HOLOCAUST
On January 30, 1933, Adolf Hitler took office as Reich Chancellor of Germany.
After this, the flywheel of repression affected not only the political opponents of the National Socialists (Nazis) – the communists. An entire nation was declared an enemy of the superior race, subject to extermination. We are talking about one of the most terrible tragedies of the 20th century – genocide of the Jewish people.
According to the Nuremberg Tribunal, about 1,000 people became victims of genocide in Europe. 6 million people. Jews were forcibly placed en masse in concentration camps and ghettos. Several thousand of these terrible places were opened all over Europe. They were created in cities in occupied territories specifically to gather Jews in one place. This made it easier to exterminate them, because according to the racial concepts of the Nazis, all Jews had to be wiped off the face of the earth.
In modern literature and journalism, this policy of Nazi Germany was called Holocaust — from the ancient Greek holocaustosis, meaning “burnt offering”, “destruction by fire”, “sacrifice”.
Holocaust – this is a catastrophe not only for the Jewish people. This is a tragedy for all of humanity, the memory of which will remain for centuries.
Forget
- means to create conditions for restarting the death conveyor
TRANSNISTRIA
During the Second World War, the Transnistria Governorate General was created on the lands between the Dniester and Southern Bug rivers, occupied by Romanian troops.
More than a dozen concentration camps and ghettos were created on Transnistrian soil. One of the first tasks of the occupation authorities was "final solution" Jewish question.
Dictator Antonescu did not like to mention the word “destruction” in his speech, instead he claimed that the alien element would be “expelled” from Bessarabia and Bukovina “recovered” by Romania. It was decided to deport the Jews to Transnistria. This region was not chosen by chance. The fact is that occupied Transnistria, unlike Bessarabia and Bukovina, was not officially included in the Romanian Kingdom. Antonescu received from the Wehrmacht leadership only a mandate for "administration and economic exploitation." The leadership of fascist Germany emphasized that the transfer was only temporary, and German law was in effect on the territory of Transnistria. However, the Romanians were in charge here. This gave the territories a kind of suspended, indefinite, no-man's-land status. And that is precisely why the Romanian leadership decided to deport the Jews to Transnistria, which was not officially part of Romania, but at the same time was not under the direct control of the German leadership, which was even more "principled" in the "solution" of the Jewish question.
- There were 3 ghettos in Tiraspol district,
- in Dubossary - 2,
- In Rybnitsa there are 6 ghettos.
Ghettos were also located in some other places.
According to various estimates by historians, during the years of occupation on the territory of modern Transnistria there were 54-90 thousand Jews were exterminated.
The Transnistrian ghettos had a clear management structure headed by a "community president". They had well-developed social services and handicraft production. From the beginning of 1942, the prisoners of the Transnistrian ghettos, deported from Bessarabia and Bukovina, began to receive regular financial and food aid from the Jewish community of Romania, and from 1943 - from international Jewish organizations. This was one of the main features of these ghettos, which helped many prisoners to survive. There is a version that this is why about 70% of all Soviet Jews who survived the occupation survived in Transnistria.
As eyewitnesses recalled, the killings themselves were not carried out by Germans, but by Romanians who did it in a festive atmosphereNot far from the execution site there was a table with various food and alcoholic drinks.
Throughout Transnistria – More than 300,000 Soviet and Romanian Jews were killed.
TIRASPOL
During the occupation, between 1,500 and 3,000 Jews died in Tiraspol. According to other information, the number of dead may be as high as 12,000.
After the occupation of Tiraspol in August 1941, a census of the Jewish population was immediately carried out.
After this, about 1,500 Jews were driven into the courtyard of a summer cinema, then, after being starved to death, they were taken to the Dniester and shot.
At the same time, a ghetto was created on the territory of the city hospital named after V. I. Lenin. The fact of its creation was carefully disguised, outsiders were not allowed into the territory of the facility. The commission for the investigation of the crimes of the occupiers, which operated in 1944, failed to establish the number of people held in the ghetto, as well as the subsequent fate of the prisoners.
In October-November 1941, the Romanian invaders carried out another mass shooting of the city's Jewish population (1,500 people, including women and children) in a quarry near the Kolkotova Balka area. The corpses were taken to the Dniester and dumped in the river.
BENDER
On July 21, 1941, Bendery was occupied by German and Romanian troops. Part of the Jewish population managed to evacuate. Immediately after the occupation, a ghetto was created in Bendery.
In the alley near the ship repair shops they were shot and thrown into the water 300 people. They also executed in the moat of the Bendery Fortress 700 Jews. More people lost their lives in the anti-tank ditch near the Jewish cemetery 1000 peopleMany Jews were killed in the suburbs of Bender.
All Jews who did not manage to evacuate from the city were subject to registration and expulsion, some were shot on the spot. In 1944, burials of executed Jews, including children and teenagers, were discovered in the ditch of the Bendery Fortress.
