In November 1941 between 20,000 and 25,000 Jews from Odessa, as well as Jews from other places, including from Bessarabia and North Bukovina, were deported to the village of Bogdanovka, about 200 kilometers northeast of Odessa, and put into barns and pigsties of a state farm. The total number of Bogdanovka camp inmates was between 48,000 and 54,000. In the last third of December 1941 the Romanian prefect of the area, Modest Isopescu, ordered the structures where ill detainees were held to be set on fire. Between 3,000 and 5,000 people, many of them deportees from Odessa, were burned alive. The rest of the Jews deported to Bogdanovka were shot in a nearby ravine in a massacre that lasted, with Christmas and New Year breaks, from December 21, 1941 to January 9, 1942. Jews were taken in groups of about 20 to the ravine, stood at the edge, and then shot. The children were thrown into the ravine alive. The perpetrators were members of the Ukrainian auxiliary police and the ethnic German militia (Selbstschutz).

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Soviet Reports

ChGK Soviet Reports

From information contained in a letter from military prosecutor of the 37th Army Colonel Gulevich, about atrocities committed by the German-fascist occupiers on territory that was liberated by the Red Army in February 1944:

Document from the 37th Army Prosecutor's office regarding the murder of Jews in the Dnepropetrovsk and Odessa regions, 1944

…On December 21, 1941 a squad of German colonists headed by Nikolai Mikhailovich Gegel arrived [in Bogdanovka] from Pervomaisk. Along with German soldiers, on the same day they began shooting the inmates [of the Bogdanovka camp] in the forest, 500 meters from the bank of the Southern Bug River. Near deep pits they [the inmates] were robbed of their clothes, taken in groups of 8 to the edge of the pits, forced to kneel, and were shot with rifles in the back of their heads. The able-bodied prisoners buried the bodies. Afterwards, they [too] were shot. Many [of the victims] resisted and tried to escape, but were shot down on the spot. Straw and wood were thrown into the pits and set afire. Often people who had been wounded but were still alive were thrown into the pits. The children were thrown into the fire alive. Policemen headed by Andrusenko set on fire 4 pigsties where people were trying to hide from the shooting. Those who jumped out of the fire were shot dead. Most [of the prisoners] were burned to death. The bloody massacre of the Jews lasted for 7 days. All of them were killed…

TsAMO, PODOLSK 37-8900-108 copy YVA M.40 / 5

Bogdanovka

Murder Site

Ukraine (USSR)

46.460;30.750

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Photos

Naum Krimer was born in 1928 in Odessa and lived there during the war years (part 1)

USC SHOAH FOUNDATION, 22400 copy YVA O.93 / 22400

Naum Krimer was born in 1928 in Odessa and lived there during the war years (part 2)

USC SHOAH FOUNDATION, 22400 copy YVA O.93 / 22400

Naum Krimer was born in 1928 in Odessa and lived there during the war years

USC SHOAH FOUNDATION, 22400 copy YVA O.93 / 22400