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

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

Pogrebishche is located 64 kilometers (40 miles) east-northeast of Vinnitsa. In 1939, the Jewish population of the settlement was 1,445 (15.2 percent of the total). In addition, there were another 259 Jews residing in the villages of the Pogrebishche raion. Jews in Pogrebishche were aware of the Germans’ persecution of the Jews in Poland from radio and press reports, but some people dismissed this merely as Soviet propaganda. Following the German invasion of the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941, a number of Jews tried to flee before the advancing German forces, but the majority stayed behind and awaited their arrival.

The German army initially occupied the town on July 22, 1941. They immediately established a Ukrainian auxiliary police force. Jews were obliged to wear white armbands bearing a blue Star of David, and a curfew was also imposed on them after 9:00 p.m. Germans and the Ukrainian police would enter Jewish houses and rob their possessions. One Jewish survivor reported that his mother was raped by a German.¹

In August 1941, German officials in black cars arrived in Pogrebishche and took away 20 Jews ostensibly for a work assignment, but instead these people were shot. This incident was repeated again two weeks later. These were Aktions conducted by the Security Police, directed initially against alleged Communists and Soviet activists. Sensing the danger, some Jews prepared to hide or flee on the next occasion when the Germans returned.²

As the Jews and non-Jews mostly lived in separate parts of the town, a form of open ghetto already existed. The Germans prohibited the Jews from buying food at the market or having other contacts with non-Jews. However, some Ukrainians continued to supply Jews with eggs and other food items. All Jews over the age of 13 were required to perform forced labor. Only those who worked were entitled to receive any food.³

In September (or October) 1941, the German and Ukrainian police, probably under the direction of Einsatzkommando 5 of Einsatzgruppe C, conducted a mass shooting of the Jews in Pogrebishche, which was directed particularly against children, the elderly, and others incapable of work. Before the Aktion there were probably more than 1,000 Jews living in the settlement. According to Anna Grinboim, after the Aktion only about 200 remained.⁴ One Soviet source gives the figure of 1,360 Jews killed and dates the Aktion at the end of October, but Jewish survivors date it earlier.⁵ After the Aktion a small ghetto was formally established for the remaining Jews, who were moved to just one or two streets. The other Jewish houses were looted and locked up. Jewish survivors do not specifically mention a fence, but they note that Jews could not leave because the Ukrainian police patrolled the ghetto’s perimeter all the time.⁶

The transition from a military to a civil administration in this area occurred on October 20, 1941. Rayon Pogrebischtsche was located in Gebiet Kasatin of Generalkommissariat Shitomir. The German Gebietskommissar was Hundertschaftsführer Steudel.⁷ The head of the German Gendarmerie post in Pogrebishche was Meister der Gendarmerie Bruno Mayrhofer.

Overcrowding in the ghetto was terrible, as about five families had to share each house. The Jews were always hungry. Now under the civil administration, instead of an armband, the Jews had to wear yellow stars on their chest and back. Although they had been robbed repeatedly, Jews were still able to buy some food from the Ukrainians with the few valuable possessions that they had managed to preserve.⁸

Grinboim recalled of the ghetto: “There was no water to drink or to wash with, no food, terrible hunger. Occasionally kind Ukrainians came and brought food they had already prepared. Every morning all the young people and all the men were taken to work.” Her own work consisted mainly of cleaning—s treets, bathrooms, and stores. Anna’s grandmother died of hunger, as did many others. No holidays were celebrated in the ghetto. There were very few children, since most of them had been killed in the pogrom. The most terrible thing, she recalled, was the knowledge that sooner or later there would be another Aktion to end it all.⁹

Michael Tokar stated that “anyone who refused to work was killed on the spot. The Ukrainian police drank all the time and would beat the Jews just for fun in their drunken stupor.” Tokar was in the Pogrebishche ghetto until the beginning of February 1942. At that time a group of prisoners was transferred to Vinnitsa for labor, and he was among them.¹⁰

By early summer 1942, the German Gendarmerie had established a training school for noncommissioned officers (NCOs) in the Ukrainian police (now renamed Schutzmannschaft) in Pogrebishche, commanded by a man named Robowski. Stationed in the same barracks was also a Gendarme, Max Roth, who supervised the so-called railway protection police in the region, which was also composed of Ukrainian auxiliaries stationed along the railway.¹¹ In May or June 1942, the Jews in the ghetto learned from a translator who worked for the Germans about an impending Aktion, and a number of Jews went into hiding or fled the ghetto.¹²

In June 1942, SS- und Polizei-Gebietsführer Heinrich Behrens ordered the execution of the remaining Jews of [End Page 1561] Gebiet Kasatin, who were being temporarily held in a barracks in Pogrebishche. As a result, those Jews who were rounded up were taken to a pit, where the Ukrainian auxiliaries translated the German orders to the Jews. The Jews were forced to undress, then line up for an SD squad from Berdichev, and were shot. In August 1942, after intense searches by the Ukrainian police and German Gendarmes, 200 more Jews were gathered in the barracks. Behrens telephoned the SD post in Berdichev and agreed to assist the SD in the killing Aktion by providing about 40 Ukrainian police and some German soldiers who were stationed nearby. When the SD squad arrived at the local airfield, Behrens was there to greet them and then drove the killing squad to the Talymynivka ravine, which was the execution site near the barracks.¹³ The Gendarme Max Roth also recalled the arrival of about four SD men in Pogrebishche during the summer of 1942, in connection with the murder of Jews being temporarily housed in the barracks of the Schutzmannschaft School while it was empty between training courses.¹⁴

Some of the Jews who fled were taken in by Ukrainains, but the danger of being discovered remained great. For example, Anna Grinboim decided to leave her initial protector after a policeman discovered her hiding on top of the stove. Her protector, an acquaintance of her father’s, quickly improvised, saying that she was her niece. But she feared the police might soon return and arrest her.¹⁵

German Gendarmes, assisted by the Ukrainian police, continued to hunt for Jews in hiding for many months after the liquidation of the ghetto. In May 1943, Mayrhofer reported:

On May 7, 1943, at 9:00 p.m., following a confidential report, eight Jews, that is, three men, two women, and three children, were flushed out of a well-camouflaged hole in the ground in an open field not far from the post here, and all of them were shot while trying to escape. This case had to do with Jews from Pogrebishche who had lived in this hole in the ground for almost a year. The Jews had nothing else in their possession except their tattered clothing. The few items of food they possessed, which lay strewn about the camp, were given to the village poor, as was the still somewhat-usable clothing. The burial was carried out immediately, on the spot.¹⁶