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

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

Litin is located 32 kilometers (20 miles) west-northwest of Vinnitsa. In 1939, the Jewish population of Litin was 1,410, comprising 28 percent of the total.

The Germans occupied Litin on July 17, 1941. Only a small number of Jews, perhaps 20 or 30 people, were able to evacuate via the railroad. Around 200 Jews of military age (those born between 1903 and 1924) were conscripted into the Red Army before the Germans arrived.¹

Immediately after the occupation, German and Hungarian troops began to bully the Jewish population. In this region, the Jews suffered in particular at the hands of Ukrainian policemen who raped women and tore the beards from elderly Jewish men. According to German orders, Jews had to wear a Star of David on their outer clothing, front and back, and had to mark their homes as well. Artisans were ordered to work, often without pay. The remaining able-bodied Jews were escorted to a quarry (for stonemasonry), which was located 20 kilometers (12.4 miles) from Litin. They were also ordered to perform agricultural work. By the fall of 1941, many Jewish families were starving. Jews were taxed heavily and forced to pay onerous “contributions” to the occupying forces. The Germans threatened to kill the Jews if payments were not made in exchange for their security.² On August 18, 1941, German Security Police from Einsatzkommando 5 arrested more than 100 Jews over the age of 15, and after selecting some for a specific labor task, they shot the remaining 57 young men, apparently because they did not possess “useful” skills.³

In the fall of 1941, the area around Litin was transferred from the military to a German civil administration. Litin became the center of its own district (Gebiet Litin), consisting of the surrounding Rayons of Litin, Brailow, and Chmelnik. SA-Standartenführer Traugott Volkhammer was appointed as Gebietskommissar in Litin.

In the early morning of December 19, a squad of German Security Police from Vinnitsa arrived in Litin. Reinforced by local Gendarmerie forces and the Ukrainian police, they surrounded the streets where the Jewish population lived. The police drove the Jews out of their homes and onto the streets. A few dozen Jews were murdered during this process. The Jews were then taken to the Red Army base located in the town. Jews from the surrounding area were also brought there, including about 100 Jews from Diakovtsev. Then the German authorities carried out a selection. About 200 specialized craftsmen and their families were removed from the group, and the remaining 2,000 or so people were escorted towards the ditches, prepared 2 kilometers (1.2 miles) from the military base. The German punitive detachment and Ukrainian policemen shot the Jews into the ditches. Gebietskommissar Volkhammer directly supervised the mass shooting.⁴ [End Page 1542]

The remaining Jews were transferred into the ghetto over the next two hours. The ghetto consisted of a few houses on two narrow streets. The Germans also resettled into the ghetto those Jews who had hidden during the mass shooting and emerged thereafter. Around 300 Jews were concentrated inside the ghetto, which was surrounded by a fence. The prisoners were prohibited from leaving and threatened with shooting if they tried. Although food was scarce and hunger severe, nobody was allowed to go to the peasant market to obtain food. Among many humiliating restrictions, the Jews of the ghetto were not allowed to walk on the sidewalk.⁵

After several subsequent Aktions, the ghetto was reduced in size until it consisted only of one side of a single street. A Polish Jew, Nuta Gekht, who knew German well, was appointed as the elder (starosta) of the ghetto. The German commandant demanded that Gekht compile lists of those able to perform forced labor. A witness, Maria Zavodiuk-Fainshtein, was among the girls assigned to work at the German military garrison, where she had to clean the rooms, bring water from the well, chop wood, and perform other tasks. Later on, the girls were sent to the stone quarries, where they had to shovel stones into a special grinding machine: backbreaking work that left them exhausted at the end of every day.⁶

Refugees arrived in Litin from many places, as they were trying to get to Transnistria (the Romanian zone of occupation), where by 1942 conditions were somewhat better for Jews. Some of the fugitives were allowed into the ghetto and given work permits; others hid illegally within the ghetto.⁷ Insofar as it was possible, the Jews of Litin directed the refugees towards the Bug River, supplying them with food, clothing, and sometimes money to assist their escape. A few hundred of these runaways were nevertheless captured and shot by local policemen. The Jews of Litin secretly gathered the clothing and other possessions, which they had retained when they were resettled into the ghetto, and collected them in their old homes and the homes of Jews who had already been shot. Often the Jews of Litin went into neighboring villages, where they exchanged the clothing and other items for food. As far as possible, the prisoners of the ghetto continued to observe Jewish traditions and holidays. They celebrated Passover (eating matzot) and Purim and fasted on Yom Kippur.⁸

Mass shootings continued on a regular basis. On December 29, 1941, about one week after the establishment of the ghetto, the Gendarmerie and Ukrainian police shot approximately 100 more Jews in the ditches, mainly elderly people, women, and children: probably Jews who were found in hiding after the recent Aktion.⁹

On June 11, 1942, the next Aktion was carried out. Hungarian soldiers and Ukrainian policemen shot 167 people on the grounds of the military base. Among these victims were women, children, and the elderly, who had been seized because they were unable to work. The survivors and prisoners who remained alive in the ghetto called this the “children’s pogrom.” The German punitive forces used dogs to catch children who were in hiding. The authorities shot 150 Roma (Gypsies) along with the Jews. This Aktion was organized by the new Gebiets-kommissar named Nikesh.¹⁰ In September and October 1942, there was another series of Aktions: on September 18, 1942, 86 prisoners from the ghetto were shot. On October 10, 1942, 260 people were shot. In the course of this Aktion, about 10 prisoners escaped to the Romanian zone of occupation. On October 25, 1942, 96 people were shot. Some of these victims were Jews found hiding in and around Litin who were brought to the ghetto to be murdered in groups.¹¹

A labor prison camp was organized on the grounds of the military base in Litin, into which the Nazis resettled Romanian Jews, mostly from Bukovina. The purpose of the camp was to provide labor for the construction in 1942 of Transit Highway (Durchgangsstrasse) IV from Poland to the North Caucasus. Able-bodied men and women, including young people, were moved into the prison labor camp. The majority of the prisoners, around 1,000 men, worked on building the road. The remaining 250 women prisoners worked in the quarry, where they cut stone needed for the road-building efforts. The German state-run Organisation Todt (OT) was responsible for the project. In September 1942, the Germans liquidated the labor prison camp. On September 12, 580 people were shot, and on September 20 and 26 (by varying accounts), the remaining 520 people were killed.

Litin was liberated on March 20, 1944. Only a few dozen Jews from Litin who had escaped to various places during the occupation (some of them joining the partisans) were able to return to their homes. A number of Jews returned to Litin after having been evacuated to the east and also from the Red Army. Some of them then left permanently for other places, including Vinnitsa.¹²