Holocaust in Kamianets-Podilskyi Oblast: Chronology, Mechanisms, Methods of Extermination of the Jewish Population (July 1941 – January 1943)

Abstract

The purpose of the research. This article focuses on some aspects of Holocaust history in Kamianets-Podilskyi (now Khmelnytskyi) oblast of Ukraine during the German-Soviet war. The subject of the article is to cover the chronology, mechanisms and methods of extermination of the Jewish population during the German occupation in 1941–1943.

The research methodology is based on the principles of historicism, systematic, multifactority, concreteness, scientific and comprehensiveness. The following general historical methods have been used: historical-comparative, retrospective, problem, microhistorical analysis.

The scientific novelty. The author of the investigation used a significant amount of published and still unpublished materials during the preparation for this study. General information on the Holocaust in the oblast is contained in the documents of the Extraordinary State Commission for the Detection and Investigation of the Atrocities of German-Fascist Invaders and Their Associates. A large body of documentary material (in particular, criminal cases and indictments against Holocaust executors from a number of local collaborators) is stored in the funds of Sectoral State Archive of Security Service of Ukraine (in Khmelnytskyi) as well as the State Historical Archives of Khmelnytskyi oblast. One of the defining complex set of sources used in this article, a group of narrative sources and eyewitness-survivors of the Holocaust are from the Research Center Yahad – In Unum (France).

Conclusions. During the Nazi occupation, more than 80 actions of extermination of the Jewish population took place, during which about 115 thousand people died, including more than 100 thousand local and 10–12 thousand Jews deported from Hungary. The majority of the total number of civilians killed were also Jews. The local chronology of the Holocaust was characterized by two peak periods, during which the vast majority of mass executions took place: July – September 1941 (30 massacres), April 1942 – January 1943 (47 actions). One of the peculiarities was that the activities of Einsatzgruppes were not observed in the oblast. At the first stage, the leading role in the organization of the genocide was played by the combined detachment of the SS-Obergruppenführer and the police, F.Jeckeln, and at the second stage, by the SD department, the gendarmerie, and the police. Introducing the extermination doctrine of the Holocaust, the Nazis and their local accomplices used not only the most common method of execution, but also bricklaying in basements and mines, gas poisoning, and drowning.