July 8 1941
Mielnica
With the Red Army's entry into Mielnica during the second half of
September 1939, the large farms were nationalized. Homes, large stores
and warehouses owned by Jews were confiscated and private workshops were banned.
The community's institutions, political parties, and youth organizations were
broken up, and a number of rich persons and community workers were arrested. A
few people succeeded in escaping while there was still time, while others were
arrested with their families and expelled to remote regions of the Soviet Union.
A local public school was established whose language of instruction was Yiddish.
When war between Germany and the Soviet Union broke out, military conscripts
retreated together with Soviet authorities as did a few Jews who were known
Communists. The Russians did not try to persuade Jews to leave the city.
Practical possibilities for evacuation were closed off; roads were sealed by the
army and were bombed by the Germans. Up until the Soviet authorities and army
departed, a hostile atmosphere toward Jews prevailed. Ukranian nations organized
their own militia, spread anti-Semitic slogans, and cited the Christian populace
to reprisal, plunder and rioting. On the pretext that the Jews had collaborated
with the Soviet police in the murder of Ukrainians, Jews were ordered to exhume
the bodies of 12 prisoners who had been shot by the Soviets in the prison yard.
To prevent harm to members of the community, Jewish youths gathered at the
Community Center and organized themselves into night patrols. Jews were afraid
to go out into the street. From all over the surrounding area, and even from
Bukovina across the Dniester, wagonloads of Ukrainian farmers streamed into town
to plunder the property of Jews. Armed with axes, the farmers and the urban mob
broke into Jewish homes and shops and destroyed a pharmacy. Only the
intervention of the Greek Catholic priest, a group of Baptists, and some decent
Ukrainians in Mielnica kept the looting from becoming pogrom. Especially great
bloodshed took place in the village of Volkovca. Bodies of murder victims
floating on the Dniester were retrieved by the Jews of Mielnica and buried in
the cemetery.
After several days of general anarchy, on July 8, 1941, the Hungarians
entered Mielnica and established a large military presence in the city.
Officers took up residence in Jewish homes, treating Jews with a decency
comparable to that shown Christians, and often sharing food with their hosts.
The Hungarian command imposed order and put an end to killing, looting, and
housebreaking. The farmers who had come into Mielnica from the surrounding area
were dispersed. In exchange for this, the Hungarians demanded that the Jews
supply them with food and goods, and coerced them to serve and work for the
army. The following representatives of the Jewish council which had been
organized in those days maintained contact with the Hungarians: David Mancer,
Leibush Schwarcz, Rabbi Donner, Ch. Feuerstein, Richter the pharmacist, and
Moshe Kopler.
Suddenly, after two weeks of calm, the Hungarians arrested and
incarcerated a number of Jewish men and women on the eve of July 17, 1941.
This arrest was carried out following denunciation by the Ukrainians, who
brought the Hungarians a list of alleged Communists in town - 146 Jews and 4
Ukrainians. The prisoners were treated very rudely but were released after a
short time, evidently through the intervention of the Jewish delegation with the
Hungarian commander.
The Hungarians brought to Mielnica several truckloads of Jewish refugees from
Carpatoros. These refugees were starved and weak, shoeless and threadbare, and
had been robbed and beaten on the way by the Ukrainians. The Jews of the town
aided the refugees as much as their means allowed, inviting them into their
homes, feeding them, and collecting clothing for them.
August 1941
Mielnica
When authority passed directly to the Germans in August 1941, a Jewish
council was established in Mielnica. It
included respected members of the community and public figures who had been
active during the days of the Hungarians. Among the other members of the
delegation mentioned above, we know the names Itche Fischler, S. L. Scharfstein,
Munyu Roth, Izio Reich, Nathan Sohnenklahr, and Joseph Kesselblat.
Under Hungarian rule the situation of the Jews of Mielnica became severe. They
were forbidden to stroll in the city's center, and the men were forced into hard
labor: unloading and loading, paving and repair of roads, breaking of stones for
paving, work on surround estates which had been taken over by the Germans. In
addition, a derogatory star-of-David ribbon was instituted (though even under
the Hungarians it had not been uncommon to mark Jews with a yellow star sewn to
the clothing). The Jews were left with no means of livelihood, the poor among
them being hired out as workers on Ukrainian farms. This contact enabled them to
purchase needs whose official sale to Jews was banned.
Along with its responsibility of regularly supplying the Germans with manpower,
the Jewish council was required to give them money, jewelry, merchandise and
furniture, clothing and shoes, and surplus food items on a permanent basis.
German border guards were billeted in the Zilberbusch home, and the Jewish
council was forced to equip the building with furniture and appliances, which it
procured from wealthy Jews or bought from Christians. The German border guards
enjoyed getting drunk, rioting through the town and harassing Jews whom they
happened to encounter in the streets. They broke into houses at night and raped
young girls. Many Jews never undressed for the night or simply slept out of
their houses until dawn. Gestapo men from Czortkov would often fan out over
Mielnica, demanding money and merchandise in exchange for false promises to
protect Jews from new edicts. The Jewish populace complained to the Jewish
council because it had no power to prevent such abuses.
