Holocaust

The Holocaust period and colonies

In 1941 Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union, putting in immediate danger the approximately 3,000,000 Jews who lived in the Soviet republics. Hard on
the heals of the rapidly advancing Wermacht were the Einzatsgruppen, the special SS units whose function was to put into action the Final Solution and exterminate the Jews of the Soviet Union.

In the Ukraine, in that area where were located the Jewish Agricultural colonies, most of which had been Sovietised as collectives, and their adjacent urban communities, the killing process was carried out by Einsatzgruppe D.

After the war, the details of the numbers of Jews who perished were not readily available in the West, obscured by the descent of the Iron Curtain. With the dismantling of the Soviet Union, much information about the Holocaust became available. Local authorities collated lists of the victims, eyewitness reports were recorded, and articles were write, both by Ukrainian and Jewish researchers.

Zelenopole (Myadla) massacre. The Death of the Jewish Collective Farm Workers of Zelenopolye
”Report from The Black Book” (Ehrenberg)
Yad Vashem Testimony sheets or Shlomo-Reuven Komisaruk, and his sons.
Yad Vashem Valley of the Communities – photographs, showing colonies and towns.
Novozlatopol massacre

List of victims in Russian Cyrillic and in English.
Report of Soviet committee of investigation.(Original text in russian is here.)
Soviet Special Commission reports (under construction).

Zatishye Massacre Newspaper report of unveiling of memorial monument.
Holocaust in Berdyansk
Holocaust in Mariupol.
Interview of residents of former Jewish colony Novozlatopol by Father Patrick Desbois

Considerable material is available on the Internet:

http://remember.org/
Transcripts of the Nuremberg Trials: http://nuremberg.law.harvard.edu/php/docs_swi.php?DI=1&text=overview
Simon Wiesenthal Center: http://motlc.wiesenthal.com/index.html
Reports of the Einzatsgruppen trials: http://www.einsatzgruppenarchives.com/einsatz.html
US Holocaust Center http://www.ushmm.org/
Yad Vashem: http://www.yadvashem.org/
Search Yad Vashem's names database: http://www.yadvashem.org/wps/portal/IY_HON_Entrance

· Holocaust on the colonies (Google translated from http://evkol.ucoz.com/colony_holocaust.htm)

The Novozlatopolsky district included 13 Jewish colonies founded in the middle of the 19th century (Novozlatopol, Veselaya, Gorkaya, Gorky (formerly Nechaevka), Zelenopol, Krasnoselka, Mezhirich, Nadezhnaya, Novodavka (former Bogodarovka), Priyutnaya, Proletarskaya (formerly Grafskaya) Luxurious, Sweet-water) and about 20 new resettlement settlements founded under Soviet rule. According to the census in the district in 1939 there were 4,700 Jews. On October 6, the advanced German enemy units broke into Novozlatopol. Within five days, from October 5 to 9, 1941, the enemy occupied the entire Novozlatopolsky district. Due to the delay of the advancing German army in the Zaporozhye-Melitopol area, the occupation of Novozlatopolsky district occurred approximately 50 days later than the occupation of the nearest Stalinist district. This fact favorably affected the evacuation of the Jews of Novozlatopolsky region, about 75% of them managed to escape or evacuate to the east. Information on the fate of the Jews of the region caught in the occupied territory is not much, and, besides, it is quite contradictory.

In our view, the extermination of the Jews of the district took place as follows. During the first six weeks after the occupation, preparations were underway to eliminate the Jewish population. November 20, 1941, the Nazis with the help of local police shot all the Jews who remained in the occupied Novozlatopol (about 250 people). Then they took Jews to Novozlatopol from neighboring colonies and settlements. When their number reached about 150 people, an SS squad arrived and shot all the gathered Jews. The last execution was carried out on February 5, 1942. In all, four events in the district center destroyed approximately 725 Jewish residents of the district center and neighboring villages of the Novozlatopolsky district. List of brutally tortured and executed 725 Jews, compiled by local fascist minions, found out soon after the liberation of Novozlatopol, the secretary of the village council, T.M. Zogoth (Ushkats). [141] All of them, according to the Act of the Commission for the Investigation of the Crimes of the German Fascist Forces during the Second World War in the territory of the village of. Novozlatopol Zaporozhye region of September 23, 1943, buried in four graves in the territory of Novozlatopol.

In addition to Novozlatopol, the occupiers were destroying the Jewish population elsewhere in the district. So, in Oktyabr'feld, after the massacre of civilians on Nov. 20 in Novozlatopol, the commandant Zimon ordered an order that guaranteed the Jewish population complete safety and food on the part of the kolkhoz.The citizens who were in the absence of believing the order returned to their place of residence. 1942 suddenly "the SS and the police staged a round-up and then shot the Jews of the Oktyabr'l Village Soviet. [142]

A total of 1,100 Jews of the region were killed, i.е. approximately 25% of the pre-war Jewish population (about 4,500 people) of the Novozlatopol district.

5.5.2. Chongar village council

In the villages of the Genichesky district, according to the census of 1939, 771 Jews lived. Approximately 700 of them lived on the territory of the Chongar Peninsula on the eve of the war. In the 1920s. on the peninsula were founded several Jewish agricultural settlements, united in the Chongar Jewish National Village Soviet. On September 16, the fascist troops occupied the Chongar Peninsula. By early 1942, all the remaining Jews on the peninsula, as well as those who had fled and intercepted by the invaders in the Crimea, were destroyed. In the occupied territory, approximately 200 Chonghar Jews were killed.

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Altogether, in the occupied territory of the Zaporozhye region, approximately 1,300 (25%) of the 5200 Jews who lived on the eve of the war in the old agricultural colonies and resettlement settlements died.