Murder Story of Kamenets Podolsk Jews at the Munitions Depot in Kamenets Podolsk

On August 26, 1941, between 12,000 and 14,000 Jews deported to Kamenets Podolsk from Hungarian-controlled Carpatho-Rus were murdered in the area of the munitions depot on the eastern outskirts of Kamenets Podolsk. Jews of all ages and both sexes were ordered to assemble at the city's train station on the pretext that they were either going to be returned home or resettled in Palestine. Instead they were taken to the murder site. There they were forced to run a gauntlet of policemen and to surrender their valuables. Some of them were ordered to undress and then lay face down in a pit and were shot in the back of the head. The executioners were members of the 320 Order Police Battalion, as well as members of a unit formed especially for this massacre by Friedrich Jeckeln, the High SS and Police Leader of the South, from his personal bodyguards, a guard platoon from his headquarters, and members of his staff. The next day, August 27, 1941, early in the morning, the Jews of Kamenets Podolsk were driven out of their houses by Germans and local auxiliary policemen. They were told they were going to be resettled. The Jews were then taken on foot to the former munitions depot area, a huge territory on the northeast outskirts of Kamenets Podolsk. Craters left by explosions of munitions were visible there. The Jews were ordered to undress, to hand over their money and valuables and, then, taken in groups to the craters, and shot by automatic weapons fire. The perpetrators of this massacre were members of the German 320 Order Police Battalion and of a special unit formed by Friedrich Jeckeln, the High SS and Police Leader "South," from his bodyguards, a guard platoon from his headquarters, and members of his staff. The massacre continued on the following day. During the two days close to 10,000 Jews were murdered. After the transfer of the surviving Jews of Kamenets Podolsk to the ghetto in the area of the former Soviet military camp of a Soviet borderguard training unit, in the every Saturday in the second half of 1942 small groups of the ghetto inmates were shot at the munitions depot area nearby. In early November 1942 the inmates of the ghetto totaling about 4,000 persons of all ages and both sexes, were brought by truck, in groups of 40 to 60, to two pits. There the victims were forced to completely undress, enter the pits, and lie face down. They were then shot in the back of the head with sub-machine guns. At the end of 1942 and throughout 1943 the munitions depot area served as a site for the murder of those Jews who either had succeeded in avoiding the previous massacres of Kamenets Podolsk Jews or had been brought to the city from nearby localities.