Ghetto – Bukovina Jewish Heritage Sites

Shargorod Memorial – 8/2017 – by Josef (Julku) Klein

This memorial was erected at the Shargorod Cemetery. It was the initiative of and funding by the engineer Mr. Rubin (Bubby) Laufman, a native of Kimpolung, in memory of his father Zeev (Wilhelm) Laufman and his grandmother Sarah and his grandfather Joseph, and not less important, to the Jewish victims of the Holocaust from the communities of Kimpolung-Bukovina and the surrounding area, who were deported to Transnistria, to the Shargorod ghetto, during World War II, where they perished from illnesses, cold, hunger and endless marches in Ukranian roads. Some of them were buried on the site as individuals, but most of them were buried in a mass grave in the Shargorod cemetery.

Here is an article (in German) written by Mr. Klein and 3 pictures taken during the dedication ceremony.

Shargorod monument

Murafa Ghetto – by Sara Rosen, Phd. – April 2017

Mrs. Sara Rosen has researched processes in Ghettos in Transnistria.
Her articles provided hereafter (One in English and one in Hebrew) deal with the Murafa Ghetto and are provided here with her permission. Sara, thank you!

SURVIVING IN MURAFA GHETTO: A CASE STUDY OF LIFE IN THE GHETTOS IN TRANSNISTRIA

The paper presents the life of Jewish families in the ghetto of Murafa in northern Transnistria. The main research question is: How can one evaluate the importance of the interrelationship between the communal organization and the family unit to the efforts of Jews to endure ghetto life? The hypothesis of the paper is that the family unit was central to the ability to survive and that the transformations undergone by families were a reflection of both difficulties and opportunities of the family unit under extreme conditions. Various factors impacting on the family unit will be examined, including communal organization, the position of the family in the social system of the ghetto, the economic situation of the family, the level of mutual support among family members, role change in the family, and different patterns of interaction between family members.

This is the first study dedicated to this particular ghetto in Transnistira, with its population of 4,500. The research is based on primary sources from the ghetto, including formal archival materials of the authorities, personal letters, journals and memoirs, and oral histories. The analysis will draw on the theories of sociology as they relate to the structure and conduct of families in everyday life as well as life under extreme pressure. The study findings will provide new insights to understanding life in this ghetto and may offer a comparative approach to everyday life in East European ghettos under German occupation.

SURVIVING IN MURAFA GHETTO: A CASE STUDY OF ONE GHETTO IN TRANSNISTRIA Murafa Ghetto 14.7

The Hebrew document: יחיד, משפחה וקהילה: חקר מקרה להישרדות בגטו מורפה בטרנסניסטריה
גטו מורפה

Djurin Ghetto – by Sara Rosen, Phd. – April 2017

Mrs. Sara Rosen has researched processes in Ghettos in Transnistria.
Her paper provided hereafter deal with the Djurin Ghetto and is provided here with her permission. Sara, thank you!

Ghetto Djurin in Transnistria through the lenses of Kunstadt Diary

Djurin is located about 45 kilometers northeast of the city of Mogilev, about 25 km south of Shargorod. Before the outbreak of the second WW, the local Jewish community numbered some 2,000 people. The Jews lived in very great poverty. Notably Rabbi Herschel Karalnik was the respected leader of Jews in the town.

At the outbreak of the war all men were drafted into the Red Army including the Jews. In town remained only the elderly, the sick, women and children, about 1,000 people. Date of occupation by the German and Romanian armies: July 22^nd , 1941. From the fall of 1941, the Romanians ruled Djurin.

The first deportees arrived in Djurin in September 1941 from Bessarabia. They arrived after a long weeks of wondering from camp to camp. Those deported Jews were housed in the synagogue and most of them died shortly after arrival. From the end of October of that year to January 1942 hundreds of deportees, arrived in Djurin ghetto. Most of them were brought from Bucovina, and others north of Moldova (Dorohoi) .

Inspired by Rabi Karalnik, local Jews welcomed the deportees with open arms although the locals themselves were very poor. 8- 10 persons crowded in one room. The homes of local Jews were able to receive more than two-thirds of them and gave those blankets and household items. About 1,000 people did not have a place; they were housed in barns and warehouses.

