Kamenka Moldavskaya

The settlement of Kamenka was founded in 1609 within the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, and by the end of the 18th century it was a small town on the western border of the Russian Empire. In 1897, it was home to 6,746 people, 2,902 of whom were Jews. In the years 1924-1940, Kamenka lay within the Moldavian ASSR, and in 1940-1941 it was part of the Moldavian SSR. Many of the town's Jews were artisans and craftsmen. A Jewish collective farm named Novaya Zhizn' ["New Life" in Russian] was established in the vicinity of Kamenka. The town also had a Yiddish-language school. In 1939, there were 1,283 Jews in Kamenka, making up about seventeen percent of the total population. Following the outbreak of the Soviet-German War on June 22, 1941, some of the Jewish men in Kamenka were conscripted into the Red Army, while a number of other local Jews managed to evacuate into the Soviet interior. At the same time, some Bessarabian Jews fleeing the advancing German and Romanian troops came to the town. The Romanian army occupied Kamenka on July 23, 1941. Apparently on that same day, Romanian soldiers passing through the town rounded up all of its remaining Jews – more than 1,000 people – and assembled them in the market square. The detainees were held there for several days. During this time, their homes were looted. Probably in the same period, the Romanian soldiers shot as many as sixty Jews in an orchard near the marketplace. After the first wave of killings, the Jews of Kamenka were required to wear badges with the Star of David on the front and back of their clothes, and perform forced labor of various sorts. During the winter of 1941-1942, some 1,000 Jews were drowned in the Dniester River by the Romanian gendarmes. After these massacres, some Jews were still kept in the former inn for travelers (known as “zayezd” in Russian) in the town center, and the Romanians permitted them to work. In early 1942, the remaining Jews of Kamenka were moved to other camps in Transnistria; those unable to walk were drowned in the Dniester River. Kamenka was liberated by the Red Army on March 24, 1944.