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

[End Page 1602] Pre-1941: Smela, town and raion center, Kiev oblast’, Ukrainian SSR; 1941–1943: Rayon and Gebiet center, Generalkommissariat Kiew, Reichskommissariat Ukraine; post-1991: Smila, Cherkasy oblast’, Ukraine

Smela is located 133 kilometers (83 miles) northeast of Uman’. According to the 1926 population census, there were 5,978 Jews in what was then the Smela raion, which included the town. The 1939 census indicated that only 3,428 Jews lived in the town of Smela (10.1 percent of the total population). There were another 106 Jews in the villages of the Smela raion.¹ The decrease in the Jewish population from 1926 to 1939 by more than 40 percent can be explained mainly by the resettlement of Jews to other regions.

German forces occupied Smela on August 4, 1941, six weeks after the German invasion of the USSR on June 22. During this period, some of the Jewish population was able to flee to the east, and Jewish men were conscripted into or volunteered for the Red Army. Approximately one third of the pre-war Jewish population remained in Smela at the start of the German occupation.

More than 400 people, including some Jews, were killed in the first two days of the occupation.² The murders were probably carried out by SS soldiers of the Wiking Division, which was active in the region at that time.

In the summer and fall of 1941, a German military commandant’s office (Ortskommandantur) administrated the town. The commandant set up a local administration and organized an auxiliary Ukrainian police force from among the local residents.

Shortly after the occupation of the settlement, the German military commandant and the local administration registered the Jews and made them wear armbands. They were also forced to perform heavy physical labor (such as the repair of roads and buildings). The head of the Rayon, Rayonchef Streidenberger, was especially vigilant regarding the Jews, chastising his subordinates for violations in their registration and employment—most likely resulting from bribes.³

In October 1941, a detachment of the Secret Field Police (Geheime Feldpolizei or GFP) attached to the 213th Security Division (Sicherungsdivision 213) shot 55 partisans, 37 collaborators of the partisans, and 17 Communist Party functionaries in Smela.⁴ Jews also were among the 109 people who were killed.

In November 1941, power was transferred to a German civil administration. Smela became the administrative center of Gebiet Smela, which included the Rayons of Tscherkassy and Woronzowo-Gorodischtsche. Regierungsrat Schwehr became the Gebietskommissar. Gebiet Smela was in turn part of Generalkommissariat Kiew in Reichskommissariat Ukraine.⁵

At the end of 1941, the German administration ordered the formation of a ghetto (“Jewish residential district”) in Smela. A few streets were cordoned off. Jews were prohibited from leaving the ghetto and from buying products from local Ukrainians. As a result, famine quickly developed in the ghetto. In January 1942, eight Jewish families from the settlement of Rotmistrovka were resettled into the ghetto.⁶ A Jewish boy, Dmitro Mironeneko, who arrived in January 1942 from Cherkassy, noted that the Jews of Smela had not yet been killed by the Germans. He registered himself in Smela and lived for several weeks in the home for invalids. He was fortunate that he left the town in February, sensing the danger of an upcoming German Aktion.⁷ It is probable that the Smela ghetto was liquidated at the end of February 1942, when the German Gendarmerie and Ukrainian police arrested 512 Jews and subsequently shot them.⁸