NOVAIA ODESSA
[End Page 1628] Pre-1941: Novaia Odessa, town and raion center, Nikolaev oblast’, Ukrainian SSR; 1941–1944: Nowa Odessa, Rayon center, Gebiet Wosnessensk, Generalkommissariat Nikolajew; post-1991: Nova Odesa, Mykolaiv oblast’, Ukraine
Novaia Odessa is located 126 kilometers (78 miles) north-northeast of Odessa. According to the 1939 population census, there were 228 Jews living in Novaia Odessa.1
German armed forces occupied Novaia Odessa in mid-August 1941, about six weeks after the German invasion of the USSR on June 22. 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 half of the pre-war Jewish population remained in Novaia Odessa at the start of the German occupation.
Shortly after the occupation of the settlement, the German military commandant’s office (Ortskommandantur) ordered the registration of the entire Jewish population. The Jews were also moved into several buildings in a separate district near the local school, and the area was surrounded with barbed wire. The Jews were forced to wear the yellow Star of David and were prohibited from leaving this area on pain of death. They were also required to perform forced labor.2
According to the Soviet Extraordinary State Commission report, German forces liquidated the ghetto in September 1941, removing 125 Jews and shooting them.3 According to one survivor testimony, the Germans shot the elderly and infirm first and then shot all the remaining Jews about two weeks later.4 German investigative sources indicate that the mass shooting was carried out by a detachment of Sonderkommando 10b. Some Jewish refugees from Bessarabia may have been among the victims.5
In mid-November 1941, authority was transferred from the military to a German civil administration. The town became a Rayon center in Gebiet Wosnessensk, Generalkommissariat Nikolajew. Around this time, a Jewish family of five was also shot.6
SOURCES
Relevant publications include Boris Zabarko, ed., Zhizn’ i smert’ v epokhu Kholokosta: Svidetel’stva i dokumenty (Kiev, 2006); Andrej Angrick, Besatzungspolitik und Massenmord: Die Einsatzgruppe D in der südlichen Sowjetunion 1941–1943 (Hamburg: Hamburger Edition, 2003), p. 234; and Handbuch der Lager, Gefängnisse und Ghettos auf dem besetzten Territorium der Ukraine (1941–1944) (Kiev: Staatskomitee der Archiven der Ukraine, 2000), p. 117.
Relevant documentation can be found in the following archives: GARF (7021-68-182); Sta. Mü I (22 Js 203/61); and USHMM (RG-22.002M, reel 1).
NOTES
1. Mordechai Altshuler, ed., Distribution of the Jewish Population of the USSR 1939 (Jerusalem: Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 1993), p. 55.
2. Zabarko, Zhizn’ i smert’, pp. 192–194.
3. GARF, 7021-68-182, pp. 157, 190–193.
4. See Zabarko, Zhizn’ i smert’, pp. 192–194. This witness, Arkadii Bykovskii, dates the destruction of the Jews to mid- and late November 1941.
5. Sta. Mü I, 22 Js 203/61, vol. 8, p. 1752, testimony of Siegfried Suchart, who indicates that about 100 men, women, and children were shot. This source supports the contention that the mass shooting took place in September 1941.
6. GARF, 7021-68-182, p. 162.
