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holocaust

On January 30, 1933, Adolf Hitler took over as Chancellor of Germany.

 

After that, the flywheel of repression touched not only the political opponents of the National Socialists (Nazis) - the Communists. An entire nation was declared an enemy of the superior race, to be destroyed. This is one of the worst tragedies of the 20th century. — genocide of the Jewish people.

According to the Nuremberg Tribunal, about 6 million people. Jews were forcibly placed en masse in concentration camps and ghettos. Several thousand of these terrible places were discovered throughout Europe. They were created in cities in the occupied territories specifically in order to gather Jews in one place. So it was easier to destroy them, because, according to the racial concepts of the Nazis, all Jews were 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 not only a disaster for the Jewish people. This is a universal human tragedy, the memory of which will be preserved for centuries.

Forget

- means to create conditions for restarting the conveyor of death

TRANSNISTRIA

During the Second World War, on the lands between the Dniester and the Southern Bug, occupied by Romanian troops, the Transnistria Governor-General was created.

 

More than a dozen concentration camps and ghettos were created on Transnistrian soil. One of the first tasks of the occupying power was "final decision" Jewish question.

Dictator Antonescu did not like to mention the word "destruction" in his speech, instead he argued that the alien element would be "expelled" from Bessarabia and Bukovina "returned" by Romania. It was decided to deport the Jews to Transnistria. This region was not chosen by chance. The fact is that the occupied Transnistria, unlike Bessarabia and Bukovina, did not officially become part of the Romanian kingdom. Antonescu received from the leadership of the Wehrmacht only a mandate for "administration and economic exploitation." The leadership of fascist Germany emphasized that the transfer was only temporary, German law was in force on the territory of Transnistria. However, the Romanians ruled here. This gave the territories a kind of suspended, indefinite no-man's status. And that is why the Romanian leadership decided to deport the Jews to Transnistria, which is not officially part of Romania, but at the same time is not under the direct control of the German leadership, which is even more "principled" in the "solution" of the Jewish question.

  • in the Tiraspol district there were 3 ghettos,
  • in Dubossary - 2,
  • in Rybnitsa - 6 ghettos.

There were also ghettos in some other places.

According to various estimates of historians, in the territory of modern Transnistria during the years of occupation there were 54-90 thousand Jews were destroyed.

Military Commandant's Office of Odessa - Holocaust - Jews

The Transnistrian ghettos had a clear governance structure headed by a "president of the community". They had well-developed social services and handicraft production. From the beginning of 1942, the prisoners of the Transnistrian ghetto, deported from Bessarabia and Bukovina, began to receive regular financial and food assistance 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 escape. 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 murders themselves were carried out not by the Germans, but by the Romanians, who did this. in a festive atmosphere. Not far from the place of execution there was a table with various food and alcoholic beverages.

Throughout Transnistria - over 300,000 Soviet and Romanian Jews killed.

TIRASPOL

During the occupation in Tiraspol, from 1.5 to 3 thousand Jews died. According to other information, the death toll may be 12 thousand people.

After the occupation of Tiraspol in August 1941, a census of the Jewish population immediately took place.

After that, about 1.5 thousand Jews were herded into the courtyard of the summer cinema, then, having previously starved, they were taken to the Dniester and shot.

1941 - Romanian troops pass by secondary school No. 6
Places of executions and ghettos on the map of Tiraspol

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 those held in the ghetto, as well as the further fate of the prisoners.

In October-November 1941, the Romanian invaders carried out another mass execution of the city's Jewish population (in the amount of 1,500 people, including women and children) in a quarry near the Kolkotovaya Balka area. The corpses were taken to the Dniester and thrown into the river.

BENDERS

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 workshops, they were shot and thrown into the water. 300 people. More were executed in the moat of the Bendery fortress 700 Jews. In the anti-tank ditch near the Jewish cemetery, more people lost their lives 1000 people. Many Jews were killed on the outskirts of Bendery.

All Jews who did not have time to evacuate from the city were subjected to registration and eviction, some were shot on the spot. In 1944, burial places of executed Jews, including children and adolescents, were discovered in the moat of the Bendery fortress.

