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

[End Page 1622] Pre-1941: Kamenka, village, Sofievka raion, Dnepropetrovsk oblast’, Ukrainian SSR; 1941–1944: Rayon Sofijewka, Gebiet Kriwoj Rog-Land, Generalkommissariat Dnjepropetrowsk, Reichskommissariat Ukraine; post-1991: Kamianka, Dnipropetrovsk oblast’, Ukraine

Kamenka is located about 140 kilometers (87 miles) southwest of Dnepropetrovsk. In the 1930s, the village became the center of its own Jewish sel’sovet with 1,458 residents, as part of the Stalindorf Jewish national raion.¹ By June 1941, the Jewish population had decreased significantly, owing to the Holodomor famine of 1932–1933 and the resettlement of Jews to other regions.

On August 16, 1941, the village was occupied by German armed forces. In the weeks prior to this, some Jews were able to evacuate from the village, and able-bodied men were conscripted into the Red Army or enlisted voluntarily.

In the first months of the occupation, a German military commandant’s office (Ortskommandantur) controlled the village. At the end of 1941, authority was transferred to a German civilian administration. The village became part of Gebiet Kriwoj Rog, which was headed by a Nazi official named Dr. Frick, who served as Gebietskommissar. Together with Krivoy Rog, the village of Kamenka lay within Generalkommissariat Dnjepropetrowsk.

After the occupation of the village, Ukrainian antisemites persecuted the Jewish population. Dozens of Jews were shot, accused of being Communists and Soviet activists. In September 1941, all Jews were moved into an unfenced ghetto, consisting of one street in the village. Jews were not allowed to go beyond the boundaries of the street and were required to wear white armbands. There were about three or four families living in each house. Living conditions were very unsanitary, with no place to bathe, and Jews ate mostly soup, kasha, and corn. Jews were robbed or forced to surrender clothing such as fur items and other valuable possessions. The Jews were taken out to perform forced labor every day, mostly in agriculture or clearing snow from the roads. Children were also put to work removing the husks from corn.²

At the end of April or in early May 1942, the Germans and local police rounded up the Jews and selected those fit for labor. These people were transported to a labor camp surrounded with barbed wire in the village of Avdot’evka, where they were exploited for work in a quarry and the construction of a highway between Krivoi Rog and Dnepropetrovsk. On days off, they were allowed to return to see their relatives in the village. The Kamenka ghetto was liquidated on May 29, 1942, when all the Jews remaining there, mostly the elderly and children, were shot. The total number of Jewish victims from Kamenka was more than 200.³