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

Pre-1941: Malaia Viska, town and raion center, Kirovograd oblast’, Ukrainian SSR; 1941–1944: Mala Wiska, Rayon and Gebiet center, Generalkommissariat Nikolajew; post-1991: Mala Vyska, Kirovohrad oblast’, Ukraine

Malaia Viska is located about 55 kilometers (34 miles) west-northwest of Kirovograd. In 1939, there were 207 Jews living in the town (2.56 percent of the total population). Another 101 Jews resided in the villages of the Malaia Viska raion.

The town of Malaia Viska was occupied by German troops at the beginning of August 1941, five and a half weeks after the German invasion of the Soviet Union on June 22. During this period, some of the local Jews fled the town and managed to escape to the east. All men, Jewish or non-Jewish, of military age were drafted into the Red Army. A number of others joined the Soviet forces voluntarily. When German troops occupied Malaia Viska, only about one quarter of the pre-war Jewish population was still in the town. In the summer and fall of 1941, a German military commandant’s office (Ortskommandantur) was in charge of the administration of the [End Page 1626] town. The Ortskommandantur organized a local administration and established a unit of Ukrainian auxiliary police recruited from local inhabitants. The Ukrainian police took an active part in the anti-Jewish measures.

In November 1941, a German civil administration took over responsibility for the town. Malaia Viska initially became the center of Gebiet Mala Wiska under the command of Gebietskommissar Hinz. Several other towns and their raions, such as Khmelevoe, Novo-Arkhangel’sk, and Podvysokoe, belonged to the Gebiet. Gebiet Mala Wiska was part of Generalkommissariat Nikolajew within Reichskommissariat Ukraine.¹ By 1943 the administrative structure had been reorganized, and Malaia Viska became a Rayon center within Gebiet Nowo Mirgorod.

Shortly after the occupation of the town by German troops, the Ortskommandantur ordered several anti-Jewish measures. First, members of the Jewish population were forced to register and to wear distinguishing armbands identifying them as Jews. In addition, the Jews were ordered to carry out physically exhausting work, for which they received little or no payment. All these individuals were settled or relocated into a specific area of the town (an open ghetto). The first Aktions against the Jews of Malaia Viska and its environs came in September 1941. On September 19, a detachment of the 8th SS-Regiment shot 17 Jews.²

According to the report of Ortskommandantur I/829 (based in Novaia Ukrainka), on October 10, 1941, there were 53 Jews still residing in Malaia Viska. At that time the head of Rayon Mala Wiska was an ethnic German named Johann Sartisson, and the head of the Ukrainian police (Hilfspolizei) was Jakob Chomitsch.³ Most of the remaining Jews were murdered between February and March 1942, when a general Aktion against the Jews in Rayon Mala Wiska took place. During the Aktion, those Jews able to work were selected and sent to a labor camp in Malaia Viska. These Jewish prisoners had to live in the stables of a sugar refinery, and they worked on building and repairing roads.⁴ This labor camp was closed in 1943. It is assumed that all the prisoners were then killed.