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

Pre-1941: Khmel’nik, town and raion center, Vinnitsa oblast’, Ukrainian SSR; 1941–1944: Chmelnik, Rayon center, Gebiet Litin, Generalkommissariat Shitomir; post-1991: Khmil’nyk, raion center, Vinnytsia oblast’, Ukraine

Khmel’nik is located 56 kilometers (35 miles) northwest of Vinnitsa. According to the 1939 population census, there were 4,793 Jewish residents in Khmel’nik (63.8 percent of the total population). Another 906 Jews were living in the surrounding villages of the Khmel’nik raion.

After the German invasion of the USSR on June 22, 1941, some Jewish men were drafted into or voluntarily joined the Red Army, and several hundred Jews managed to evacuate eastward, but more than 4,000 remained in Khmel’nik at the start of the occupation. According to German statistics, in August 1941, out of 7,000 residents of Khmel’nik, 4,000 were Jews.¹

Following an artillery bombardment in which some Jews were killed, units of the German 17th Army occupied Khmel’nik on July 17, 1941. In July and August 1941, the town was governed by a military commandant’s office (Ortskommandantur), which recruited local residents to serve in the auxiliary police and the local administration. Some Jews recall that their former teachers became ardent Ukrainian nationalists and took an active part in the persecution of the Jews.

The first anti-Jewish Aktion took place on August 12, 1941.² On that day a detachment of Einsatzkommando 5, commanded by SS-Hauptsturmführer Wadel, shot 229 Jews in Khmel’nik. They were buried outside the town near the road to Ulanov. The German Security Police reported that the Aktion was intended as a reprisal for acts of sabotage along the road (blocking the passage of cars). The detachment also hanged a leading local official.³

In late October 1941, the military authorities were replaced by a German civil administration. Khmel’nik became a Rayon center within Gebiet Litin. The Gebietskommissar in Litin was SA-Standartenführer Traugott Volkhammer.⁴ By August 1941, the local Ukrainian police squad numbered 30 members and was headed by a certain Tarnavsky (his deputy was Shchur).⁵ In the fall of 1941, the Ukrainian police was subordinated to the German Gendarmerie post in Khmel’nik, which was commanded by a man named Jochinke.

In the summer and fall of 1941, the German authorities established a Judenrat and introduced a series of anti-Jewish measures, including markings, confiscations, curfews, and forced labor.⁶

On December 25, 1941, the Germans ordered Jews to hand over immediately all their warm clothing, especially furs, for the use of German soldiers at the front. To ensure compliance with the order, 11 Jews were taken hostage. On January 2, 1942, Gebietskommissar Volkhammer demanded a large monetary “contribution” from the Jews and ordered them to resettle into a ghetto in the Old Town, in the area of the old militia building (where the German police was based) on Shevchenko and Sholom-Aleichem Streets. Volkhammer’s order also [End Page 1535] instructed Russians and Ukrainians to mark their houses with a cross and warned that anyone who allowed a Jew into his home would be severely punished.⁷ It is estimated that the total number of Jews who moved into the ghetto was around 4,500.

On January 9 and January 16, 1942, units of Einsatzkommando 5, which had now established an office of the Security Police (KdS Aussendienststelle) in Vinnitsa, the German Gendarmerie, and the Ukrainian police raided the ghetto, killing most of the Jews (probably around 3,000). The several hundred Jews who survived these two Aktions, the so-called specialists—skilled professionals and their families—were then settled into a smaller ghetto together with a number of Jews who had survived in hiding. After the Aktion, the Germans organized the clearing of furniture and any remaining food from the empty houses in the ghetto.⁸

The German terror continued after these two Aktions. On January 25, 1942, an official of the Gestapo dragged Rabbi Shapiro out into the street and murdered him. His body was left lying there for several days, as the German authorities forbade its removal and burial. A group of women sent for forced labor by the Judenrat were made to dance and then lie in the snow before being brutally kicked and beaten by local policemen.⁹ The Germans registered the surviving Jews and continued to exploit their labor.

Anatoly Shvidkoy, a Jewish survivor, has described the conditions in the Khmel’nik ghetto as

hell on earth…. We lived with several other families in a small room without heat or light. We were always hungry. We managed to get food from local peasants in exchange for our belongings. We made friends with one peasant woman who frequently came to the ghetto boundary. Our family was caught in a roundup on three occasions, but we were released each time because my father was a craftsman.¹⁰

Several survivors mention the existence of contacts between the surviving remnant of the ghetto and the Soviet partisan forces. According to one account, a group of Jewish youths obtained arms and hid them in the synagogue with the aim of using them during their escape. Unfortunately the cache was uncovered, and the police arrested and shot the youths.¹¹ Other Jews successfully escaped from the ghetto and subsequently joined the Soviet partisans. Among the former residents of Khmel’nik who served in the partisans were a man named Weissman, Izya Reznik, and Leva Kneloiz.

On June 12, 1942, the Germans carried out another Aktion in the ghetto during which the German and Ukrainian policemen, aided by a squad of the Hungarian army, captured and shot 360 children and old people.¹²

The Khmel’nik ghetto was liquidated on March 3, 1943. According to the Soviet Extraordinary State Commission (ChGK) report, some 1,300 people were shot on that day (but this figure is probably too high).¹³ The 135 artisans who survived the massacre (127 men and 8 women) were put into a school building that was turned into a labor camp. The craftsmen had to train Ukrainians as their replacements. Some 67 people managed to escape from this camp.¹⁴ On June 26, 1943, the remaining Jews were divided into two groups: 14 people were selected to be kept alive, and the German forces took the other 54 Jews to the forest to be shot. After being brought to the killing site, 13 Jews attempted to flee, but only 4 managed to get away; the rest (50) were shot. It is estimated that the Germans and their collaborators murdered more than 5,000 Jews in Khmel’nik between 1941 and 1943.

Several dozen Jews who survived the massacres of 1941–1943 lived to see the liberation of the town by the Red Army in March 1944. A number survived by hiding, most with the help of sympathetic local Ukrainians. Others managed to escape across the border into the Romanian-occupied area (Transnistria), where by late 1942 the chances of survival as a Jew were considerably greater than under German occupation.