Krzemieniec

Jewish settlement in Krzemieniec started at the beginning of the 16th century. During the uprising (1648-1649) of Bogdan Chmelnitsky, many Jews fled under the onslaught of Chmelnitsky's Cossacks. However, others were murdered when the Cossacks captured the town. In 1753 there was a blood libel against the Jewish community of the town. In 1793, after the Second Partition of Poland, Krzemieniec came under the rule of the Russia Empire. The Jewish population of the town rose rapidly during the 19th century: in 1897 Krzemieniec had about 6,400 Jews, who comprised approximately 36 percent of its total population. One of the prominent Jewish figures connected to Krzemieniec was Rabbi Isaac Baer Levinsohn (known as Ribal), one of the founders of the Jewish Enlightenment in Eastern Europe.

After World War I Krzemieniec was incorporated into the independent Polish state. During the interwar years Jewish educational institutions included a Hebrew-language high school, later a Tarbut school, and a kindergarten, Talmud Torah, ORT school, evening classes for artisans, and several Jewish public libraries. Non-Zionist parties (such as the Bund, the Communists, and the Folkspartei) and Zionist parties (such as Poalei Zion, Ha Mizrahi and the Revisionists) and their youth movements were active in Krzemieniec. In 1931 7,256 Jews lived in Krzemieniec, where they comprised 26.5 percent of the total population.

With the beginning of World War II on September 1, 1939, the number of Jews increased since several thousand Jews from German-occupied Poland took refuge in Krzemieniec. After September 17, 1939, with the arrival of the Red Army in the city following the Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact, Krzemieniec became part of Soviet Ukraine.

Soviet rule put an end to Jewish independent public and commercial life. Factories were nationalized and artisans organized into cooperatives, while the Tarbut school became a Soviet school that taught in Yiddish. It is estimated that by mid-1941 the Jewish population exceeded 12,000.

The Germans captured Krzemieniec on July 2 or 3, 1941. After the start of the German invasion, several hundred young Jews were able to flee into the Soviet Union. During the first days of German rule in the town, Jewish property was looted by the local population and members of the Ukrainian militia who, incited by the Germans, staged a pogrom in the town that lasted several days. At that time between 400 and 800 Jewish men were killed. The Germans discovered that NKVD personnel had killed several hundred Ukrainian national activists just before the Soviet retreat from the town. As a result, hundreds Jewish men were arrested and, after being held for several days in the town's prison, were shot to death there by a German unit in reprisal for the alleged "Jewish" murder of the Ukrainians.

On July 23, 1941 the German Security Police arrested and shot to death about 800 members of the Jewish intelligentsia and Jewish religious figures near the Security Police headquarters in the town, thus destroying the fabric of the Jewish community leadership.

In early August 1941 the Jews were required to wear a white armband with a blue Star of David (replaced later with a yellow patch) on their outer clothes. They were also compelled to perform forced labor. It was forbidden for Jews to use the sidewalks and they had to take off their hats when passing a German. Women and men were forced to have short hair. Jews had to dismantle the Jewish cemetery because the Germans wanted the stones for their construction projects. During that time a Judenrat (Jewish council) was created; it was headed by Benjamin (Ben-Zion) Katz. This Judenrat consisted of well respected individuals from the town, as well as refugees from the western parts of Poland. After Katz was murdered, he was eventually succeeded by Dr. Bronfeld. When Bronfeld was killed by the Germans, Dr. Mandel from Kraków, who had previously served as head of the Jewish Order Service, was appointed the last head of the local Judenrat. The Judenrat was charged with collecting ransom payments that were referred to as "contributions." It also distributed the daily bread rations that the Germans allotted, as well as conscripted workers for forced labor. According to several testimonies, the Gebietskommissar (regional commissar) of Krzemieniec Regierungsrat Fritz Müller demanded from the Judenrat that a Jewish brothel for the Jewish youth be set up, but his order was rescinded after a bribe was paid. At the same time the Germans stole everything valuable from the town's synagogue and then they set it on fire. Afterward, the Gestapo came to the Judenrat to "investigate" who had burned down the synagogue. They wrote an official report claiming that the Jews had burned it down themselves. Gebietskommissar Müller decided to pull down the walls of the burned-out synagogue and sow grass in the place the synagogue had stood.

On March 1, 1942 about 9,000 Jews were interned in a sealed ghetto located in the north-western part of the town. This ghetto was enclosed by a three-meter high wooden fence and divided into seven areas for the purpose of organizing forced-labor workers. The ghetto was overcrowded. The Judenrat's soup kitchen could not fully mitigate the harsh living conditions in the ghetto and, therefore, starvation was rampant. There was no running water and the entire ghetto population had access to only three wells. The hospital lacked medicine and food for its patients. Jewish refugees and poor people lived in an abandoned synagogue, where many perished.

On August 9, 1942 German and Ukrainian auxialary police selected from the ghetto between 1,200 and 1,500 Jewish skilled workers, as well as members of the Judenrat and Jewish police and their families, and transferred them for work to the nearby village of Bialokrynica. On August 10-11, the Krzemieniec ghetto was liquidated. Many of its inmates, as well as half of the Jews who had been taken to Bialokrynica, were shot to death, at the former shooting range outside the town, by a German murder squad assisted by Ukrainian auxiliary police. The Jews of the nearby village of Berezce were also killed at the same murder site. The operation continued with searches and manhunts for two weeks, during which many Jews were discovered in hiding and murdered at the same murder site. Thus, on August 14 1,500 Jews from the ghetto were shot to death, and two days later, another 400 Jews who had been kept in Bialokrynica, along with some other Jews from the ghetto, were shot to death. At the same time, 200 skilled worker and artisans were taken from Bialokrynica to the town's prison. On August 20 an SS squad shot to death 1,210 Jews, apparently at the same former shooting range.

On September 2 or 9, 1942 the Jews who had been still hiding in the ghetto set it on fire to cover their escape. Most of them, several hundred people, were subsequently captured and shot to death, apparently at the town's prison. On the same day, 120 Jewish tailors, who had been kept in prison, were shot to death. During the following weeks the killing of the specialists continued. On October 22 or 23, a last group of 21 Jewish artisans who had been transferred from Bialokrynica to the town's prison was shot to death. In the following weeks some Jews who had been found in hiding were also shot to death in the local prison.

Krzemieniec was liberated by the Red Army on March 19, 1944.