YENAKIEVO
1938–1941: Yenakievo, town, Stalino oblast’, Ukrainian SSR; 1941–1943: Jenakjewo, Rear Area, Army Group South (rückwärtiges Heeresgebiet Süd); post-1991: Yenakievo, Donets’k oblast’, Ukraine
Yenakievo is located 240 kilometers (149 miles) east of Dnepropetrovsk. By 1939, there were 3,293 Jews living in the town (3.72 percent of the total population).
Units of the German 6th Army occupied the town on November 1, 1941, more than four months after the initial German invasion of the Soviet Union on June 22. Most Jews were able to evacuate to the east. Approximately 15 percent of the pre-war Jewish population remained at the start of the German occupation.
From November 1, 1941, until the end of the occupation in September 1943, a military commandant’s office administered Yenakievo. From the end of November 1941 to August 1942, the occupying authority was Ortskommandantur I/270, which was subordinated to Feldkommandantur 240 in Stalino.1 The commandant established a local administration and a Ukrainian police force in the town. The Ukrainian policemen actively participated in the persecution and elimination of the Jews.
Shortly after the occupation of Yenakievo, the Ortskommandantur ordered the local administration to register and mark the Jews. The Jews were also forced to perform heavy labor.
In February 1942, the remaining 509 Jews (175 families) in Yenakievo were resettled into a ghetto by an official administrative order. The ghetto consisted of four large barracks in the Krasnyi Gorodok settlement area. The Jews remained confined within the ghetto for around three months. At the end of May or the beginning of June 1942, the Jews were driven out to Gorlovka and shot together in a mine, where their corpses were then covered over. There were 25 Communists who were also taken out to Gorlovka and shot along with the Jews.2
One Jewish woman, Maria Markovna Konovalova (née Ginzburg), escaped from the ghetto on the eve of its liquidation, after being tipped off by non-Jewish friends of the Kvasha family. The ghetto was closely guarded, but dressed only in her underwear she fled at night by swimming across a river. She was met on the other side by Andriy and Petro Kvasha, who gave her clothes, put a cross around her neck, and subsequently helped her to move from village to village to avoid recognition and betrayal.3
The extermination of Jews in Yenakievo was organized by Sonderkommando 4b with the assistance of the Ukrainian police. The headquarters staff of Sonderkommando 4b was located in Gorlovka from March 1942. At that time, it was headed by SS-Sturmbannführer Walter Haensch.4
After the liquidation of the ghetto, some 30 Jews (10 families) composed of artisan specialists remained in the town. In September 1942, they were also taken out and shot in the mine area near Gorlovka.5
SOURCES
Documentation concerning the German occupation of Yenakievo and the murder of the town’s Jews can be found in the following archives: GARF; NARA; and YVA. A brief mention of the ghetto can also be found in a book by Yakov Suslensky, They Were True Heroes: Citizens of Ukraine, Righteous among the Nations (Kiev: Society “Ukraine,” 1995), pp. 141–143.
NOTES
1. See report by Feldkommandantur 240 dated December 4, 1941. NARA, T-501, reel 6, fr. 818.
2. GARF, 7021-72-18, pp. 23, 26–27. According to another account in this file, the ghetto was liquidated on May 17 or May 18, 1942 (see p. 40 and reverse) or perhaps in April 1942 (see pp. 15, 19, and reverse).
3. Suslensky, They Were True Heroes, pp. 141–143.
4. In 1948 in Nürnberg, Haensch was sentenced to death. In 1951, the sentence was commuted to 15 years in prison. In 1955, he was released from prison before completing his sentence.
5. GARF, 7021-72-18, pp. 15, 27.