This paper is focusing on the reality of the new life in which the Jews deported to Djurin ghetto found themselves, as Kunstadt wrote in his Diary. The paper describes the local Jews and the relationship between them and the deportees, as well as the non-Jewish environment outside the ghetto and the relationships forged with those outsiders. All of this as it emerges from this diary.

See in the link: Kunstadt – Sarah Rosen

Czernowitz Memorial – provided by Chernivtsi Museum of the History and Culture of Bukovinian Jews

Memorial plaque in Chernivtsi on the wall near the place, where the entrance to the Chernivtsi ghetto used to be (crossroads of Sahaidachnogo and Haharina Streets).
Source: The Chernivtsi Museum of the History and Culture of Bukovinian Jews

Provided by Mrs. Anna Yamchuk, PR and Programme Manager,
The Chernivtsi Museum of the History and Culture of Bukovinian Jews.

Bershad Ghetto Memorial – by Mr. Zvika Schwartzman

On 7-15 July 2015 a group of almost 90 people from Israel went on a journey on the path of the Holocaust of Romanian Jews, in Bukovina and Transnistria valley of death.

Mr. Zvika Schwartzman took part in this journey, that was organized by the World Organization of Bukovina Jews and led byMr. Yochanan Ron Singer and Mr. Dan Marian.

One of the places Mr. Schwartzman visited was the Bershad Ghetto in Ukraine/Transnistria and visited the Ghetto Mass Murder Memorial.
See a picture of a the memorial site and the visit of the group there.

Bershad Ghetto – by Mr. Zvika Schwartzman

On 7-15 July 2015 a group of almost 90 people from Israel went on a journey on the path of the Holocaust of Romanian Jews, in Bukovina and Transnistria valley of death.

Mr. Zvika Schwartzman took part in this journey, that was organized by the World Organization of Bukovina Jews and led by Mr. Yochanan Ron Singer and Mr. Dan Marian.

One of the places Mr. Schwartzman visited was the Bershad Ghetto in Ukraine/Transnistria.
See a pictures of a typical house from there.

Pechera (Peciora) Mass Grave – by Dan Marian

A group of people that were born in Bukovina and Bessarabia went in May 2006 to Ukraine, on a trip after the past – to visit places in Transnistria, to where the Jews from Bukovina and Bessarabia were deported by the Romanians and Germans during WW2. Transnistria is located between the rivers Dniester and Bug. Jews who survived the Holocaust and arrived in Israel are looking for a way “to close the loop” and therefore come back to those places.
Dan Marian, Avraham Iwanier, Ben Artzi and Mrs. Sara Hemel took part in this journey, that was lead by Prof. Wolf Moskowitz and Mr. Eliezer Lesoboy. An article (in Hebrew) by Mrs. Sara Hemel was published on 06/06/2006 and can be found at:
http://www.tapuz.co.il/forums2008/articles/article.aspx?forumid=325&aId=72670

There is much talk about the death camp Pechera (Ukrainian), Peciora (Romanian) פצ’יורה (Hebrew), but there are very few visitors, and not many pictures. During WW2 it was a work-death camp, managed by the Germans (unlike other places in Transnistria that were managed by the Romanians).
The Jews in the camp died of hunger, thirst (although the Bug river is close, Jews were not allowed to drink its water), cold and diseases.
Before and after WW2, when the Soviets ruled the place, it was a hospital for tuberculosis patients.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA — A fountain into which the bodies were thrown into

Summary of the trip (in Hebrew) can be found at: 2006 Journey to Ukraine

Tulchin Jewish Ghetto – by Christian Herrmann

This work is published under a Creative Commons License Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/

Many thanks to Christian Herrmann who is researching, traveling, photographing and providing very valuable information about many Jewish Heritage Sites in Bukovina, Transnistria and Bessarabia.

Tulchyn, old name Nesterwar is a town in Vinnytsya Oblast (province) of western Ukraine, formerPodolia. It is the administrative center of Tulchyn Raion (district).

Here are pictures provided by Christian – who visited the Ghetto in June 2015.