1941 - Romanians lead Jews and their families to the "gathering place"

On August 31, 1941, in Bender, Germany and Romania signed an agreement on the deportation of Jews to the concentration camps of Transnistria. Including the Dubossary ghetto, where more than 20,000 people. Before the war, about 12,000 Jews lived in Bendery, in 1942 only a few people survived.

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 October 25 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, in which Jews from Chisinau, Tiraspol, Rybnitsa, Grigoriopol, Balta, and Kotovsk were placed. In August 1941, a German SS punitive detachment headed by sergeant major W. Keller arrived in the city.

Since 1945, it became known that the massacres in Dubossary were committed by the Sonderkommando - the formation of a special purpose in Nazi Germany. The Sonderkommando included the Einsatzgruppen of the Security Police and the Special Forces Task Force of the Nazi Security Service. They were created and used for the purpose of mass executions of civilians in the territories occupied by the Third Reich.

In September 1941, W. Keller ordered to dig many holes 16 meters long and 4 meters deep. Residents of the surrounding villages and Jewish prisoners from the camp were forcibly used for these works. It was announced that pits allegedly needed to store potatoes. For credibility, straw was even brought. However, on the morning of September 12, the terrible truth was revealed. The first batch of Holocaust victims numbered 2 500 people. Ghetto prisoners were shot in groups of 20-30 people. Neither children nor women were spared by the fascist executioners. Moreover, they even approached their work with "humor and soul". So, mothers had to hold infants in outstretched arms in profile, so that the SS men could practice their marksmanship, trying to hit both the child and the mother with one bullet. However, receiving "spiritual" satisfaction from "work", the executioners, with their inherent 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. Greed-driven punishers even pulled out gold teeth from their victimscausing them additional suffering before death. For 16 days (from September 12 to September 28, 1941), about 18,500 people. In the central part of the city, where 4,586 people lived before the war, only 1,720 Jews remained after the execution of the Jews.

After shooting the men, they brought the women and children. Before the murder, they collected gold, cut off the braids. 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 from above. Guards were posted nearby. The next day, it was seen how the earth above the pit was rising, falling, as if breathing. There were still living people in the graves.

Peter Ignatiev

resident of Dubossary, witness of those terrible events

Rybnitsa

In Rybnitsa during the war, a transshipment camp and a ghetto were organized. As of January 1942, about 25,000 Jews. According to archival data, there were several ghettos and camps in Rybnitsa, where Jews from the MSSR, a number of regions of Ukraine, cities and counties of Romania stayed.

One of the largest ghettos in the region was established in Rybnitsa in early September 1941. All the Jews were rounded up on Sholom Aleichem Street, who were settled by 12-15 people in one room. The people were not fed. The youth were used for forced labor. The ghetto was not fenced, but any going outside and trying to buy food from local residents was punishable by death.

Jews of Bessarabia during the Holocaust
Shootings of Jews during the Holocaust

The Rybnitsa ghetto lasted 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 Nazis also pursued a policy of mass executions and forced imprisonment of the population in the ghetto. Over 500 Jews were killed there.

In with. Rashkov, all residents of Jewish nationality were exterminated.

During the Holocaust, more than 6,000 Jews, both local people and immigrants from Bessarabia, Bukovina, died at the hands of the German-Romanian Nazis on the territory of the city and the region (about 3,000 fishermen of Jewish nationality, including small children).

Those Jews who were able to leave the city before the occupation managed to escape. Rybnitsa residents hid some Jews under the threat of the death penalty in their homes. Many were released as a result of special operations by underground workers.

We remember. But it is more important that other peoples also remember this - this is necessary so that such a tragedy does not happen again. Never…

Holocaust - a crime against humanityJanuary 27: Holocaust Remembrance Day

"Kel male rahamim"

from the memorial prayer Yizkor

Monuments and memorials in Transnistria

Material prepared Ivan Voit, with the assistance of the Jewish communities of Tiraspol, Bendery, Dubossary and Rybnitsa.