the Ternovka Ghetto

Ternovka (Yiddish: Ternevka; Ukrainian: Ternivka) In the mid-1920s, Ternovka had a Jewish population of about 3,000. A number of Jews continued to run private businesses in the early years of Soviet rule, but many eventually took up white- and blue-collar jobs in the state sector, while others turned to farming on kolkhozes. The town had a Jewish Ethnic Soviet and a Jewish government school, both of which operated in Yiddish. In the mid-1930s, the town’s synagogues were closed. After the German invasion of the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941, a number of Jewish townspeople fled to the Soviet interior. The Germans occupied Ternovka in late July 1941, and shortly thereafter established an unfenced open ghetto. Jews were forced to wear white Star of David armbands and paint Stars of David on their homes. The Germans appointed two Jews, one surnamed Nokhe, to head the community. Survivors of massacres in Uman,* Teplik,* Gaysin*, and other locations arrived at the Ternovka ghetto. During the fall and winter of 1941, Germans and Ukrainian police murdered several ghetto inhabitants. Men were seized for forced labor. A number of men were sent to the Krasnopolka labor camp in the Gaysin area and did not return. After a selection was conducted on May 27, 1942, SS forces and Ukrainian police murdered 2,400 ghetto inhabitants at a location near the town. The following day, the German commander of the town murdered forty-five Jews that had been hiding. Several skilled workers, the two leaders of the ghetto and their families, and a few people that had managed to hide during the killings, survived. They were later concentrated in two houses, and, over time, were joined by Jews from other localities. The Ternovka ghetto was liquidated on April 2, 1943.