Kalinindorf

Kalinindorf (Yiddish for "Kalinin's village") was founded in 1926 by emigrants from Belorussia and Ukraine as a Jewish agricultural settlement supported by the American organization Agro-Joint. The kolkhoz "Nay Lebn" (Yiddish for "new life") was established nearby. In 1932 Kalinindorf's Jewish population consisted of 120 residents. In 1935 Kalinindorf became part of the Larindorf Jewish ethnic County. On the eve of World War II 80 families (mostly Jewish), with 400 residents, were living in the village. When the war broke out its Jewish residents managed to leave the village before the arrival of the German forces. However, some of them only succeeded in reaching Kerch (a crossing-point to the Soviet interior), from which they returned to Kalinindorf. The Germans occupied Kalinindorf in late October 1941. From the beginning of the occupation the local Jews were deprived of food and forced to perform forced labor. Then, assisted by the local policeman, the Germans, who had lists of the names of Jewish residents, went through the village and drove the Jews out of their homes. According to some testimony, in November 1941 Germans surrounded the village, took all the Jews (mainly children, women, and the elderly) away by truck, and shot them to death at a well outside the village. In November also, according to the same testimony, a truck took the young children from other villages to an abandoned well in the center of the village and shot them to death. Their bodies were thrown into the well. In June 1942 an SS unit murdered 36 Jews of the village at a well 2 kilometers northwest of the village. There is evidence that some Jews (mainly women) were forced to walk into mine fields, where they were killed when they stepped on mines. In April 1944 Kalinindorf was liberated by the Red Army. In 1948 the village was renamed Kalinino.