PIATIGORY
Pre-1941: Piatigory, village, Tetiev raion, Kiev oblast’, Ukrainian SSR; 1941–1943: Rayon Tetijew, Gebiet Taraschtscha, Generalkommissariat Kiew; post-1991: Cherkasy oblast’, Ukraine
Piatigory is located about 69 kilometers (43 miles) north-northwest of Uman’. According to the census of December 1926, 531 Jews were living in Piatigory. By 1939, however, the Jewish population had declined to less than half this number.
Two German light tanks entered Piatigory on July 16, 1941. In the four weeks from the start of the German invasion, part of the Jewish population attempted to evacuate to the east using horses and carts or traveling by rail. Some, however, such as the family of Galina Klotsman, were forced to turn back by the rapid German advance. On their return, by July 10, the family found that their house had been robbed; Galina’s father was then conscripted into the Red Army, just before the Soviet authorities abandoned Piatigory.1
From July to October 1941, a German military commandant’s office (Ortskommandantur) administered Piatigory. Shortly after the occupation of the village, the German military commandant ordered the registration of the Jews and required them to wear distinguishing armbands. On July 31, 1941, German security forces shot 2 Jews in Piatigory as hostages. Then on August 28, 1941, the Germans ordered the Jews to report to the school building. They selected 17 male Jews over the age of 14. These men were taken away and shot, including the father of Raisa Zelenkov.2
The remaining women and children, together with a few male specialist workers, were held in the school building, and some form of ghetto was probably established in Piatigory. The female Jews were required to perform farmwork every day. Some Jews who had evaded the roundup passed themselves off as Ukrainians and worked for a time on nearby kolkhozy, but eventually most were denounced and forced to register as Jews with the Gendarmerie and local police in Piatigory. Half-Jews, however, were treated with somewhat greater leniency, not being required to wear armbands.3
At the end of October 1941, power was transferred to the German civilian administration. Piatigory was incorporated into Gebiet Taraschtscha, where Kameradschaftsführer Wurach served as Gebietskommissar.4
On April 26, 1942, those Jews capable of work—namely, the young and couples without children—were selected and transferred to the Buki labor camp, where they worked in a nearby quarry.5 The 133 Jews that remained in Piatigory were shot in a local park on November 16, 1942. According to the testimony of Raisa Kleter (Zelenkov), who with several other Jews from mixed marriages was spared at the killing site along with her daughter, German Gendarmes, including a man named Hochmann, and local Ukrainian police were responsible for the shooting.6
SOURCES
The recollections of Raisa Zelenkov, “In the Shtetl of Pyatigory, Kiev Region,” have been published in Joshua Rubenstein and Ilya Altman, eds., The Unknown Black Book: The Holocaust in the German-Occupied Soviet Territories (Bloomington: Indiana University Press in association with the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, 2007), pp. 169–185. An oral history by the same woman, now called Raisa Kleter, can be found in VHF (# 37434). Another relevant oral testimony can be found in USHMM (RG-50.226 # 0015).
NOTES
1. “In the Shtetl of Pyatigory, Kiev Region,” pp. 169–185, here p. 170; and USHMM, RG-50.226 # 0015, Oral History interview with Galina Iosifevna Klotsman, born 1923.
2. “In the Shtetl of Pyatigory, Kiev Region,” pp. 170–171; and A. Kruglov, Entsiklopediia kholokosta: Evreiskaia entsiklopediia Ukrainy (Kiev: Evreiskii sovet Ukrainy, Fond “Pamiat’ zhertv fashizma,” 2000), pp. 87, 90.
3. USHMM, RG-50.226 # 0015. “In the Shtetl of Pyatigory, Kiev Region,” pp. 169–185, does not use the term ghetto; however, VHF, # 37434, testimony of Raisa Kleter (aka Zelenkov), has been indexed by the Shoah Foundation as describing the ghetto in Piatigory. Rossiiskaia Evreiskaia Entsiklopediia (Moscow: Russian Academy of Natural Sciences, Jewish Encyclopedia Research Center, “Epos,” 2007), 6:312, also states that a ghetto was established in Piatigory.
4. 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.
5. A. Kruglov, Katastrofa ukrainskogo evreistva 1941–1944gg.: Entsiklopedicheskii spravochnik (Kharkov: “Karavella,” 2001), p. 51; Shmuel Spector and Geoffrey Wigoder, eds., The Encyclopedia of Jewish Life before and during the Holocaust (Jerusalem: Yad Vashem; New York: New York University Press, 2001), p. 985; and USHMM, RG-50.226 # 0015.
6. Kruglov, Entsiklopediia kholokosta, pp. 89–91. Rossiiskaia Evreiskaia Entsiklopediia, 6:312, indicates that 133 Jews were shot on November 16, 1942, but the source for this is unclear. “In the Shtetl of Pyatigory, Kiev Region,” pp. 169–185, dates the shooting in November 1942, but gives no numbers. VHF, # 37434, testimony of Raisa Kleter (aka Zelenkov), however, dates the shooting in November 1943 (sic).
