On October 2, a group of tourists from Australia visited the Holocaust memorial in Khmelnytskyi.
In this place, the memory of the tragedy of the Jewish people is always alive. In our city, 16,000 Jews were shot, specifically in the place where the memorial is now, 8,200 people. There was a deep ravine here at that time.
The death sentence for the Jews was the order of the Housing Commissioner on December 14, 1941, according to which the Jews and their property had to move to the ghetto - specially fenced city quarters with barbed wire.
Jews in Proskurove began to be shot in the fall of 1941, and by the end of the year, about 850 of them were exterminated. They spared neither the old, nor the children, nor the infants. And before the execution, household property was looted, valuables were taken, they were forced to undress in front of the grave and even their clothes were taken away.
The conveyor belt of death worked even more intensively from the fall of 1942. Jews were shot in two stages: first, the ghetto inmates, and at the end of 1942, specialists. In addition, Jews were brought to Proskurov for extermination from the surrounding towns. In particular, 800 people were brought from Mykolaiv, 1172 from Black Island. Not a single tailor, shoemaker or tinsmith remained in the villages. There was a tough command to complete the liquidation of all Jews by the end of 1942 and finally "solve the Jewish question." The same applied to the workers of the Jewish labor camp. They repaired the road to Vinnytsia, it was the only road through which supplies for the German army arrived. But even though the road was not completed, the Jews were shot.
In 1965, on the 20th anniversary of the Victory over fascism, monuments were erected on all Jewish fraternal graves, including here. But 40 years have passed, the monument has become dilapidated and tilted, and the forest has come close to it. And it was decided to create a memorial complex at this place, which was erected after 2010. The Khmelnytskyi Charitable Foundation "Hesed Besht", sponsors, city authorities and volunteers took part in the creation of the memorial. Our volunteer Semyon Milman has nine close relatives and many distant relatives buried in this grave. It was Semyon Lvovich Milman and the director of "Hesed Beshta" Igor Aleksandrovich Ratushny who initiated the creation of such a memorial, undertook the main work, sought financing, developed the project, prepared and agreed on the documentation necessary for the start of construction, and brought this noble work to completion. The main financial sponsor was a resident of Los Angeles, our compatriot Hryhoriy Solomonovich Halperin. He financed almost all the works.
It was very painstaking work. First, it was necessary to uproot and remove many trees, to level the slope - for this, more than a thousand cubic meters of earth were imported; perform drainage, make retaining concrete walls, steps. And only then did they begin the construction of the memorial.
According to tradition, visitors to the memorial placed pebbles on the graves. After all, it is not customary to put flowers on Jewish graves, because they wither and lose their beauty. And the stones are eternal, just as our memory of the deceased is eternal.
The tragedy of the Holocaust is not only a part of Jewish history, it is a bitter part of world history. During the war, the Nazis and their accomplices exterminated about six million Jews, that is, a third of the nation. It was not just a murder, it was an attempt to destroy Jewry as such.
The Holocaust became the point in the history of the world, after which humanity proclaimed the principle "Never again." Glory to the Almighty, the Jews now have the state of Israel, in which they can escape from anti-Semitism, and which willingly gathers all Jews and members of their families in the holy land, cares for them and helps them in every way. Therefore, it is believed that such tragedies will never happen again.
