1 Execution site(s)
Oleksandra S., born in 1931: “I heard that the Jews had been put in the Palats Pioneriv building. The building was surrounded with a fence. One day I saw three Jews being led somewhere by men in uniform. These Jews had probably tried to escape but had been caught. A policeman hit one of the Jews with his rifle, he fell, and the policemen started to stamp on him. I got scared and hid in his house. It happened on the street where I used to live. I think they were taken away after that because I didn’t hear any gunshots afterwards.” (Witness n°3016U, interviewed in Vynnyky, on December 4, 2021)
“Labor camp that was created for the construction of the strategic road Lviv-Ternopil-... and existed from autumn 1941 to July 1943. The Jews from this camp were transferred to the camp in Ianovsky, where they were murdered. There was also a camp in a village near Vynnyky, called Ostriv, but it cannot be found. It was probably integrated into Lviv.” [Source: A. Kruglov, The Holocaust on the territory of the USSR, Dnipro, 2017].
Vynnyky is a city founded in the mid-14th century, located 11 km (7mi) south east of Lviv. Until the Partitions of Poland, Vynnyky, known as Winniki in Polish, belonged to the Ruthenian Voivodeship, Kingdom of Poland. From 1772 to 1918, it was part of Austrian Galicia, and in the interbellum period, the town returned to Poland, as part of the Lwow Voivodeship. In September 1939 it was taken over by the Soviet Union in accordance with the Ribbentrop–Molotov agreement. Under Polish rule, the Jewish population was small and consisted of about 40 to 50 families. The majority of Jews were merchants or peddlers. In the 19th century, a tobacco plant and a yeast factory were established in the city. The local population worked in the factories or in agriculture. In 1925, the population of the city numbered for 6,000 residents, of which 3,300 were Polish, 2,150 – Ruthenians, 350 – Jewish, and 200 – Germans. Under the Soviet rule some influential Jews, Poles and Ukrainians were deported to to Siberia.All political movements and Zionist parties that existed before 1939 were banned.
Vynnyky was occupied by German troops on June 29, 1941. A pogrom was carried out early in the occupation, resulting in a number of victims and Jewish property being destroyed. Several weeks later, all Jewish males were ordered to present themselves in front of the Jewish community office. They were marched to Piaski, where they were forced to dig the pit, before being executed. The remaining Jewish men, women and children were confined to a temporary ghetto. Towards the end of 1941, a Jewish forced labor camp was established in Vynnyky. Several hundred Jews from Lviv, Sokal, Jarczów, and Vynnyky were interned there and forced to build or fix roads and repair tracks. The exhausted or sick Jewish workers were usually shot following the daily roll call. The Vynnyky ghetto was liquidated in the early part of 1942. Ukrainian policemen surrounded the area and Jewish inhabitants, mostly women and children, were forced to mount trucks that took them to an unknown destination, probably the Piaski area, where they were shot. The Vynnyky labor camp continued to exist until the summer of 1943. Then some inmates were sent to a forced labor camp and those who remained in Vynnyky were shot on July 23, 1943.
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