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

Pre-1941: Dzhankoi, town and raion center, Crimean ASSR, RSFSR; 1941–1944: Dshankoj, administered initially by the Rear Area, German 11th Army; post-1991: Dzhankoi, Autonomous Republic of Crimea, Ukraine

Dzhankoi is located about 90 kilometers (56 miles) northeast of Simferopol’. According to the census of January 1939, there were 1,397 Jews living in Dzhankoi and 2,610 in the entire Dzhankoi raion.

German troops occupied the town on October 31, 1941. Ortskommandantur II/939 administered the town. It was headed by Hauptmann Weigand, who was subordinated to Generalleutnant Döhla, the commanding officer of the Rear Area of the German 11th Army (Korück 553).

At the beginning of January 1942, a subunit of Sonderkommando 10b arrived in Dzhankoi from Kerch’. The unit, which remained in the town until August 1942, was commanded by SS-Obersturmführer Siegfried Schuchart.

In September 1942 a Security Police post was established in Dzhankoi. It was subordinated to the commanding officer of the Security Police and SD in Simferopol’. A Gendarmerie-Gebietsführer (Gendarmerieleutnant Fitzke) based in the town was in charge of four Gendarmerie posts.

Since the town was occupied four months after the start of the war, most Jews managed to evacuate. The Germans found only 44 Jews there on their arrival. The Ortskommandantur ordered the mayor to place them in a ghetto on November 7, 1941.¹ The first Jewish Aktion was carried out in early December 1941, when 15 Jewish men were shot in District 21 by the Gendarmerie during the course of some house searches.²

In mid-December 1941, a “concentration camp” was established in the town. Jews both from within the town and the surrounding district were held there. The Jews were used for various work tasks in the town and were guarded by the local militia.³ The camp was located in the attic of a dairy in the center of the town. G. Purevich, who managed to escape with the help of a Ukrainian acquaintance, recalled the conditions in the camp:

The crowding and congestion were intolerable. The children were tormented by hunger and thirst. Every morning we found that several had died…. [The Jews] were driven to hard labor—hauling rocks. The guard made sure that each person hauled one rock. Anyone who collapsed from the weight was shot on the spot…. When I found myself in the attic and saw what was going on there … I almost went mad…. In the congestion I met all the Jews who had not been evacuated from Dzhankoi—many Jewish collective farmers from the surrounding countryside and also non-Jews. The non-Jewish peasants were being held here for helping the unfortunate or for giving them food.⁴

According to Purevich, “[E]very day several dozen people were selected from among us and taken to the trench made into a grave.” He mentions also that one Jew was appointed by the Germans as responsible for the camp as a form of Jewish elder. However, he soon became very unpopu lar with the other inmates after denouncing the ghetto’s quartermaster, Radchenko, for secretly helping the Jews with extra rations as much as he could.⁵

The Germans decided to liquidate the camp because of the danger of epidemics spreading from it. A report by the 1c Department of the 11th Army staff dated January 1, 1942, for the period December 16–31, 1941, describes the liquidation as follows:

One particular incident, the creation of the “Jewish concentration camp” in Dzhankoi, led to repeated [End Page 1765] negotiations between the SD, the 1c/AO, the Field Gendarmerie, and ourselves. According to a report by the Ortskommandant of Dzhankoi, hunger is rampant in the camp and there is a danger of an epidemic, so that the “cleansing” had to be carried out immediately. The SD refused to carry out the Aktion because it did not have enough men, and it demanded that Field Gendarmes undertake it. Field Gendarmes should in principle not be involved in such Aktions. Only after we stated that we were prepared to make available the Field Gendarmes to cordon off the camp did the SD chief issue orders to carry out the Aktion, which would presumably be done on January 2, 1942.⁶

An SD unit from the Gruppenstab in Simferopol’ carried out a “Jewish Aktion” on December 30, 1941: 443 Jews were shot in a hilly area near the road to Simferopol’.⁷ The passage quoted above suggests there may have been a second Aktion, shortly after that on December 30, but witnesses who refer to two Aktions may also be referring either to smaller killings carried out beforehand or to others later.⁸ In early January 1942, Ortskommandantur II/939 sent back to Berlin a number of items of property confiscated from Jews who had been arrested and placed into the “Jewish camp” in Dzhankoi between December 5, 1941, and January 3, 1942, by the Field Gendarmerie.⁹

Subsequently the local military commandants from time to time arrested additional Jews who had gone into hiding and handed them over for execution by the SD. In late February 1942, the Ortskommandantur handed over to the SD “the Jew Alterman, who had escaped from the Jewish camp here.”¹⁰ Six Jews were handed over to the SD in Dzhankoi in April, and two more were handed over “for execution” in June 1942.¹¹