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

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The bodies of two Jewish men hang from a gallows outside a market building in Novomoskovsk, 1942.

USHMM WS #25240, COURTESY OF YIVO

Pre-1941: Nikolaev, Kherson, Kirovograd, Dnepropetrovsk, and Zaporozh’e oblasts, Ukrainian SSR; 1941–1944: Generalkommissariate Nikolajew und Dnjepropetrowsk, Reichskommissariat Ukraine; post-1991: Mykolaiv, Kirovohrad, Dnipropetrovsk, Zaporizh’e, and parts of the Kherson and Cherkasy oblasts, Ukraine

In these two southeastern regions of Reichskommissariat Ukraine, the German occupying authorities established around 18 ghettos, which probably contained up to 24,000 Jews. Research has uncovered 11 ghettos or probable ghetto sites in Generalkommissariat (Gk) Nikolajew that contained up to 19,000 Jews and another 7 such sites in Gk Dnjepropetrowsk, which held around 5,000 Jews. The period of ghettoization extended from August 1941 until the spring or early summer of 1942. It was accompanied by the mass murder of the Jewish population by units of the Security Police (Einsatzgruppen and Commanding Officer of the Security Police and SD, or KdS), Wehrmacht, Order Police, SS, the German civil administration, and various non-German auxiliaries.

As the German forces of Army Group South advanced eastward in the late summer of 1941, much of the area concerned came temporarily under the administration of the 444th Security Division, which was responsible for securing areas in the immediate rear of the frontline troops. Most of the Nikolaev and Dnepropetrovsk regions were occupied by German forces between early August and early October. Malaia Viska, about 55 kilometers (34 miles) west-northwest of Kirovograd, was captured at the beginning of August. Krivoi Rog was taken on August 14, and the city of Nikolaev on the Black Sea coast fell on August 17. Further to the east and south, Dnepropetrovsk was captured on August 25, and Zaporozh’e on October 4, 1941.

Precise figures for the number of Jews who managed to evacuate are not available. According to the calculations of historian Alexander Kruglov, of the 26,419 Jews residing in the Kirovograd oblast’ in 1939, approximately 12,000 (about 45 percent) were murdered during the German occupation. That means that probably around 50 percent of the Jews were able to evacuate or flee. The figures for the Dnepropetrovsk oblast’ are that of 129,439 Jews registered in 1939, probably around 35,000 were murdered (about 27 percent). The higher rate of evacuation here is probably explained by the concentration of Jews in industrial centers and the location further east, giving people more time to leave.

For Adolf Hitler and Heinrich Himmler the murder of the Jews was the first step in a large-scale plan for the demographic restructuring and resettlement of the occupied territories. By the end of August 1941, the Einsatzgruppen and other German security forces had widened the group of Jews targeted for extermination to include women, children, and the elderly, and they had begun wiping out entire Jewish communities. In Ukraine, this shift was demonstrated most clearly by the large-scale massacre of Jews at Kamenets-Podolskii in late August 1941, in which more than 20,000 people were murdered.¹

This transition to mass murder by Einsatzgruppen C and D, assisted by Order Police forces subordinated to the Higher SS and Police Leader (HSSPF) South Russia (Friedrich Jeckeln), in mid-August, meant that the establishment of ghettos in the region was conducted only in a few places and on an ad hoc basis. On August 28, 1941, the commander of Rear Area, Army Group South, General Franz von Roques, ordered that ghettos were to be established in places, especially towns, with a larger Jewish population only if this was necessary or useful. It was to be deferred if the administrative tools were insufficient or if it might result in more urgent tasks being neglected.²

In late August and early September 1941, the German military administration established the first ghettos in the region in the towns of Pervomaisk and Novaia Odessa. These short-lived ghettos served mainly as collection points to facilitate the destruction of the Jews later in September.³

Available records for Krivoi Rog reveal the series of anti-Jewish measures implemented in this town, where no ghetto was established. In August 1941, a detachment of Einsatzgruppe C shot 39 Communist officials, 11 saboteurs and plunderers, and 105 Jews there.⁴ By mid-September, Jews were required to perform forced labor, to wear distinguishing armbands, and to use separate shops. They were also forbidden to slaughter livestock and had to surrender any foreign currency, precious metals, jewels, or other valuables. Feldkommandantur (FK) (V) 538 was then examining the question of whether it would serve its goals to establish a ghetto there—but by mid-October, all the Jews had been shot with the assistance of the Ukrainian auxiliary police.⁵

The establishment of the ghetto in Kherson, which existed for only two weeks, is well documented in contemporary German reports, survivor testimony, Soviet Extraordinary State Commission (ChGK) materials, postwar German investigations, and published accounts. Sonderkommando 11a issued an order that the Jews could only reside on certain streets, thereby establishing a ghetto on September 7. The ghetto was located in a remote section of the city, near the crossroads of Frunze and Rabochnaia Streets, and a Jewish police force was created. Overseeing the ghetto was SS-Scharführer Baron Leo von der Recke of Sonderkommando 11a. On a daily basis the Jews were summoned to perform various forms of humiliating and heavy physical labor.⁶

