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

Pre-1941: Uman’, city, Kiev oblast’, Ukrainian SSR; 1941–1943: Uman, Rayon and Gebiet center, Generalkommissariat Kiew; post-1991: Uman’, Cherkasy oblast’, Ukraine

Uman’ is located 190 kilometers (118 miles) south-southwest of Kiev. According to the census of January 1939, there were 13,233 Jews in Uman’, or 29.81 percent of the city’s population.

German troops occupied the city on July 31, 1941. Sonderkommando 4b (commanded by SS-Sturmbannführer Günter Herrmann) arrived shortly afterwards and carried out [End Page 1606] the first anti-Jewish Aktion—executing the Jewish intelligentsia. On the pretext that “certain questions” had to be clarified, the Jewish intelligentsia was ordered to appear at the municipal administration. The 80 men who appeared on August 13, 1941, were arrested and then killed.¹ Sometime later, 6 Jewish doctors (including Burshtein and Gitis) were publicly hanged in a prominent place.²

Ortskommandantur I/839, which administered the city at the time, appointed a new Jewish Council in the second half of August 1941 and ordered that Jews register and wear white armbands bearing six-pointed stars. Registration was accompanied by the beating of Jews with sticks, rifle butts, and lashes. German soldiers and Ukrainian policemen often robbed Jewish homes, and individual Jews were killed.

A large Jewish pogrom occurred in the city on September 21, 1941. German soldiers and Ukrainian policemen rounded up more than 1,000 women and children, forced them into the cellar of the Pioneer Palace on Lenin Street, and tightly sealed all the doors and windows. As a result of the overcrowding in the cellar, many women and children suffocated.³ The next day the surviving women and children were released, but the men who had been rounded up and placed in the prison were shot by a detachment of Einsatzkommando 5. Ereignismeldung UdSSR no. 119, dated October 20, 1941, described these events as follows:

According to observations made by Einsatzkommando 5, over the last few weeks a large number of Jews from near and far have gathered in Uman’. The population of Uman’ before the outbreak of the war was about 55,000, of which about 10,000 were Jews. In spite of the large-scale flight of Jews originally living in Uman’ after the outbreak of the war, due to many [new] arrivals, the number has been reported at about 8,000. A good intelligence network was discovered among the Jews of Uman’. Information about many events at the front and in the rear areas was passed on by the Jews not only to their coreligionists but also to the Ukrainian population. They very quickly received information about the Aktions against Jews conducted in the vicinity. A two-day Aktion was planned in order to combat this source of danger in Uman’.

Already on September 21, 1941, contrary to the plan, excesses were perpetrated against the Jews by members of the militia with the participation of numerous German soldiers. During these events, Jewish apartments were completely demolished and robbed of all utensils and valuables. In this operation, almost exclusively German soldiers were involved. Spot checks of the apartments of militia members, which a squad from Einsatzkommando 5 conducted immediately after its arrival in Uman’, were without any result.

Due to the unplanned excesses against the Jews in Uman’, the organization of the Aktion by Einsatz-kommando 5 suffered extraordinarily. Above all very many Jews now received advanced warning and fled the city….

In the remainder [of the Aktion], 1,412 Jews were executed by Einsatzkommando 5 in Uman’ on September 22 and 23, 1941.⁴

Also worth noting is the report by Ortskommandantur II/575, September 25, 1941: “On September 21–22, 1941, the SD carried out a round-up of Jews. To prevent excesses and robbery, the department sent patrols out throughout the city on September 21, and on September 22 assigned guards to certain places to prevent disturbances and other incidents. Individual servicemen from the Luftwaffe and Organisation Todt attempted to take part in the anti-Jewish Aktion, but the Feldgendarmerie of the Ortskommandantur prevented this in order to guard against Wehrmacht involvement in political actions which should be conducted only by the SD.”⁵

