1 Execution site(s)
Maria, born in 1927: "My sister and I would go to the ghetto to see a Jewish tailor. It was a woman of a certain age. Her name was Etia. We would bring her the fabric to make some clothes for us. After a while, we would come back to get the clothes. To pay for our clothes we would bring her food. We tried to help as much as we could. Another Jewish girl of about 16- or 17-years-old helped us. She worked in the vegetable garden, and we would give her food. There was also a Jewish doctor from Bukovina. All the locals would go to see him in the ghetto if they had health problems. Although, before entering, one needed to get the permission of the Romanian gendarmes." (Witness n°2575U, interviewed in Stanislavchyk, on April 19, 2019)
“[After the creation of Transnistria], the Romanian gendarmerie occupied the administrative premises of MTS [machine Tractor Service Station]. The pretor [district administrator] moved into the building of the former district executive committee. In October 1941, the deportees from Bukovina and Bessarabia arrived in Stanislavchyk. In the spring of 1942, a ghetto was created. It occupied the territory adjacent to the former House of Culture. This entire western part of the city was surrounded with barbed wire. The head of the ghetto Arthur A., his deputy K. and the policeman Badia were appointed. They all came from Chernovtsy [ukr Chernivtsi] and knew the Romanian language perfectly. A strict regime was established in the ghetto. [...] The ghetto inmates were taken to work in Zhmerinka [ukr. Zhmerynka], in the military warehouses, where they sorted ammunition obtained as trophies, repaired the railroad tracks between Zhmerinka and Iaroshenka, shovelled the roads of snow, dismantled Jewish houses that had not been occupied by the local inhabitants, etc. The wood recovered from the dismantled houses was used to heat the gendarmerie and the pretor’s offices. At three o’clock in the morning, three people left the ghetto to bring water with the help of a small blind horse taken from the former kolkhoz.” [Taken from a book, Holocaust in Ukraine, Tkuma, 2016, written by A.Kruglov]
Stanislavchyk is located 40 km (25mi) southeast of Vinnytsia. The first record of the Jewish community dates back to the 19th century. In 1880, the Jewish population numbered 795 individuals. The Jews mainly worked in small scale commerce, peddling, or were artisans. They had a small synagogue, Jewish cemetery and a cheder. In 1921, only 165 Jews lived in Stanislavchyk, following immigration to bigger cities.
Stanislavchyk was occupied by German forces in the middle of July 1941. In September 1941, the village became part of the Romanian occupation zone of Transnistria. In the autumn of 1941, the Jews of Bessarabia and Bukovina were brought to the village and placed in a ghetto created in the former Jewish area. It was fenced in with barbed wire. The Jewish artisans continued to work for local population in exchange for food. Some Jews were subjected to forced labor, like cleaning the roads and other menial tasks. Some of the detainees died in the ghetto. Their corpses were taken to be buried at the Jewish cemetery. Almost the entire Stanislavchyk ghetto was displaced to Zatishya, where another ghetto was located. Even though there were no mass execution by bullets in Zatishya, because it was also located in the Romanian zone of occupation, not all the detainees survived the war.
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