MAN’KOVKA
[End Page 1597] Pre-1941: Man’kovka, town and raion center, Kiev oblast’, Ukrainian SSR; 1941–1944: Mankowka, Rayon center, Gebiet Uman-Land, Generalkommissariat Kiew, Reichskommissariat Ukraine; post-1991: Man’kivka, Cherkasy oblast’, Ukraine
Man’kovka is located about 34 kilometers (21 miles) north of Uman’. According to the 1939 census, there were 105 Jews residing in Man’kovka, where they comprised 2.2 percent of the local population, and an additional 719 Jews lived in the other settlements of the Man’kovka raion.1
Man’kovka was occupied by units of the German 6th Army in late July 1941, about one month after the German attack on the Soviet Union. During the chaos following the invasion, some local Jews managed to flee eastward, ahead of the advancing German troops. Jewish men born between 1905 and 1918 found themselves conscripted into military service. On the arrival of German forces in Man’kovka, about 70 percent of the community’s pre-war Jewish population remained in the town.
Between July and October 1941, Man’kovka was ruled by a German military administration (Ortskommandantur), which established a village council and appointed a local mayor. The military administration also set up a Ukrainian auxiliary police force. In November 1941, a German civil administration assumed authority over Man’kovka, which became a Rayon center in Gebiet Uman-Land, Generalkommissariat Kiew, Reichskommissariat Ukraine. In December 1941, the Gebietskommissar was Kameradschaftsführer Peterson.2
Shortly after the German invasion, the military administration ordered the village council to register the Jews and required them to wear armbands bearing the Star of David. The military administration ordered all able-bodied Jews to perform various kinds of physically demanding labor for little or no pay.
In late 1941, all the Jews of Man’kovka were forced to relocate into a separate area within the town designated as a ghetto. On April 18, 1942, those Jews able to work were transferred to a labor camp in Buki. Those ghetto residents deemed unfit for work, mainly children and the elderly, numbering about 50 people, were shot on May 2, 1942.3 A few Jews managed to survive by joining Soviet partisan units operating in the area.
SOURCES
Published sources on the Jewish community of Man’kovka and its fate during the Holocaust include the following: Aleksandr Kruglov, Katastrofa ukrainskogo evreistva 1941–1944gg.: Entsiklopedicheskii spravochnik (Khar’kov: “Karavella,” 2001), p. 204; and Rossiiskaia Evreiskaia Entsiklopediia (Moscow: Russian Academy of Natural Sciences, Jewish Encyclopedia Research Center, “Epos,” 2000), 5:378.
NOTES
1. Mordechai Altshuler, ed., Distribution of the Jewish Population of the USSR 1939 (Jerusalem: Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 1993), p. 55.
2. BA-BL, BDC, SSHO 2432, Organisationsplan der besetzten Ostgebiete nach dem Stand vom 10. März 1942, hg. vom Chef der Ordnungspolizei, Berlin, March 13, 1942; and USHMM, RG-31.002M, reel 3, 3206-2-31, p. 9.
3. Association of Jewish Organizations and Communities of Ukraine (Vaad Ukrainy), program “Pamiat’ Holokosta,” Cherkassy oblast’, village of Man’kovka; directive no. 41 issued by the Man’kovka Area Council, March 18, 1999.
