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

Pre-1941: Ol’shana, town, Kiev oblast’, Ukrainian SSR; 1941–1943: Olschana, town and Rayon center, Gebiet Swenigorod ka Generalkommissariat Kiew, Reichskommissariat Ukraine; post-1991: Ol’shany, Cherkasy oblast’, Ukraine

Ol’shana is located 88 kilometers (55 miles) northeast of Uman’. Due to the effects of World War I, the Bolshevik Revolution, the Russian Civil War, the migration of Jews to the cities, and the Holodomor famine of 1932–1933, the size of the Jewish community declined considerably from 1,233 in 1897 to only 195 in 1939.

German forces of Army Group South captured Ol’shana on July 25, 1941. In August the military administration (Ortskommandantur) ordered the Jews to surrender all their valuable items such as gold, as well as furniture, cattle, and poultry. In October 1941, a detachment of Einsatzkommando 5 (subordinated to Einsatzgruppe C) shot all the adult Jewish males (up to 100 people) in Ol’shana.¹ In the fall of 1941, Ol’shana was transferred to the German civil administration. The town became a Rayon center within Gebiet Swenigorod ka, in Generalkommissariat Kiew. The Gebietskommissar in Swenigorodka was Hannjo Becker.

Sometime between August and October 1941, the German authorities ordered the Jews to move into a ghetto, which was set up in a few dozen houses in the northern part of town. Jews from the smaller settlements around Ol’shana were also ordered to move into the ghetto. All inmates over the age of 12 had to wear special armbands, and Jews were forbidden to speak to local Ukrainians. The military commandant appointed a Jewish Council (Judenrat) within the ghetto. The German and Ukrainian police guarded the ghetto, and Jews apprehended outside its limits without permission could be shot. The Ukrainian and German police also searched the ghetto frequently, looking for concealed valuables. Inside the [End Page 1598] ghetto, several Jewish doctors and nurses provided medical services to the inmates. The German military and the local Ukrainian administration forced all ghetto inmates, with the exception of small children, to perform a variety of forced labor tasks, including cleaning fuel containers, repairing roads, collecting the harvest, and clearing snow. The Jews were beaten at work, and sick or weak Jews were shot.²

During the winter of 1941–1942, the number of ghetto inmates declined due to deaths from sicknesses, starvation, and the terror imposed by the German administration and the Ukrainian police. Some Ukrainians supplied food to their friends in the ghetto. On May 2, 1942, the German administration formed the remaining 100 or so ghetto inmates into a column and marched them to Zvenigorodka, where the Jews were divided into two groups: the elderly and small children were put into a ghetto, while the older children and younger women were sent to forced labor camps at Smil’chyntsi and Nemorozh, which were established for the construction of the new highway (Durchgangsstrasse IV).³ In June, many of the Jews from Ol’shana perished during the liquidation of the Zvenigorodka ghetto. On November 2, 1942, the Germans murdered the inmates of the Smil’chyntsi camp; and on August 23, 1943, the remaining Jews at Nemorozh were murdered.⁴