Kamenka Shevchenkovskaya

From the mid 1920s until 1946 the town was called Kamenka Shevchenkovskaya; in 1946 the name reverted to Kamenka. Jews apparently first settled in Kamenka in the late 17th or the early 18th century. In 1897 they numbered 2,193 or 35 percent of the total population. In late April 1919 70 Jews from Kamenka were murdered in a pogrom carried out by Denikin's Volunteer Army. In the early 1920s the local Jewish community established an orphanage for Jewish children whose parents had been killed in pogroms. From 1922 a Yiddish-language government school operated in Kamenka. By 1939 Jewish population of Kamenka Shevchenkovskaya had fallen to 618 or 8 percent of the total population. The persecution and murder of Jews began as soon as the town was occupied by the Germans on August 9, 1941. About 60 percent of the prewar Jewish population remained in Kamenka Shevchenkovskaya, while the rest of the Jews escaped to the east. In late December 1941 400 Jews from Kamenka Shevchenkovskaya were forced into a ghetto. Its inmates were made to perform brutal forced labor and many of them died due to the severe conditions in the ghetto. The remaining Jews were killed by the local policemen together with Aleksandrovka Jews in early 1942 and, later, in separate murder operation in March 1942. In addition, according to some sources there were several killings of 5-7 Jews in different places. Kamenka Shevchenkovskaya was liberated by the Red Army on January 10, 1944.