PAVLOGRAD
Pre-1941: Pavlograd, city and raion center, Dnepropetrovsk oblast’, Ukrainian SSR; 1941–1944: Pawlograd, city and Gebiet center, Generalkommissariat Dnjepropetrowsk; post-1991: Pavlohrad, Dnipropetrovsk oblast’, Ukraine
Pavlograd is located 69 kilometers (43 miles) east-northeast of Dnepropetrovsk. In 1939 the Jewish population stood at 2,510 (7.4 percent of the total population). [End Page 1632]
In the three and a half months following the initial German invasion of the USSR, a considerable number of Jews from Pavlograd were able to evacuate to the east. Jewish men of military age were conscripted into the Red Army or enlisted voluntarily.
On October 11, 1941, units of the German 6th Army occupied the city. From the middle of October 1941 until August 1942, a German military commandant’s office (Ortskommandantur I/829) controlled the city. The Ortskommandantur established a local administration and recruited a Ukrainian auxiliary police force, which in April 1942 consisted of 158 men.1 Shortly after the occupation of the city, the commandant issued an order calling for all the Jews to be registered and requiring them to wear armbands bearing the Star of David on their left arms. All Jews were also ordered to appear in front of the city headquarters each morning for compulsory labor.
The first shooting of Jews in the city was apparently carried out at the end of 1941.2 During the spring of 1942, the German authorities established a Jewish prison camp or “ghetto” on the grounds of factory no. 359. Local Jews from Pavlograd, as well as Jews from the surrounding area and possibly some refugees, were resettled there. The camp was liquidated in June 1942, and all the prisoners were shot. In total, around 2,000 persons were murdered. German forces assisted by Latvian collaborators conducted the shootings.3
SOURCES
The “ghetto” in Pavlograd is mentioned in Handbuch der Lager, Gefängnisse und Ghettos auf dem besetzten Territorium der Ukraine (1941–1944) (Kiev: Staatskomitee der Archiven der Ukraine, 2000), p. 65.
Documents and witness testimonies regarding the persecution and destruction of the Jews of Pavlograd can be found in the following archives: DADO; GARF (7021-57-68, pp. 100–101); NARA; TsDAHOU (57-4-212, p. 60); USHMM (RG-22.002M, reel 11; and RG-22.005M, reel 2); and YVA.
NOTES
1. NARA, RG-242, T-501, reel 18, fr. 814.
2. From November 1941 to January 1942, according to one source, 3,672 persons were killed in Pavlograd. See GARF, 7021-57-68, p. 103. In our view, this figure is much too high. These shootings were probably carried out by GFP-Group 711, commanded by an officer named Färber. In December 1941 and the first half of January 1942, this unit was stationed in Pavlograd.
3. Ibid., pp. 100–101; TsDAHOU, 57-4-212, p. 60. According to the inquiry (no. 23/1297) conducted by the committee of Pavlograd’s City Council, on July 15, 1999, 2,100 Jews were annihilated on the grounds of the factory (now called “Pal-mash”) where the prison camp was located. These victims were mostly Soviet citizens; the others (670 persons) were “Polish Jews.” In our view, this figure is also too high. A Soviet intelligence report for 1942 mentioned that the Germans killed 1,000 Jews in Pavlograd; see USHMM, RG-22.005M (Russian State Archive for the Preservation and Study of Documents of Contemporary History), reel 2, 69-1-1090.
