Site of a mass grave, Khmelnik
YVA, Photo Collection, 3714/1
Ugrinovka Related Communities
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Murder Story of Khmelnik Jews in Ugrinovka
Murder Site
Ugrinovka
Ukraine (USSR)
The two largest murder operations took place at Ugrinovka. On Friday, January 9, 1942, early in the morning, the Germans and Ukrainian police drove the Jews from their homes; not all of them even had enough time to dress. Many Jews tried to flee in the turmoil of the operation; some of them were killed on the spot. The rest of the assembled Jews were driven across the Southern Bug River to the village of Ugrinovka. There, at the site of a former Soviet military base, under a heavy frost, they were told to undress their children and themselves. They were then shot in previously prepared ditches. The Soviet State Extraordinary Commission estimated the number of those killed on January 9 at 5,800 or 6,300: both of these estimates appear to be exaggerated.
Many of Khmelnik’s Jews had underground shelters, so the police failed to find all of them. The murder operation was repeated the next Friday, January 16, 1942. Before the second massacre, the Nazis separated “specialists” out of the crowd of Jews; the rest were killed at the same site in Ugrinovka. The Soviet State Extraordinary Commission estimated the number of those killed at 1,240.
The “specialists” and their families were ordered to resettle to an improvised ghetto on Shevchenko Street, or “Judenstrasse,” as the occupiers called it.
On June 12, 1942, the Nazis declared a “new registration” of Jews, during which 360 women and children were separated and later murdered at Ugrinovka. According to some accounts, a Hungarian military unit took part in the operation.
The Khmelnik ghetto was liquidated in two murder operations, on March 3 and June 26, 1943. The operation of March 3 was also veiled as a “new registration” of Jews; after it, the ghetto was reorganized into a labor camp in which the 340 remaining Jews were placed. In both cases, the victims were brought to the “pine grove” (i.e. Ugrinovka), by truck.
Related Resources
ChGK Soviet Reports
ChGK Soviet Reports from Khmelnik
... In the town of Khmelnik:
… 2. On January 9, 1942, in the town of Khmelnik, near a pine grove, 6,300 people – innocent Soviet citizens (women, children, old people) – were shot by the German hangmen.
3. On January 16, 1942, in the town of Khmelnik, 1,240 innocent Soviet citizens (women, children, old people) were shot.
4. On June 12, 1942, in the town of Khmelnik, 360 innocent Soviet citizens were shot.
5. On March 3, 1943, in the town of Khmelnik, approximately 1,300 innocent Soviet citizens were shot.
6. On June 26, 1943, in the town of Khmelnik, 1,650 people, innocent Soviet citizens, were shot. ... While perpetrating the mass extermination of innocent Soviet citizens, Hitler’s hangmen subjected these citizens to inhuman, bestial tortures before the shooting ... They cut off the beards of old people, battered young people with rifle butts and rubber lashes, and forced them to eat these [cut] beards. They forced the young people to undress and stand on broken glass near a stone wall. They beat young people and children, hitting their heads against the stone wall.
Especially inhuman tortures of innocent Soviet citizens were perpetrated on January 9, 1942 ....
GARF, MOSCOW R-7021-54-1249 copy YVA M.33 / JM/19689
Ugrinovka
Murder Site
Ukraine (USSR)
49.555;27.958
Videos
Photos
Igor Barinshtein was born in 1932 in Khmelnik, and lived there during the war years. (Interview in Russian)
USC SHOAH FOUNDATION, 38531 copy YVA O.93 / 38531