On September 24–25, 1941, Sonderkommando 11a organized the liquidation of the Kherson ghetto.⁷ Prior to the [End Page 1614] Aktion, the Jews were informed that they would be resettled to Palestine. A few Jews managed to escape, but most of these people were subsequently captured and killed. When the Aktion started, the Jews were marched on foot to a factory site on the edge of the city. From there they were conveyed on trucks to an antitank ditch 7 kilometers (4.3 miles) northeast of the city, near Zelenivka. The Jews were shot in groups by two rifle squads. Those waiting could hear the shots.⁸ Soviet forensic experts estimated that more than 8,000 people were buried in the mass graves.⁹

A similar ghetto was established in Nikolaev to facilitate the mass murder of around 7,000 Jews there under the supervision of Sonderkommando 11a, also in September 1941. However, Feldkommandantur 193 reported somewhat misleadingly on October 5, 1941, that “in Nikolaev and Kherson the Jews had been ‘evacuated’ by the SD. The intended establishment of ghettos therefore was not completed. Also in the countryside, as far as can be determined here, the Jews had in the meantime disappeared.”¹⁰ In fact, ghettos had been briefly created in Nikolaev and Kherson by Sonderkommando 11a as part of the destruction process, but FK 193 misrepresented this, as by October these ghettos had been completely liquidated.

In many places in Gks Nikolajew and Dnjepropetrowsk, no ghettos were established, especially in the Zaporozh’e oblast’, where the only ghetto discovered was in Novozlatopol’. Instead, the remaining Jews were killed in mass-shooting Aktions or by other means, without formal ghettoization. In Dnepropetrovsk it was reported that about 70,000 of the 100,000 Jews originally living there had fled before the arrival of the Germans. Of the remainder, more than 10,000 were shot by units subordinated to HSSPF Russia South (especially Police Battalion 314) on October 14–15, 1941.¹¹ It appears that the Wehrmacht (FK 240) made preparations for the establishment of a ghetto in Dnepropetrovsk, but the rapid massacre of some 15,000 Jews by the SD soon rendered this unnecessary.¹²

In Zaporozh’e, where about 4,000 Jews were living at the start of the German occupation, the German military authorities also did not deem it “appropriate” to move the Jews into a ghetto. Jewish medical personnel were still working here, but it was planned to exclude them as quickly as possible, allowing for the health-care needs of the population.¹³

The area of GK Nikolajew was officially transferred from military to civilian control in mid-November 1941, when Generalkommissar Oppermann took over the region.¹⁴ In December 1941, part of Gk Dnjepropetrowsk was officially transferred to a civil administration, although the military commandants continued to play an important role in these areas for several months more. Both Generalkommissariate were divided up into a number of Kreisgebiete, each administered by a Gebietskommissar. In Gk Nikolajew, there were three Stadtkommissare (for the cities of Kherson, Nikolaev, and Kirovograd) and 13 Gebietskommissare. In Gk Dnjepropetrowsk, there were four Stadtkommissare (for Dnepropetrovsk, Zaporozh’e, Krivoi Rog, and Kamenskoye) and 16 Gebietskommissare.¹⁵ However, the eastern section of Gk Dnjepropetrowsk was not handed over from military to civilian administration until October 1942.

With the handover to the civil administration, the Ukrainian militia was formally dissolved, and a Ukrainian Schutzmannschaft was created under the control of the Order Police, which was composed of the Schutzpolizei in the cities and the Gendarmerie in the towns and country areas. The Kommandeur der Gendarmerie (KdG) in Nikolajew was Major Gansinger. By November 1942, there were approximately 410 Gendarmes subordinated to the KdG Nikolajew, in charge of nearly 5,000 local policemen (Schutzmannschaft-Einzeldienst). In Gk Dnjepropetrowsk about 600 officials of the Schutzpolizei and 400 Gendarmes were responsible for some 6,000 Ukrainian auxiliaries. The Kommandeur der Ordnungspolizei (KdO) Dnjepropetrowsk was Colonel Gotthilf Hoffmann. Small outposts of the Security Police were established in major cities such as Nikolaev, Kirovograd, Dnepropetrovsk, and Zaporozh’e.

In some areas of Generalkommissariat Nikolajew, ghettos were not established until after the arrival of the civil administration at the end of 1941. This was the case in Aleksandrovka, in Kamenka, and also in Bobrinets, where Gebietskommissar Holzmann ordered the establishment of an enclosed Jewish residential area in late December. In the absence of much survivor testimony or German documentation, historians are forced to rely on other sources to identify ghettos in these regions. For example, information on the ghetto in Bobrinets comes from the ChGK and a postwar NKVD report from 1946. The ghetto in Bobrinets was surrounded by barbed wire and guarded day and night by the local police.¹⁶ It existed only until early February 1942, when more than 300 people were shot just outside the town.

