Vinnitsa

[Birgitte Heuschkel]

Recently I came across this location name in the USSR somewhere, but I know practically nothing of it. Anyone more knowledgeable give me a crash course? I've been looking for a location named "Vilnesta" for years, this might very well be it, mangled by phonetics and whatnot.

--Birgitte

[MaPen]

Vinnitsa region (now Cherkassy region) is in Ukraine.

Regards,

MaPen

[JC]

Birgitte,

Vinnitsa is about 120 miles southwest of Kiev.

Jeff

[Gwynn Compton]

It is most famous for having been a site of one of Hitler's headquarters isn't it? Or perhaps I'm confusing it with a similiar sounding place, however if I am correct, the lengths that the SS went to keep Hitler completely safe are comparable to the sort of security we see around the American President even when he is in America.

[Birgitte Heuschkel]

It is most famous for having been a site of one of Hitler's headquarters isn't it?

Yes -- at least this is what I got sent from a buddy off the Wiesenthal site:

regional center of Vinnitsa Oblast (district), Ukrainian SSR. Jews had been living in Vinnitsa since the sixteenth century; on the eve of World War II, the Jewish population was approximately 25,000, out of a total of 92,868. In the first few days after the German invasion of the Soviet Union, in June 1941, 17,500 of the city's Jews managed to flee to the east; when the German forces entered Vinnitsa, on July 19, they found 7,500 Jews there. A few days later hundreds of young Jews were apprehended, ostensibly in order to be sent to Palestine; in actuality, they were taken to the Jewish cemetery, where they were killed. The remaining Jews were put into a ghetto in the area of the military quarter (Voyenny Gorodok). At the end of September the skilled workers and professionals in the ghetto, together with their families -- some five thousand people -- were separated from the rest of the Jews. The rest, consisting of two thousand old people, women, and children, were taken to the city outskirts and murdered.


The Fate of Skilled Jewish Workers.
At the beginning of 1942, Vinnitsa became the site of an advance field headquarters for Hitler, in his capacity as commander in chief. Tens of thousands of workers were brought in to set up the facility, and Vinnitsa Jews as well were put to work on the project. When it was completed, a meeting was held on July 14, at which an order was given that 20,000 of the Ukrainian workers were to be sent to work in the Reich and that the Jews were to be murdered. The meeting was attended by representatives of the SS, the German police (Ordnungspolizei), the SD (Sicherheitsdienst; Security Service), and the Gebietskommissar (district commissioner). The SD commander opposed killing the Jews, claiming that he needed them for maintaining the municipal services in Vinnitsa. He made a successful appeal to the Hoherer SS - and Polizeifuhrer (Higher SS and Police Leader) of the Ukraine, Hans Prutzmann, to have the order rescinded. Nevertheless, in the following month some of the skilled workers, with their families, were killed. The remainder were transferred to a labor camp; of these, only a few survived. Vinnitsa was liberated on March 20, 1944.

[Clodius]

Also lot of massgraves of victims of the Soviet regime were discovered
there during German occupation.

[Gwynn Compton]

The same applies to Babi Yar where the Germans discovered a mass grave of Ukranian nationals in 1943, 2 years after the German's slaughtered 34,000 Jews and Russians

[Birgitte Heuschkel]

Makes you wonder if there was anyone in Ukraine not up to taking a chance to get rid of his neighbors...

[Gwynn Compton]

And we thought the Middle East was dangerous to live in.