September 6 1941
The German SS announce a policy to take effect on September 19: "Jews who
have completed their sixth year are forbidden to show themselves in public
without the Jewish star. This consists of a six-pointed star, outlined with
black superscription, 'Jew'. It must be worn visibly and sewn securely to the
left breast of clothing." The same announced policy prohibits Jews from
leaving their residential areas without police permission.
November
1941
Mielnica
Impressment of young Jewish men to the labor camps at Varkivialka and
Stopki began in November 1941. The first time, the Germans demanded of
the Jewish council that they bring 40 men to the gathering point in Czortkov.
(A memoir, by Florence Mayer Lieblich, provides a personal view of Czortkov and
the times 1923-1939)
The Jewish council selected men whose families had at least two sons or two wage
earners. Those were to go were given warm clothing.
Some time later, however, when the Germans demanded 70 men, no one came forward
because the terrible conditions at the labor camps had become known. This time
the German and Ukrainian police launched a manhunt in the houses and streets.
The third dispatch of people to the labor camps included 50 women who had until
then worked at the neighboring tobacco plantations. They were abducted and
transported by the Germans to an unknown work site.
A small number of Mielnica Jews succeeded in escaping from the town and hiding
in forests or familiar farmhouses. Most of them were killed as a result of
denunciation by the Ukrainian residents, or were discovered by the police. Some
local Jews and some who were refugees from Hungary attempted to cross the border
into Bukovina with the aid of Ukrainian smugglers in exchange for large sums of
money, and from there to Czernowitz. Most of the escapees, however, were caught
there by the police, brought back to the border point at Sniatin, and handed
over to the Germans, who murdered them on the spot.
December
1941
Mielnica
A severe night attack occurred in December 1941: the Germans broke into
many Jewish homes, even that of Rabbi Donner, abusing the rabbi and degrading
his wife. Several Jewish homes were set afire and some Jews were murdered. Next
day, when Rabbi Donner and Moshe Kopler came to complain to the commander of the
border patrol in the name of the Jewish council, the rabbi was beaten and thrown
down the stairs. After this incident, Moshe Kopler served as council chairman.
September 26th 1942
Mielnica:
First Aktion
Despite the decline in population because of deportation to the labor camps
and because of flight, the number of Jews in Mielnica not only did not decrease,
it actually increased during the period of the German conquest to about 2,500.
This was because of the flow of refugees from Hungary, mentioned above, and
later because of the flow of refugees and displaced persons from the surrounding
villages. The last group of exiles was concentrated in Mielnica on September
25, 1942. Next day, on September 26, 1942, the first day of Sukkot in the year
5703, a liquidation Aktion took place in the town, conducted by Gestapo men from
Czortkov. German and Ukrainian police surrounded the town and began
shooting. People were abducted from the houses in the streets, brought to the
marketplace, and made to sit with their hands on their necks. During the Aktion
the sick, the weak, the handicapped, and those who had hidden out were summarily
murdered. The police also shot those who attempted to escape. Some 100 to 300
persons were killed. The Ukrainian rabble looked at the murders and aided in the
hunt for those in hiding. Those who were concentrated in the marketplace
were brought to the railroad station in the village of Ivania-Pusta, 4
kilometers from the town. Some wagons transported those who could not walk fast.
From this station they departed for the annihilation camp at Belz. The number of
exiles, local Jews, and displaced persons is estimated variously as 1,200, 1,400
or 2,000. After the action several hundred Jews were left in the town. A
portion of them were not discovered in hiding, and a portion were permitted by
Germans to remain. Among the latter were members of the Jewish council, the
Jewish police, and the burial society. During the Aktion the Germans did not
respect any work cards, and those who held such cards were sent to their deaths.
(Jonas Lindenbaum's story b1917 Mielnitza, immigrated to the USA c 1946)
October 22, 1942
Mielnica
: 2nd and Final Aktion
The next day, or perhaps some days after the Aktion, the German
authorities let it be known that in two weeks (until October 22, 1942 according
to another account) Mielnica was obligated to be Judenrein [clean of Jews] and
that its remaining Jews were to move to the ghetto at Borshchov. The
Jews loaded their remaining possessions on wagons and relocated to that ghetto.
Before they left they hid several Torah scrolls under the floor of the great
synagogue, Torah scrolls which they had until then managed to save from
destruction. They took some Torah scrolls with them to Borshchov, where the fate
of Mielnica's displaced Jews overtook them.
(3)
Read Julius Rauch's story, (born in Borschov), as told to me October 1, 1994
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06/24/11 by ELR
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