Jews from Kamenets Podolsk collected by Germans before being taken to the murder site
USHMM - United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Copy YVA 14614574
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Murder Story of Kamenets Podolsk Jews at the Kamenets Podolsk Munitions Depot
Murder Site
Kamenets Podolsk
Ukraine (USSR)
On August 26, 1941, between 12,000 and 14,000 Jews deported to Kamenets Podolsk from Hungarian-controlled Carpatho-Rus were murdered in the area of the munitions depot on the eastern outskirts of Kamenets Podolsk. Jews of all ages and both sexes were ordered to assemble at the city's train station on the pretext that they were either going to be returned home or resettled in Palestine. Instead they were taken to the murder site. There they were forced to run a gauntlet of policemen and to surrender their valuables. Some of them were ordered to undress and then lay face down in a pit and were shot in the back of the head. The executioners were members of the 320 Order Police Battalion, as well as members of a unit formed especially for this massacre by Friedrich Jeckeln, the High SS and Police Leader of the South, from his personal bodyguards, a guard platoon from his headquarters, and members of his staff.
The next day, August 27, 1941, early in the morning, the Jews of Kamenets Podolsk were driven out of their houses by Germans and local auxiliary policemen. They were told they were going to be resettled. The Jews were then taken on foot to the former munitions depot area, a huge territory on the northeast outskirts of Kamenets Podolsk. Craters left by explosions of munitions were visible there. The Jews were ordered to undress, to hand over their money and valuables and, then, taken in groups to the craters, and shot by automatic weapons fire. The perpetrators of this massacre were members of the German 320 Order Police Battalion and of a special unit formed by Friedrich Jeckeln, the High SS and Police Leader "South," from his bodyguards, a guard platoon from his headquarters, and members of his staff. The massacre continued on the following day. During the two days close to 10,000 Jews were murdered.
After the transfer of the surviving Jews of Kamenets Podolsk to the ghetto in the area of the former Soviet military camp of a Soviet borderguard training unit, in the every Saturday in the second half of 1942 small groups of the ghetto inmates were shot at the munitions depot area nearby.
In early November 1942 the inmates of the ghetto totaling about 4,000 persons of all ages and both sexes, were brought by truck, in groups of 40 to 60, to two pits. There the victims were forced to completely undress, enter the pits, and lie face down. They were then shot in the back of the head with sub-machine guns.
At the end of 1942 and throughout 1943 the munitions depot area served as a site for the murder of those Jews who either had succeeded in avoiding the previous massacres of Kamenets Podolsk Jews or had been brought to the city from nearby localities.
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From the letter of Semyon Faingold, the Red Army soldier, sent to his brother in 1944:
... Mother and Manya spent their last days at the former barracks of NKVD troops near the train station. Here large graves were prepared and shootings took place on Saturdays as soon as the graves were prepared.
Manya lost her children on September 10. The children were not shot, but thrown alive into the graves. The little children were torn apart...
I am standing here near one of the opened graves. Hundreds of bodies of naked men, women, and children are lying on top of each other. Some had their skulls split by blows from weapons, others had their limbs broken, still others did not have any wounds at all-they were simply buried alive.
Right here on October 31, 1942 our sweet, infinitely dear old mother walked, together with other pitiful people, on bare feet through frozen puddles. Although totally emaciated, pale from pain and humiliation, and bruised,she approached this grave and one large tear fell from her kind, tender eyes, but she did not cry. I know that. With her gaze directed into the distance, with her last look she saw you and me and begged [us] to take revenge. Then a drunken "shutzman," a traitor, grabbed her by her torn blouse and dragged her to the grave where that fascist barbarian, like an animal lacked a conscience, shot this unfortunate, totally innocent woman...
YVA O.48 / 273.25
N. H. testified: (in Yiddish)
...After Hungarian and Czech Jews collected the gold that was demanded from them, they were given two hours to get ready for the journey. They were lined up in rows in military fashion and taken to the destroyed train station. Rabbis with Toral scrolls led [this procession], followed by mothers with their children, and ill and old people supported [by others]. All the people moved along with difficulty; the majority of them believed that they were going to be returned home. They were taken to demolished barracks near the train station and were held there under guard for two days on the pretext that they were waiting for a train. On the third day they were driven out of the barracks with rubbber clubs and taken to an open field where there was a ravine surrounded by hills. There all of them were shot by SS men.
Women and children from the Kamenets-Podolsk train station area, who were living in a cellar about a kilometer from the murder site told me horror stories about the groans and cries that they heard from far away.
[The site of the massacre] was full of smoke coming from the constant shooting. Many people were thrown into the grave while still alive, some of them having been wounded only slightly.
Several days afterward, both day and night frightful noises were heard from the graves. Then SS men forced peasants from the surrounding villages to cover the graves. The railway workers said that the earth was heaving for several days.
ZIH, WARSAW 301/6848 copy YVA M.49 / JM/21067
Kamenets Podolsk
ammunition warehouse
Murder Site
Ukraine (USSR)
48.683;26.585
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Bina Tenenblat, who was born in 1928 in Kamenets Podolsk and lived in there during the war years, testified:
USC SHOAH FOUNDATION, 33150 copy YVA O.93 / 33150
Mikhail Melnik, who was born in 1926 in Kamenets Podolsk and lived in the city during the war years, testified:
USC SHOAH FOUNDATION, 38692 copy YVA O.93 / 38692
Ilya Kelmanovich was born in 1930 and lived in Kamenets Podolsk during the war years, testified:
USC SHOAH FOUNDATION, 15814 copy YVA O.93 / 15814