ZOLOTONOSHA
Pre-1941: Zolotonosha, town, Poltava oblast’, Ukrainian SSR; 1941–1943: Solotonoscha, from September 1942, Gebiet center, Generalkommissariat Kiew, Reichskommissariat Ukraine; post-1991: Zolotonosha, Cherkasy oblast’, Ukraine
Zolotonosha is located 139 kilometers (86 miles) east-southeast of Kiev. According to the 1939 census, there were 2,087 Jews residing in Zolotonosha.
The Germans entered Zolotonosha on September 19, 1941. In the weeks prior to the Germans’ arrival, a large part of the Jewish population managed to evacuate or flee to the interior of the Soviet Union. According to the report of the Soviet Extraordinary State Commission, on the third day after the occupation of the town, the German commandant ordered the execution of 300 local citizens. Among those killed were many refugees from western parts of the Soviet Union, and it is most likely that a high proportion were Jews.1 The German unit responsible for the shooting was probably a detachment of Sonderkommando 4a. The remaining Jews were herded into a ghetto, from which they were taken to perform menial jobs such as cleaning streets and repairing roads.
On November 21, the German commandant announced that all Jews would be “resettled” to Kremenchug the following day. They were ordered to gather all their valuables, money, and best clothes and to assemble near Gestapo headquarters at 9:00 a.m. on November 22, 1941. On that day guards were posted all over the town, and they thoroughly searched the Jewish apartments and the neighboring houses for any Jews who went into hiding. The Gestapo men robbed the assembled Jews of all their valuables. The Jews were then escorted under close guard to a ravine about 3 kilometers (1.9 miles) outside of Zolotonosha to the northwest, where they were shot. Involved in the Aktion were forces of the Higher SS and Police Leader Russia South, namely, Police Battalion 303, men of Sonderkommando 4a, and members of the Ukrainian police, commanded by the Ukrainian police chief in the town, Vladimir Ivanovich Kalanchuk. The precise number of victims, Jewish men, women, and children from Zolotonosha and its environs, is unknown, but estimates range from 600 up to 3,500 or more.2
In the ensuing period until the spring of 1942, several hundred more Jews were successively brought in to Zolotonosha from the countryside and confined in the ghetto. In January 1942, during a German antipartisan sweep through the Poltava oblast’, a number of Jews were shot in Zolotonosha. The rest were murdered by men of Sonderkommando “Plath” in June 1942.3
SOURCES
Regarding the murder of the Jews in Zolotonosha, see Nimets’ki okupanty na Poltavshcnyni (1941–1943): Zbirnyk dokumentiv (Poltava: Vydavnytstvo “Zoria Poltavshcnyny,” 1947), pp. 24–29. An English translation can be found in A.F. Vysotsky et al., eds., Nazi Crimes in Ukraine, 1941–1944: Documents and Materials (Kiev: Naukova Dumka, 1987), pp. 151–155.
Relevant documentation can be found in the following archives: DAPO; GARF; NARA (T-501, reel 6, fr. 1013); and TsDAHOU.
NOTES
1. GARF, 7021-70-952, p. 1. This Soviet report named German officers Hauptmann Greisching and Oberleutnant Ilger as being responsible.
2. Nimets’ki okupanty na Poltavshchyni (1941–1943), pp. 24–29. The figure of 3,500 victims can be found in DAPO, R-4085-3-2276, p. 2. Wolfgang Curilla, Die deutsche Ordnungspolizei und der Holocaust im Baltikum und in Weissrussland 1941–1944 (Paderborn: Ferdinand Schöningh, 2006), p. 797, gives the figure of at least 1,000 killed. A. Kruglov, Entsiklopediia kholokosta: Evreiskaia entsiklopediia Ukrainy (Kiev: Evreiskii sovet Ukrainy, Fond “Pamiat’ zhertv fashizma,” 2000), pp. 142, 144, however, gives a figure of probably only around 600 in light of the pre-war Jewish population of only 2,087.
3. TsDAHOU, 166-2-34, p. 1; DAPO, R-1876-8-98, p. 1; and R-3388-1-1086, p. 1.
