NOVOZLATOPOL’
Pre-1941: Novozlatopol’, village, Guliaipole raion, Zaporozh’e oblast’, Ukrainian SSR; 1941–1944: Nowo-Slatopol, Rayon center, Gebiet Kujbyschewo (Kuibyshevo), Generalkommissariat Dnjepropetrowsk; post-1991: Novozlatopil’, Zaporozh’e oblast’, Ukraine
Novozlatopol’ is located 146 kilometers (91 miles) east-southeast of Dnepropetrovsk. According to the 1939 population census, there were 4,701 Jews living in the raion (30 percent of the total population), including 1,109 Jews in the village of Novozlatopol’ itself (50 percent of the total population).
The village was occupied by units of the German 17th Field Army in early October 1941, nearly three and a half months after the initial Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union on June 22. Some Jews were able to evacuate to the east. A number of Jewish men of eligible age escaped the occupation by conscription into the Red Army or by voluntary enlistment. [End Page 1631]
During the first months of the occupation, when the mass murder of the Jewish population was carried out, a military commandant’s office (Ortskommandantur) ran the affairs of Novozlatopol’ and the surrounding Rayon. The German administration appointed a village elder and recruited a Ukrainian auxiliary police force.
Shortly after the occupation of the village, the Ortskommandantur ordered the registration and marking of the entire Jewish population. Jews were also forced into various kinds of heavy labor.
Information on the fate of the Jews of Novozlatopol’ and the surrounding settlements is sparse and somewhat contradictory. According to one witness, I.P. Pliasovitsa:
From the very first days of the Germans’ administration of the raion territory, headed by the bloodthirsty officer Miller and the police chief Petkovskii, they began gathering together the Jewish population, ostensibly for shipment to Palestine. The order was given to take along their best clothing and food for the journey. After taking them to the Gendarmerie building, they made them dig four pits to serve as their own graves, and then the shooting started. Before being led to the pit, they were made to undress, and the perpetrators took the clothing for themselves. Those who offered any resistance were tossed into the pit alive. To drown out the cries and groans of the people thrown into the pit alive, the German accomplices beat on metal pails and buckets. For the same purpose, they also started up a tractor engine, but nothing could muffle these people’s groans. When each pit was full of corpses, the police forced the kolkhozniks to fill them in with earth. The victims who were still alive moved about in the pits, and the earth rose up in these places.1
According to the Encyclopedia of Jewish Life, hundreds of Jews from the area were “ghettoized” in Novozlatopol’ in November and December 1941, prior to being murdered in a large-scale Aktion, which commenced on December 20, 1941. This source estimates that a few thousand Jews from Novozlatopol’ and the surrounding area were executed, and some were expelled to Staryi-Kermenchik and perished there.2
According to other sources, the mass shooting of the Jews was probably not carried out until sometime in early February 1942. The approximately 800 victims were from Novozlatopol’ and other villages in the raion. The bodies were buried in four pits on the outskirts of the village.3 The killings were organized, in all likelihood, by a detachment of Einsatzkommando 12, which was deployed in Guliaipole at that time, assisted by the Ukrainian police and local ethnic Germans.
Some local non-Jews, however, risked their lives in efforts to save Jews. For example, in early February 1942, Nikifor Cheredenko of the village of Prishib traveled several hours by cart to rescue the Tsviling family (former neighbors, then living in Friling, Novozlatopol’ raion) shortly before their scheduled arrest and transfer to Novozlatopol’. He had to smuggle them through German patrols and quickly supplied them with false identity papers. However, the other villagers of Prishib also had to keep the secret in the face of repeated German investigations into the “new arrivals.” The Tsviling family was one of the very few that survived in the Novozlatopol’ Jewish national raion. Another Jew who survived was Ruvim Gershovich Platok, who fell into the pit alive and was buried but at night somehow managed to climb out and find refuge in the area.
At the end of the occupation, the police chief Petkovskii and the local German “colonists” Simon, Bauer, Krebs, and Risselman were tried by the Soviet authorities and found guilty of having committed mass murder in the Novozlatopol’ raion.4
SOURCES
Information about the destruction of the Jews of the Novozlatopol’ raion can be found in the following publications: S.F. Orlianskii, Kholokost na Zaporozh’e (Zaporozh’e, 2003); and Joshua Rubenstein and Ilya Altman, eds., The Unknown Black Book: The Holocaust in the German-Occupied Soviet Territories (Bloomington: Indiana University Press in association with the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, 2007), pp. 205–207. Shmuel Spector and Geoffrey Wigoder, eds., The Encyclopedia of Jewish Life before and during the Holocaust (Jerusalem: Yad Vashem; New York: New York University Press, 2001), p. 907, but reports the “ghettoization” of the Jews of Novozlatopol’, unfortunately does not cite any sources for this.
Documentation pertaining to the elimination of the Jews of Novozlatopol’ can be found in the following archives: DAZPO (1335-6-6; 1662-1-1; 1844-1-1 and 3); GARF (7021-61-29 and 8114-1-952, pp. 132–133); and TsDAHOU (57-4-14).
NOTES
1. DAZPO, 1662-1-1, p. 5, as cited in Orlianskii, Kholokost na Zaporozh’e, pp. 38–40.
2. Spector and Wigoder, The Encyclopedia of Jewish Life, p. 907.
3. DAZPO, 1335-6-6, p. 182, inquiry of the executive committee of the Guliaipole Council of Peoples’ Deputies, No. 08-27/86, February 17, 1986. In DAZPO, 1844-1-3, the number of 800 victims is given, together with a list of Jewish residents of the Novozlatopol’ raion who were killed during the occupation. This list—which is not complete—includes the names of 661 persons.
4. DAZPO, 1844-1-3, p. 93, as cited in Orlianskii, Kholokost na Zaporozh’e, pp. 39–40.
