Vinnytsia massacre
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The Vinnytsia massacre was the mass execution of between 9,000 and 11,000 people in the Ukrainian town of Vinnytsia by the
Soviet The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR), commonly known as the Soviet Union, was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until Dissolution of the Soviet ...
secret police
NKVD The People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs (, ), abbreviated as NKVD (; ), was the interior ministry and secret police of the Soviet Union from 1934 to 1946. The agency was formed to succeed the Joint State Political Directorate (OGPU) se ...
during the
Great Purge The Great Purge, or the Great Terror (), also known as the Year of '37 () and the Yezhovshchina ( , ), was a political purge in the Soviet Union that took place from 1936 to 1938. After the Assassination of Sergei Kirov, assassination of ...
in 1937–1938, which
Nazi Germany Nazi Germany, officially known as the German Reich and later the Greater German Reich, was the German Reich, German state between 1933 and 1945, when Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party controlled the country, transforming it into a Totalit ...
discovered during its occupation of Ukraine in 1943.Valery Vasiliev, Yuriy Shapoval, "Stages of «Great Terror»: The Vinnytsia Tragedy", '' Zerkalo Nedeli'', No. 31 (406), August 17–23, 2002,
in Russian

in Ukrainian
)
The investigation of the site first conducted by the international Katyn Commission coincided with the discovery of a similar mass murder site of Polish
prisoners of war A prisoner of war (POW) is a person held captive by a belligerent power during or immediately after an armed conflict. The earliest recorded usage of the phrase "prisoner of war" dates back to 1610. Belligerents hold prisoners of war for a ...
in Katyn. Among the 679 dead identified by the Germans in 1943, there were also a certain number of Russians and 28 Poles (according to the latest data, the number of Poles killed by the NKVD in the city could amount to over 3,000). Nazi propaganda invoked mention of the massacre to illustrate communist terror by the
Soviet Union The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR), commonly known as the Soviet Union, was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until Dissolution of the Soviet ...
.


History


Massacre

Most of the victims buried at Vinnytsia were killed using .22 calibre bullets fired into the back of the neck.; fragment in question originally published in: Due to the small calibre of the bullet, most victims were shot twice, and at least 78 of them were shot three times; 395 of the victims found there had their skulls broken in addition to traces of gunshot trauma. Almost all men whose remains were excavated had their hands tied. Older women were dressed in some form of clothing, whereas younger victims were buried naked. The executions were clandestine; the families were not informed of their relatives' fate. Personal belongings, documents and trial documentation were not preserved and instead were buried in a separate pit not far from the mass graves.


The investigation commission

The first examinations of the exhumed bodies were made by doctors such as professor Gerhard Schrader of the University of Halle-Wittenberg, docent Doroshenko of Vinnytsia, and professor Malinin of
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, respectively. The excavations started in May 1943 at three locations: the fruit orchard in the west, the central cemetery, and the People's Park. Most of the bodies were found in the fruit orchard (5,644 bodies). Altogether, 91 mass graves were discovered at the three locations, and 9,432 bodies were exhumed; 149 of them were women. The excavations at the People's Park were not finished, though many more bodies were thought to be buried there. After a preliminary investigation conducted by Professor Schrader's team, two teams of medical examiners were invited—one international and the other made up of 13 experts from universities in
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. An international commission of experts in
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and
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were brought in from 11 countries in
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, predominantly from Nazi Germany's allied or occupied states. They were: * Dr. Soenen,
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, Occupied Belgium. * Dr. Michailov,
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,
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. * Dr. ,
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, Republic of Finland. * Dr. Duvoir,
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, Occupied France. * Dr. Cazzaniga,
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,
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. * Dr. Ljudevit Jurak,
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. * Dr. ter Poorten,
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, The Occupied Netherlands * Dr. Alexandru Birkle, Institute of Forensic Medicine and Criminology,
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. * Dr. , Karolinska Institutet,
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, Kingdom of Sweden. * Dr. Krsek, University of Bratislava, Slovak Republic. * Dr. , University of Budapest,
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. The group visited the mass graves between July 13 and July 15, 1943. The Nazi German commission completed its report on July 29, 1943. Both commissions determined that almost all of the victims were executed by two shots in the back of the head between 1937 and 1938.About Crime in Vinnytsia
Ukrainian society of the repressed. Peter Pavlovych
468 bodies were identified by people of Vinnytsia and the surroundings; the other 202 were identified on the basis of documents and evidence found in the graves. Most bodies that were identified this way were Ukrainians; there were also 28 bodies that were identified as ethnic
Poles Pole or poles may refer to: People *Poles (people), another term for Polish people, from the country of Poland * Pole (surname), including a list of people with the name * Pole (musician) (Stefan Betke, born 1967), German electronic music artist ...
.


