Stalino, Ukraine, The entrance to a cave, where bodies were found.
Ukrainian State Archive, Copy YVA 4059/61
Mine 4/4-B in the Kalinovka Neighborhood Related Communities
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Murder Story of Stalino Jews in Mine 4/4-B in the Kalinovka Neighborhood
Murder Site
Mine 4/4-B in Kalinovka Neighborhood
Ukraine (USSR)
The 4/4-B mine, which lay near the Kalinovka neighborhood in Stalino, became a large murder site – apparently, of both Jews and non-Jews. Some groups of Jews were either shot or killed in gas vans, and their bodies would then be thrown down the mine shaft, while some other groups of Jewish victims were thrown down the shaft alive. The Jews appear to have been liquidated in several murder operations on various scales, which began in November 1941 and lasted into the winter and early spring of 1942. The final liquidation of the Stalino Ghetto is dated to April 6, 1942, when several hundred Jews were gassed, although there are sources that refer to Jews being thrown down the mine shaft later, in July 1942. When describing the mass murder operations at the 4/4-B mine, the ChGK reports usually avoid mentioning the Jewish origin of the victims. The exact number of Jews killed in Stalino remains unknown, since it was difficult to identify all the victims thrown down the mine shaft. By some estimates, about 3,000 Jews from Stalino and nearby settlements were liquidated, most of them apparently at this site, while the ChGK documents speak of 75,000 people murdered at the site, without specifying their ethnicity.
Related Resources
Written Testimonies
Written Accounts
ChGK Soviet Reports
Anna Melnikova, who was born in 1921 and lived in Stalino during the war years, testifies:
Sometime after the beginning of the occupation, my mother came home and said she had seen our neighbor Sara Yefimovna Khat begging for bread from neighbors and passersby in the area where she and her family used to live before the war. I collected all the food supply and went to that area to help Sara Yefimovna Khat and spare her the indignity of begging. When I approached the house [of Sara Khat], I saw two German soldiers and a German officer force Sara out of the yard. A column of arrested Jews – elderly people, women with children – was already walking down the street under a convoy of Germans and policemen. She [Sara Khat] was pushed into the column, which was moving toward the steel plant. Neither me, nor my family, nor anybody else ever saw Sara Yefimovna Khat, or heard from her, after that day.
From eyewitnesses testimonies, we knew that the Germans and the policemen had herded all the Jews into the bodies of trucks and taken them to the area of the 4/4 mine in the Kalinovka neighborhood of Stalino, where they [the Jews] were thrown alive down the mine shaft.
Aleksander Ivachshenko and Lilia Zaskavskaya, eds., Tears of the Holocaust, Donetsk, 2012, pp. 34–35 (Russian)
The testimony of Aleksander Polozhentsev (born in 1915 in Stalino), who was arrested during the war, thrown alive down the 4/4 mine, but was able to find a way out and escape:
On July 6, 1942, we were taken from the prison cells into the courtyard; about 15 of us were herded into a vehicle, a kind of bus, and then driven to the premises of the 4/4 mine.… I heard the trucks arriving at the [mine] premises, the yells of the arrestees, and the sounds of gunfire. I saw the bodies of the shot individuals falling down the mine shaft. Once, I counted 50 shots. Sometime later, 14 more people, either naked or stripped to the underwear, were thrown down. I found a passport in the mine tunnel; it was impossible to decipher the last name of the person to whom it belonged, but I was able to determine that s/he was a Jew. I put the passport into my pocket. I heard children approaching the shaft and saying: "People have been thrown inside, and they are still hanging there."
Aleksander Ivachshenko and Lilia Zaskavskaya, eds., Tears of the Holocaust, Donetsk, 2012, pp. 30–32 (Russian)
Yakov Karlin, who was born in 1931 in Stalino and lived there during the war years, testifies:
Several days after I had left the ghetto [in April 1942], all those who remained there – including my brother Semyon, my sister Alla, my grandmother Chana Rukhl Yankelevna, and my aunt Betya Izrailevna Krivitskaya with her three young children – were thrown down the mine shaft, and perished there.
Aleksander Ivachshenko and Lilia Zaskavskaya, eds., Tears of the Holocaust, Donetsk, 2012, p. 36 (Russian)
Mine 4/4-B in Kalinovka Neighborhood
Murder Site
Ukraine (USSR)
48.033;37.747
Photos
Stalino, Ukraine, The entrance to a cave, where bodies were found.
Ukrainian State Archive, Copy YVA 4059/61