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

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

Nemirov is located 40 kilometers (25 miles) southeast of Vinnitsa. According to the 1939 census, 3,001 Jews were living in Nemirov (36.7 percent of the population), while another 161 Jews were living in the villages of the Nemirov raion.

After the German attack on the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941, a number of Jewish men from Nemirov were drafted into or volunteered for the Red Army. Some Jews were also able to evacuate to the east. According to German data, the town had a population of 8,000, including 3,000 Jews, in August 1941.¹ However, some additional Jews from the surrounding villages were probably brought into the town at the time of the establishment of the ghetto.²

Units of the German 17th Army occupied Nemirov on July 22, 1941. In July and August, the town was run by a local military commandant (Ortskommandantur), which set up a local administration and an auxiliary police force employing local non-Jewish inhabitants. On October 20, control of the town was turned over to a German civil administration. Nemirov became the administrative center of Gebiet Nemirow, which included the Rayons of Woronowiza and Sitkowzy. The Gebietskommissar was Kameradschaftsführer Herbert Sittig, a longstanding member of the Nazi Party.³ In the autumn, the German Gendarmerie, the Reich’s rural police force, established a post in Nemirov, which also took over the Ukrainian auxiliary police force (Schutzmannschaft).⁴ A certain Gerchanivskii was appointed chief of the Ukrainian police at the end of July 1941. In August 1941, he had 32 indigenous policemen under his command.⁵

During the summer and autumn of 1941, a series of measures were introduced in Nemirov including the formation of a Jewish Council (Judenrat); Jews were required to wear distinguishing markings and to work at forced labor and were plundered, beaten, and humiliated.

By September, perhaps even late in August 1941, the German authorities in Nemirov set up a ghetto consisting of three narrow streets surrounded by barbed wire with a guard at the gate. Five or six families were made to share a residence in the ghetto. No communication was permitted with non-Jews, who were not even allowed to come close to the ghetto fence. Not all of the Jews were relocated to the ghetto; some of them continued to live outside its confines. Able-bodied men and also some women capable of performing hard labor were selected from the ghetto every day. They were put to work constructing the road from Nemirov to Gaisin, a segment on the key supply line, Durchgangsstrasse (highway) IV, and were also used to load and unload heavy construction materials. Such work enabled these Jews to procure foodstuffs from the local population and bring them back into the ghetto. As a result, there was not widespread starvation within the ghetto.⁶

The first killing operation in Nemirov was carried out on November 24, 1941. Assisted by the men of a construction company of the Luftwaffe, the Gendarmerie, and the local police, about 20 men of the Security Police and SD organized the roundup of the Jews from the ghetto and their concentration in the local Palace of Culture. Here a selection took place: craftsmen and their families were sent back to the ghetto, and the remaining Jews were escorted partly on foot and partly by truck to pits that had been dug in advance behind the Polish cemetery, where men of the Security Police squad shot them.⁷ In all, some 2,680 Jews were killed that day.⁸ It appears that a squad of Einsatzkommando 5 under the direction of SS-Oberleutnant Theodor Salmanzig, stationed in Vinnitsa, carried out the shooting.⁹

Some Jews survived the first Aktion in hiding. After the slaughter, the Germans reduced the area of the ghetto by half. [End Page 1550] Those adults who remained alive were escorted daily to the road construction site. No fuel was available for heating, and the death rate from cold and hunger rose. The ghetto guards became more severe, and those who became ill were taken out and shot.¹⁰

On June 26, 1942, the ghetto in Nemirov was liquidated. The Jews were driven into the synagogue, where 200 to 300 young and strong men and women were selected and sent to a labor camp. The rest, perhaps as many as 500, were shot behind the Polish cemetery in pits that had been dug in advance.¹¹

The Red Army liberated Nemirov in the spring of 1944. On their return, their former neighbors welcomed back the Jewish family of Rozengaft, and they were able to reclaim their apartment and even some clothes. Grigory Rozengaft was immediately mobilized to the front.¹²