charge of the village. In November 1941, a German civil administration replaced the military authorities. Until its liberation in March 1944, Rayon Dshulinka was part of Gebiet Gaissin in Generalkommissariat Shitomir. In Dzhulinka itself, there was a Gendarmerie post, to which a squad of Ukrainian police was subordinated.
Soon after the occupation of the village, the residential area, where most Jews were concentrated, was probably declared to be a “Jewish quarter” (open ghetto). According to one Soviet source, this “open ghetto” was only in existence for a few weeks, as in August 1941, the Germans rounded up the Jews and shot them, killing 156 people in total. The shooting took place on a tract of land where pine trees grew, near the village.1
SOURCES
The available sources consulted for this article, however, give conflicting versions of the events. The Handbuch der Lager, Gefängnisse und Ghettos auf dem besetzten Territorium der Ukraine (1941–1944) published in Kiev in 2000 by the State Committee of the Ukrainian Archives, p. 33, states that there was a ghetto in Dzhulinka, citing two documents from the State Archives of the Vinnytsia Oblast’ (DAVINO, R-1683-1-13 and R-6022-1-27, which is cited as a list of ghetto prisoners), but it gives no further details. Other sources give different dates for the murder of the Jews of Dzhulinka. According to Shmuel Spector and Geoffrey Wigoder, eds., The Encyclopedia of Jewish Life before and during the Holocaust ( Jerusalem: Yad Vashem; New York: New York University Press, 2001), p. 351, the Jews were murdered outside the town on April 2, 1942. Rossiiskaia Evreiskaia Entsiklopediia (Moscow: Russian Academy of Natural Sciences, Jewish Encyclopedia Research Center, “Epos,” 2000), 4:381, also dates the shooting of all the remaining Jews (156 people) in August 1941. According to the ChGK (GARF, 7021-54-1240, p. 5), 156 people (Jews and Ukrainians) were shot in December 1942 and February 1943. It has to be concluded that the existing data on the “Dzhulinka ghetto” remain unconfirmed and require further research.
Additional documentation regarding the extermination of the Jews of Dzhulinka can be found in the following archives: BA-L (e.g., B 162/2331, 2332, 26795); DAVINO (e.g., R 425-1-5, R 1683-1-13, and R 6022-1-27); and GARF (7021-54-1240).
NOTES
1. DAVINO, R-425-1-5, p. 13.