On August 31, 1941, in Bender, Germany and Romania signed an agreement on the deportation of Jews to concentration camps in Transnistria. Including the Dubossary ghetto, where more than 20,000 peopleBefore the war, about 12,000 Jews lived in Bendery; in 1942, only a few people remained alive.
DUBOSSARY
Dubossary was not chosen by chance: Almost half of the city's population before the war were Jews. Two ghettos were organized in the city. The first occupied the streets of 25th October and Kirov, where the Jewish population lived compactly before the war. Jews from the surrounding villages were also driven here. A camp was also organized on the territory of the tobacco fermentation plant, where Jews from Chisinau, Tiraspol, Rybnitsa, Grigoriopol, Balta, and Kotovsk were placed. In August 1941, a German punitive detachment of the SS, led by Sergeant Major W. Keller, arrived in the city.
Since 1945, it has become known that the mass murders in Dubossary were carried out by the Sonderkommando, a special forces unit in Nazi Germany. The Sonderkommando included Einsatzgruppen of the Security Police and special forces task forces of the Nazi Security Service. They were created and used for the purpose of mass executions of civilians in the territories captured by the Third Reich.
In September 1941, V. Keller ordered the digging of many pits 16 meters long and 4 meters deep. Residents of nearby villages and Jewish prisoners from the camp were forcibly used for this work. It was announced that The pits are supposedly needed for storing potatoes. To make things more convincing, they even brought in some straw. However, on the morning of September 12, the terrible truth was revealed. The first batch of Holocaust victims numbered 2,500 people. The ghetto prisoners were shot in groups of 20-30 people. The fascist executioners did not spare either children or women. Moreover, they even approached their work with “humor and soul”. Thus, Mothers had to hold infants at arm's length in profile, so that the SS men could practice their accuracy, trying to hit both the child and the mother with one bullet. However, while receiving “spiritual” satisfaction from their “work,” the executioners, with their characteristic German scrupulousness, did not forget about the material side of the issue. Before the execution, the prisoners were searched, all jewelry and valuables were taken away. Driven by greed, the punishers even pulled out gold teeth from their victims, causing them additional suffering before death. In 16 days (from September 12 to September 28, 1941) about 18,500 peopleIn the central part of the city, where 4,586 people lived before the war, only 1,720 Jews remained after the execution.
After the men were shot, women and children were brought in. Before the killing, gold was collected and hair was cut off. Small children were forced to be lifted onto the shoulders of adults, and older ones were forced to kneel in front of the pit. Then everything was repeated. When the pit was filled with the executed, it was covered with straw and earth. Guards were posted nearby. The next day, you could see how the earth above the pit rose and fell, as if breathing. There were still living people in the graves.
RYBNICA
During the war, a transit camp and ghetto were organized in Rybnitsa. In January 1942, about 25,000 JewsAccording to archival data, there were several ghettos and camps in Rybnitsa, where Jews from the Moldavian SSR, a number of regions of Ukraine, and cities and counties of Romania were housed.
One of the largest ghettos in the region was created in Rybnitsa in early September 1941. All the Jews were herded onto Sholem Aleichem Street, where they were housed 12-15 people in a room. People were not fed. Young people were used for forced labor. The ghetto was not fenced off, but any exit beyond its borders or attempts to buy food from local residents were punishable by death.
The Rybnitsa ghetto existed for 936 days and nights – from September 7, 1941 to March 29, 1944. About 3,000 people were imprisoned in it. 2,731 people were killed.
Not far from Rybnitsa in Kamenka, the fascists also carried out a policy of mass shootings and forced confinement of the population in a ghetto. More than 500 Jews were exterminated there.
In the village of Rashkov, all residents of Jewish nationality were exterminated.
During the Holocaust, more than 6,000 Jews, both locals and people from Bessarabia and Bukovina (about 3,000 Jewish residents of Rybnitsa, including small children), died at the hands of German-Romanian Nazis in the city and region.
Those Jews who managed to leave the city before the occupation managed to escape. Some Jews were hidden by the residents of Rybnitsa in their homes under threat of death. Many were freed as a result of special operations by the underground.
We remember. But it is more important that other nations remember this too – this is necessary so that such a tragedy does not happen again. Never…
Holocaust - a crime against humanityJanuary 27: Holocaust Remembrance Day
"Kel Male Rachamim"
Monuments and memorials in Transnistria
Innocently killed
The monument was erected on the initiative and thanks to the financial support of the Chairman of the Jewish Community of the Republic of Moldova, Alexander Bilinkis.
To the victims of the Holocaust
The monument was erected with the financial support of the head of the Jewish community of Bender, Yuri Mendelevich Grinfeld.
To the victims of fascism
The Requiem monument. The idea of the sculptor Lazar Dubinovsky was realized by Sergey Ganenko, thanks to the sponsorship of the businessman Avram Goldemberg.
Monument of Remembrance
Erected in memory of the victims and martyrs of the Rybnitsa ghetto.
Material prepared by Ivan Voit, with the assistance of the Jewish communities of Tiraspol, Bendery, Dubossary and Rybnitsa.