In the Ukrainian major city of Donetsk several memorials remember the tens of thousands of Soviet citizens, including approximately 15,000 Jews, who were murdered in the city during the German occupation in World War II.
Donetsk is an industrial city in southeastern Ukraine. The whole region called the Donets Basin or Donbas is rich in mineral resources. For this reason the Welshman John Hughes established a metallurgical factory in 1867 on today's city zone, the estate that developed around it was called Yuzovka. The place rapidly became a centre for the steel industry. In honour of Stalin Yuzovka was renamed Stalino in 1924 and bore this name until 1961. In 1939 the city had a population of 500,000, including tens of thousands of Jews. In October 1941, four months after the attack on the Soviet Union the German Wehrmacht reached Stalino. Reports about atrocities and mass executions behind the front resulted in the flight of more than 60,000 inhabitants, including many Jews, to the Soviet hinterland. In December 1941, only weeks after the occupation of the city, members of the SS-Einsatzgruppe C (mobile killing squad) shot several hundred Jews. Later a ghetto was established to which approximately 3,000 Jewish families had to move to. With catastrophic scarce supplies they had to conduct up to 17 hours of forced labour per day. Again and again the occupation forces conducted mass executions in Stalino, especially at the »mine shaft No. 4/4«. Up to 75,000 people were murdered there until the end of the German occupation in September 1943, mainly Soviet POWs and roughly 15,000 Jews. The perpetrators dropped the corpses into a pit where they piled up hundreds of meters.
The exact number of victims remains is not know. The number of Jewish victims is estimated to be around 15,000.
In 1965 a monumental memorial to the »Victims of Fascism« was erected. It is placed on the site of a former camp for Soviet POWs. Since 1983 there is a memorial on the former site of mine shaft No. 4/4, into which the SS dropped the corpses of the murdered. Finally in 2006 a memorial remembering the Jewish victims was erected on the site of the former ghetto.
- Name
- Pamjatniki w Donetzke
- Address
-
prospekt poleglih komunariv, 81
83000 Donezk - Open
- The memorials are accessible ar all times.