ZLATOPOL’
Pre-1941: Zlatopol’, town, Novomirgorod raion, Kirovograd oblast’, Ukrainian SSR; 1941–1944: Slatopol, Rayon center, Gebiet Nowo Mirgorod, Generalkommissariat Nikolajew; post-1991: part of Novomyrhorod, Kirovohrad oblast’, Ukraine
Zlatopol’ is located about 65 kilometers (40 miles) northwest of Kirovograd. In 1939 the Jewish population numbered 1,047 (26 percent of the total population).1
German forces occupied the settlement on August 1, 1941, six weeks after the German invasion of the USSR on June 22. During this intervening period, part of the Jewish population was able to evacuate to the east. Men of eligible age were conscripted into or enlisted voluntarily for the Red Army. Around 75 percent of the pre-war Jewish population remained in Zlatopol’ at the start of the German occupation.
In the summer and fall of 1941, a German military commandant’s office (Ortskommandantur) governed the town. It established a local administration and a Ukrainian auxiliary police force recruited from local residents.
In November 1941, power was transferred to a German civil administration. Zlatopol’ became the center of Rayon Slatopol in Gebiet Kirowograd, and later in Gebiet Nowo Mirgorod, within Generalkommissariat Nikolajew in Reichskommissariat Ukraine.
Shortly after the occupation of Zlatopol’, the Ortskommandantur organized the registration and marking of the Jews with armbands. They were also forced to perform heavy forced labor tasks, such as the repair of roads and buildings, solely because of their race.
In the fall of 1941, the German military administration established a “ghetto camp” for the Jews in Zlatopol’.2 Jews were prohibited from leaving the ghetto to buy products from Ukrainian local inhabitants. As a result, starvation quickly ensued among the ghetto inmates.
In November 1941, the first Aktion was conducted against the Jews of Zlatopol’. German security forces assisted by Ukrainian police used chloropicrin gas to suffocate 174 Jews in a basement.3 During the second Aktion in February 1942, on the instructions of the Gebietskommissar, the Ukrainian police suffocated 202 Jews, also using gas.4 In May 1942, a third Aktion was carried out in the same manner, killing 183 Jews.5 Altogether, 559 people were killed in the course of these three Aktions.
In June 1942, the German Gendarmerie captured 14 Jews who had been hiding and shot them in the forest nearby.6 By June 1942, 240 Jews remained in the ghetto.7 On September 30, 1942, around 100 Jews were shot in a deserted mine shaft near the village of Maslovo. When they were taken out of the building and led into the car for transportation to the killing site, a number of young Jews offered resistance. Armed only with metal bars, they threw themselves at the German and Ukrainian police, slightly wounding some of them.8 After this, only the craftsmen and their families remained in the ghetto. They were exterminated at some time later in 1942 or in 1943.9
Between 1941 and 1943, the Germans and their collaborators murdered more than 800 Jews in Zlatopol’.
SOURCES
The ghetto in Zlatopol’ is mentioned in the following publications: Rossiiskaia Evreiskaia Entsiklopediia (Moscow: Russian Academy of Natural Sciences, Jewish Encyclopedia Research Center, “Epos,” 2000), 4:486; and in Handbuch der Lager, Gefängnisse und Ghettos auf dem besetzten Territorium der Ukraine (1941–1944) (Kiev: Staatskomitee der Archiven der Ukraine, 2000), p. 93. There is also a survivor testimony published in Yitzhak Arad, ed., Unichtozhenie evreev SSSR v gody nemetskoi okkupatsii, 1941–1944: Sbornik dokumentov i materialov (Jerusalem: Yad Vashem, 1991), pp. 246–249.
Documents relating to the persecution and annihilation of Jews in Zlatopol’ can be found in the following archives: BA-BL; DAKO; GARF (7021-66-123); TsDAHOU (57-4-170); TsDAVO (3676-4-317; R4328-1-1); USHMM; and YVA (O-33/154-1-4).
NOTES
1. Mordechai Altshuler, ed., Distribution of the Jewish Population of the USSR 1939 (Jerusalem: Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 1993), p. 27.
2. “Zlatopol’,” in Rossiiskaia Evreiskaia Entsiklopediia, 4:486, indicates the building of a children’s home was used for this purpose. 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. 1514, dates the establishment of the “ghetto camp” to December 1941. TsDAVO, R4328-1-1, pp. 61–62, 67–68, calls it a “ghetto camp” established in the forest on the outskirts of town.
3. GARF, 7021-66-123, p. 55.
4. TsDAVO, 3676-4-317, Report of the Higher SS and Police Leader (HSSPF) and chief of the Security Police in Reichskommissariat Ukraine for the period from March 6 to April 1, 1942.
5. GARF, 7021-66-123, p. 55.
6. TsDAHOU, 57-4-170, p. 73, Meldungen aus den besetzten Ostgebieten, No. 12, July 17, 1942.
7. Testimony of Iosif Iakovlevich Butovetskii, in Arad, Unichtozhenie evreev SSSR, p. 247.
8. Ibid., pp. 247–248; the Butovetskii testimony has also been published in Yalkut Moreshet 45 (June 1988): 179–184.
9. Available sources indicate that 83 Jews were murdered in 1943; see GARF, 7021-66-123, pp. 55 and reverse side.
