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

[End Page 1630] Pre-1941: Novovitebskoe, Novovasil’evka sel’sovet, Sofievka raion, Dnepropetrovsk oblast’, Ukrainian SSR; 1941–1944: Nowo Witebsk, Rayon Sofijewka, Gebiet Kriwoj Rog-Land, Generalkommissariat Dnjepropetrowsk; post-1991: Novovitebs’ke, Dnipropetovsk oblast’, Ukraine

Novovitebskoe is located 96.5 kilometers (60 miles) southwest of Dnepropetrovsk. There were only 277 Jews living in Novovitebskoe in 1941. On August 18, 1941, about eight weeks after Germany’s invasion of the USSR on June 22, German armed forces occupied the village. During that time, some of the Jews was able to evacuate.

In the first months after the village was occupied, a German military commandant’s office (Ortskommandantur) administered the village. At the end of 1941, authority was transferred to the German civilian administration. The village was incorporated into Gebiet Kriwoj Rog, within Generalkommissariat Dnjepropetrowsk.

After the occupation of the village, Ukrainian antisemites persecuted the Jewish population. All the Jews were isolated in an open ghetto, located on a single street, and Jews were not allowed to go beyond its designated borders. Jews deemed fit to 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, DG IV) between Krivoi Rog and Dnepropetrovsk. In May 1942, the ghetto was liquidated, and all the Jews there were shot. Most of the remaining Jewish forced laborers working on the DG IV in camps around Sofievka were shot during the winter of 1942–1943.¹