Soon after the Aktion on September 21–23, the Jews of the city were ordered to move to a residential district (ghetto) that had been set aside for them near the marketplace on Rakovka, Vostochnaia, Nekrasov, and other streets, in agreement with the city administration. The local commandant’s office—Ortskommandantur II/575 (V)—ordered that the move to this district be completed by the end of September 1941.⁶ The Jewish district was not isolated and only lightly guarded, but Jews were forbidden to leave it, and Ukrainians were forbidden to enter. Those who violated this order were severely punished by being beaten and heavily fined. A Jewish elder and his assistant administered the district. Samburskii was appointed as the elder; his assistant was Tabachnik. They had at their disposal three Jewish police officers, one of them a woman. With their assistance the elder collected the “contributions” that were periodically imposed on the Jews. If Jews refused to hand over gold or valuables, Jewish police officers placed them face down on a trestle bed and beat them on their backs and buttocks until they agreed to hand over what was demanded of them.⁷

A week after the move into the ghetto, German Police Battalion 304 carried out a further Aktion in the city, with the assistance of the Ukrainian police. The battalion arrived in Uman’ from Kirovograd on October 7, and at 4:00 a.m. the next morning, German and Ukrainian police began herding Jews to the market square. From the market square they were taken to the prison, where they were forced to undress; their money, valuables, and papers were confiscated. From the prison the Jews were taken to three large trenches in Sukhoi Iar outside the city and shot. Sick people, cripples, and small children were driven to the trenches in trucks and murdered. In all, that day Police Battalion 304 shot 5,400 Jewish civilians from the city and 400 Jewish prisoners of war.⁸ A memorial has been erected on the site.

After the Aktion on October 8, 1941, about 1,500 Jews remained in the “open ghetto,” compressed together now onto one street. Starting on January 8, 1942, they were forced to wear round yellow patches 8 centimeters (3.2 inches) in diameter on their backs and chests. The Jews were sent out every [End Page 1607] day under Ukrainian police escort to perform various jobs (shoveling snow, moving rocks, and repairing roads). From time to time public executions of Jews were carried out. On January 5, 1942, 2 men and a woman were publicly hanged.⁹ According to a report on March 7, 1942 (for the period from February 2 to March 5) by the Higher SS and Police Leader—issued by the Senior Commander of the Order Police in Reichskommissariat Ukraine—the Gendarmerie in Uman’ executed 3 Jews, 2 former Ukrainian police commanders, and 6 partisans. According to his report for March 6 to April 1, 1942, first 5 Jews were publicly hanged, and subsequently another 8 people were hanged, including 1 Jew and the commanding officer of a Ukrainian police detachment.¹⁰

Security Police and SD forces under the command of SS-Sturmbannführer Xaver Schnöller, assisted by German Gendarmes, and Lithuanian and Ukrainian police auxiliaries, liquidated the ghetto in Uman’ on April 22, 1942. During the Aktion, those Jews fit for work were selected and to a labor camp in the Gaisin raion. Those not fit for work were escorted to a nearby forest, where Lithuanian and Ukrainian police took part in shooting them under German direction.

Also involved in clearing the ghetto were members of the 1st platoon, 2nd Company of the Polizeisicherungsabteilung an der Durchgangsstrasse (highway) IV (DG IV) (German police assigned to supervise forced laborers on road construction work). According to testimony by members of this unit, SS-Brigadeführer Jürgen Stroop, in charge of security for the entire length of the DG IV project, ordered the ghetto to be liquidated to prevent Jews fleeing to the partisans and to confine those fit for work in secure labor camps. The ghetto was surrounded at dawn, and most Jews were assembled on the market square for the selection. A few hid within the ghetto, however, and a number were shot as the Germans and their collaborators searched the ghetto, including the attic of the synagogue, looking for those in hiding.¹¹ After the liquidation of the ghetto, 50 to 60 Jewish craftsmen remained in the town; they were shot in 1943.

A group of former policemen from Police Battalion 304 were convicted at several trials in the former East Germany. They were accused of killing Jews in several cities in Ukraine, including participation in the Aktion in Uman’ on October 8, 1941. Three former members of the battalion were convicted and sentenced to death in Halle on October 26, 1978.

SS-Sturmbannführer Günter Herrmann, commanding officer of Sonderkommando 4b, was sentenced to seven years’ imprisonment in Düsseldorf on October 12, 1973. His unit organized the shooting of Jews in Uman’ in August 1941.

In 1970, the Staatsanwaltschatt in Lübeck closed the investigation of Xaver Schnöller and Robert Deneke, who took part in the liquidation of the Uman’ ghetto, because there was insufficient evidence.