DOBROVELICHKOVKA (aka DOBROVELICHNEVKA)
Pre-1941: Dobrovelichkovka, town and raion center, Kirovograd oblast’, Ukrainian SSR; 1941–1944: Dobrowelitschkowka, Rayon center, Gebiet Perwomaisk, Generalkommissariat Nikolajew, Reichskommissariat Ukraine; post-1991: Dobrovelichkovka, Kirovohrad oblast’, Ukraine
Dobrovelichkovka is located 100 kilometers (62 miles) west of Kirovograd. According to the 1939 census, 366 Jews (10.3 percent of the total population) were living in Dobrovelichkovka.1
At the start of August 1941, six weeks after Germany’s invasion of the USSR on June 22, German armed forces occupied the town. Part of the Jewish population was able to evacuate to the east. Men of eligible age were called into the Red Army or enlisted voluntarily. Approximately 55 percent of the pre-war Jewish population remained in Dobrovelichkovka at the start of the German occupation.
In the summer and fall of 1941, a German military commandant’s office (Ortskommandantur) was in charge of the town. The German military created a local authority and an auxiliary Ukrainian police force recruited from local residents. The Ukrainian police played an active role in the implementation of most of the anti-Jewish measures imposed by the German occupiers.
In November 1941, authority was transferred to a German civilian administration. Dobrovelichkovka was incorporated into Gebiet Perwomaisk, within Generalkommissariat Nikolajew. The Gebietskommissar was Kameradschaftsführer Lafrentz.2
Shortly after the occupation of the town, the German military authorities ordered the registration and marking of all the Jews. They had to wear distinguishing armbands, and they were forced into various kinds of heavy physical labor such as road building and repair work.
According to one uncorroborated source, in the fall of 1941, on the orders of the German military administration, a ghetto was created in the town. Jews were prohibited from leaving the ghetto and were not allowed to buy goods from Ukrainians. As a result, starvation quickly ensued. The Germans shot the Jews of Dobrovelichkovka on December 23, 1941. On that day, 207 Jews (40 men, 57 women, 45 elderly people, and 65 children) were shot in a ditch to the northeast of the town near the village of Mar’evka.3 A number of Jews living in Rayon Dobrowelitschkowka, for example, 18 from the village of Lipniazhka, were also murdered in the fall of 1941.
SOURCES
The main published source used for this entry is Evreiskie vesti (Kiev, 1994), nos. 23–24, p. 15.
NOTES
1. Mordechai Altshuler, ed., Distribution of the Jewish Population of the USSR 1939 (Jerusalem: Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 1993), p. 59.
2. 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.
3. See the memorandum of the head of the Dobrovelichkovka RO NKVD, in Evreiskie vesti, nos. 23–24, p. 15.