Later history

Besides the original group of thirteen, several other delegations visited the sites in mid-1943. Among them were politicians and other officials from
Kingdom of Bulgaria The Tsardom of Bulgaria (), also known as the Third Bulgarian Tsardom (), usually known in English as the Kingdom of Bulgaria, or simply Bulgaria, was a constitutional monarchy in Southeastern Europe, which was established on , when the Bulgaria ...
, Occupied Denmark, Occupied Greece, Republic of Finland, and Kingdom of Sweden. Photos and results of the investigation were published in many countries in Europe, and were used by Nazi Germany in the propaganda war against the Soviet Union. Most of the bodies were reburied after a burial service led by metropolit Vissarion of
Odessa ODESSA is an American codename (from the German language, German: ''Organisation der ehemaligen SS-Angehörigen'', meaning: Organization of Former SS Members) coined in 1946 to cover Ratlines (World War II aftermath), Nazi underground escape-pl ...
. The service was also attended by many other Orthodox bishops and foreign church officials.Amtliches Material zum Massenmord von Winniza, p.124, 208–209. Archiv-Edition 1999 (Faksimile der 1944 erschienenen Ausgabe). A monument was also erected to the "Victims of Stalinist Terror". Later the Soviet authorities rededicated the monument to the "Victims of Nazi Terror", finally completely removing it and creating an entertainment park in its place. In the last ten years a new monument has been constructed at the burial site in the park; it only refers to "victims of totalitarianism". During Soviet times, information about the massacre was disseminated and investigated by the Ukrainian diaspora in the West. The mass murder in Vinnytsia returned as a critical topic in Ukraine in 1988.


See also

* Bykivnia mass grave near
Kyiv Kyiv, also Kiev, is the capital and most populous List of cities in Ukraine, city of Ukraine. Located in the north-central part of the country, it straddles both sides of the Dnieper, Dnieper River. As of 1 January 2022, its population was 2, ...
* Dem'ianiv Laz, massacre near
Ivano-Frankivsk Ivano-Frankivsk (, ), formerly Stanyslaviv, Stanislav and Stanisławów, is a city in western Ukraine. It serves as the administrative centre of Ivano-Frankivsk Oblast as well as Ivano-Frankivsk Raion within the oblast. Ivano-Frankivsk also host ...
* Fântâna Albă massacre *
Katyn massacre The Katyn massacre was a series of mass killings under Communist regimes, mass executions of nearly 22,000 Polish people, Polish military officer, military and police officers, border guards, and intelligentsia prisoners of war carried out by t ...
* Kurapaty mass grave near
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,
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*
List of massacres in the Soviet Union The following is a list of massacres that took place in the Soviet Union. For massacres that took place in countries that were once part of the Soviet Union, see the list of massacres in that country. See also * List of massacres in Russia * ...
* Lunca massacre * Mass graves in the Soviet Union * Sandarmokh * Solovki prison camp * Svirlag * Tatarka common graves


References


Literature

* * Ihor Kamenetsky. The Tragedy of Vinnytsia: Materials on Stalin's Policy of Extermination in Ukraine/1936-1938, Ukrainian Historical Assn (1991)
available on line in pdf. format
* Sandul, I. I., A. P. Stepovy, S. O. Pidhainy. The Black Deeds Of The Kremlin: A White Book. Ukrainian Association of Victims of Russian Communist Terror. Toronto. 1953 * Israel Charny, William S. Parsons, and Samuel Totten. Century of Genocide: Critical Essays and Eyewitness Accounts. Routledge. New York, London. * Dragan, Anthony. Vinnytsia: A Forgotten Holocaust. Jersey City, NJ: Svoboda Press, Ukrainian National Association 1986, octavo, 52 pp.
available on line in pdf. format
* Crime of Moscow in Vynnytsia. Ukrainian Publication of the Ukrainian American Youth Association, Inc. New York. 1951 * Вінниця - Злочин Без Кари. Воскресіння. Київ. 1994 * Вінницький злочин // Енциклопедія українознавства.: 10 т. - Перевид. в Україні. - Київ., 1993. - Т.1. - С.282 * * * {{Authority control 1937 in Ukraine 1937 murders in the Soviet Union 1938 in Ukraine 1938 murders in the Soviet Union Great Purge History of Vinnytsia Mass graves in Ukraine Massacres committed by the Soviet Union Massacres in 1937 Massacres in 1938 Massacres in the Soviet Union Massacres in Ukraine Massacres of Poles Massacres of Ukrainians Second Polish Republic–Soviet Union relations Soviet Union–Ukraine relations