A variety of different structures were used as ghettos in these regions. The small ghetto in Novaia Praga (Gk Nikolajew) was established at the end of 1941 in a building in a schoolyard. Jews from nearby villages were also resettled into the ghetto, which was not liquidated until the following summer.¹⁷ In Pavlograd (Gk Dnjepropetrowsk), the German authorities established a Jewish “prison camp” or “ghetto” in the spring of 1942, on the grounds of a large factory.

As already noted, following the large-scale massacres in major cities in September and October 1941, conducted mainly by mobile units of the SS and police, the remaining smaller ghettos were liquidated successively from February through the summer of 1942, mostly by the Gendarmerie and local Ukrainian Schutzmannschaft, with close coordination by the civil administration. The Zlatopol’ ghetto (Gk Nikolajew) was subjected to at least three separate Aktions by German police and their Ukrainian helpers. In some of these Aktions, conducted on instructions from the Gebietskommissar, the Jews were murdered using poison gas.¹⁸ The Aleksandrovka ghetto was liquidated in March 1942, when several hundred Jews were shot by German and local police, again coordinated by the Gebietskommissar, as was the case at another mass shooting of Jews, near the village of Izrailevka, although these Jews had not previously been ghettoized. [End Page 1615]

In July 1942, Generalkommissar Oppermann in Nikolajew reported curtly that “only individual Jews had appeared in one Gebiet and that a corresponding report had been passed on to the SD.”¹⁹

In Gk Nikolajew and Gk Dnjepropetrowsk there were a number of rural Jewish settlements, most notably in the Stalindorf Jewish national raion. On October 20, 1941, FK (V) 246 reported that in “Rayon Stalindorf” only just over 2,500 Jews remained, compared with a figure of more than 7,000 registered there in 1939. “Most of those [that remained] had been excluded from the economy and they stayed completely calm. Through the repeated Aktions of the police, the Jewish question was becoming ever less important.”²⁰ This reflected the pattern in the Jewish agricultural settlements that a number of Jews remained on their respective kolkhozy and were liquidated in successive Aktions from the fall of 1941 through the summer of 1942. In a few kolkhozy/villages, however, survivors recall some form of open ghetto being established, where Jews were concentrated together with only limited access to food and restricted movement, as well as forced labor.²¹

Despite the above-cited report of the Generalkommissar Nikolajew indicating that almost all Jews had been removed by July 1942, the exploitation of Jewish labor remained an issue into 1943. In Aleksandrovka, for example, some Jewish craftsmen were spared from the main Aktion in the spring of 1942 and continued to live and work in the ghetto for some time afterwards.

In several other ghettos in these regions, Jews were selected for work and sent to labor camps during the liquidation Aktions in the spring and summer of 1942, where they survived for several months more. In March 1942, when most of the remaining Jews in Rayon Mala Wiska were shot, those Jews able to work were selected and sent to a labor camp in the Rayon center. These Jewish prisoners had to live in the stables of a sugar refinery, and they worked on building and repairing roads.²²

In Novovitebskoe, where the Jews had been isolated in an open ghetto, located on a single street, those deemed fit for work were selected in April 1942 and taken to a nearby labor camp run by the SS and the Organisation Todt (OT), where they were used to build the highway (Durchgangsstrasse IV or DG IV) between Krivoi Rog and Dnepropetrovsk. On May 20, 1942, around 300 young Jews were transported from the ghetto in Ingulets to another labor camp in the village of Novoselovka, which was also part of the DG IV project.

In only a few cases is information about the existence of a Jewish Council, or Jewish elder (starosta), available. The main functions of such officials included the assignment of Jews to forced labor and the raising of contributions. Jewish responses included, on rare occasions, physical resistance in the face of death and also suicide. A number of Jews tried to hide and escape, but many of these were captured shortly after the ghetto liquidation Aktions.

In view of the small number of survivors from these regions, little information is available about the reactions of the local population. A number of accounts mention the brutality of local Ukrainian and ethnic German policemen and administrators. The local police robbed the Jews, beat them, and in a number of locations, played an active part in their murder. A few instances of non-Jews helping Jews are recorded. They provided food to Jewish acquaintances and, in rare cases, warned Jews or helped them to escape (including older local policemen). For example, Nikifor Cheredenko, a farmer from the village of Prishib, traveled several hours by cart to rescue the Tsviling family of Jews shortly before their scheduled arrest. In Prishib, the other local inhabitants also did not give away the family, even though they were known to be Jews, having lived there before the war.²³ Generally, however, those that did escape from the ghetto had the best chances of surviving if they could pass as non-Jews and were able to get away from their home village, where they might be recognized. A few were even sent to Germany as Ostarbeiter (eastern workers).

The last occupying German forces were driven from the region by the Red Army during 1944. Precise figures are not available, but it seems likely that of the Jews trapped by the German occupation in the ghettos of this region, only a few hundred managed to survive. The postwar populations in these towns and cities were composed overwhelmingly of Jews who had returned (or arrived) from the Soviet interior or had served in the Red Army.