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

Pre-1941: Kazatin, town and raion center, Vinnitsa oblast’, Ukrainian SSR; 1941–1944: Kasatin, Gebiet and Rayon center, Generalkommissariat Shitomir; post-1991: Koziatyn, raion center, Vinnytsia oblast’, Ukraine

Kazatin is located 60 kilometers (37 miles) north-northeast of Vinnitsa. According to the 1939 census, 2,648 Jews were living in Kazatin (15.8 percent of the total population). There were another 1,026 Jews living in the Kazatin raion, mostly in the village of Belopol’e. After the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941, some Jews were able to evacuate, while others were called into the Red Army. Around 1,800 Jews remained in Kazatin at the start of the German occupation.

Hungarian armed forces occupied the town on July 14, 1941. From mid-July until October 1941, a military administration ran the town. The German military, which soon took over from the Hungarians, created a local administration and an auxiliary police force from among the local residents. On October 20, 1941, authority passed to a German civil administration. Kazatin became the administrative center of Gebiet Kasatin. Hundertschaftsführer Stendel was named Gebietskommissar.¹ The Samgorodok and Pogrebischtsche Rayons were also incorporated into the new Gebiet Kasatin, which in turn became part of Generalkommissariat Shitomir. The Gendarmerie-Gebietsführer in Kazatin appointed in 1942 was Leutnant Behrens. The head of the Ukrainian police in Kazatin was Zugführer Ivan Yakovenko.²

In the summer and fall of 1941, a number of antisemitic measures were introduced in Kazatin. A Jewish Council (Judenrat) was created. The Jews were ordered to wear distinguishing markings in the form of the Star of David and later in the shape of a yellow circle. They had to perform forced labor in the service of the German military and occupying forces. Jews were not permitted to leave the limits of the village. They were required to hand over all valuables, and they were not allowed to buy goods at the market. In addition, local Ukrainians were forbidden to have any relations with the Jews.

In September 1941, the first Aktion was carried out against the Jews. A detachment from German Police Regiment “South” apparently directed the operation. Starting on September 5, 1941, the staff and officers of the regiment were stationed in the village of Komsomol’skoe, close to Kazatin.³ The detachment shot 1,255 Jews on September 11, 1941, and the victims were most probably Jews from Kazatin.⁴

Those Jews who remained in Kazatin after the September operation were resettled into a ghetto.⁵ Evidence regarding the work done by Jews in the ghetto comes from the survivor Nina Glozman, who recalls that after the first wave of killings she and her family hid in the village of Belopol’e in Rayon Kasatin until a local policeman recognized them. He took the family to Kazatin, where they were placed in the ghetto, performing work such as chopping wood or cleaning toilets. When the ghetto was liquidated, they were able to escape to Berdichev, where they hid with another Jewish family.⁶

In the village of Belopol’e in Rayon Kasatin about 70 Jews were murdered at the local cemetery in May 1942.⁷ The Kazatin ghetto, or camp where Jewish craftsmen were held, was liquidated on June 3, 1942. More than 300 Jews and 16 Gypsies were shot near the village of Tylimonovka, about 2 kilometers (1.2 miles) outside the town. The Jews were rounded up and escorted by the Gendarmerie and Ukrainian local police. A detachment of the SD from Berdichev carried out the shooting. About 10 Jewish craftsmen were selected out and kept alive at this time. They were soon joined by a similar number brought from Samgorodok after a selection during the Aktion there on June 4.⁸

In the months after the liquidation of the ghetto, Ukrainian police under the orders of the German Gendarmerie continued to search for Jews in hiding. On July 6, 1942, Behrens wrote to the Gendarmerie posts in the nearby Rayon towns of Pogrebischtsche and Samgorodok that he was aware of Jews hiding in the villages and forests. He ordered that all villages must report the presence of Jews. If German Gendarmes or Ukrainian policemen still found Jews, the entire village would be punished.⁹

As a result of these efforts, a number of Jews who had escaped from the Aktions in Kazatin and the surrounding towns were captured. Most of these Jews were gathered in the Kazatin ghetto or camp, and in August 1942 two SS men flew in to organize the murder of these Jews. About 200 Jews were escorted by the Gendarmerie and local police to another ditch alongside the first one, where the SS men shot them.¹⁰

The remaining 21 Jewish artisans were killed in the fall of 1942 at the same site; on September 28, 1942, according to a report by Leutnant Behrens, the Gendarmerie-Gebietsführer in Kazatin, 18 male and 3 female Jews were shot by an SD detachment.¹¹ Other Jews were shot in the fields when they were encountered by joint patrols of the Gendarmerie and Ukrainian police.¹² For example, on January 26, 1943, the Gendarmerie post in Kazatin reported that 3 Jewish “partisans” had been “shot while trying to escape” in the village of Sestrenovka, in Rayon Kasatin.¹³

The Germans subsequently utilized the area of the “ghetto” in Kazatin, which had been used to keep Jews separate from the rest of the population, as a so-called workers’ education camp (Arbeitserziehungslager).¹⁴ Movable Jewish property, including [End Page 1534] furniture, was officially confiscated by the civil administration in accordance with an order issued by the Generalkommissar in Zhitomir, Kurt Klemm, on December 12, 1941. Much of the property, however, was taken by members of the Ukrainian police.¹⁵