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JewishHistoryעברית

Kamianets-Podilskyi massacre

Date
26 August 1941 – 29 August 1941Hebrew date: 3rd of Elul, 5701 – 6th of Elul, 5701
Location
Kamianets-PodilskyiUkraine
Then part of
German-occupied Soviet Ukraine
Perpetrators
  • SS (State)
  • Einsatzgruppen (State)
  • SS (State)
  • Locally recruited auxiliaries (Militia / auxiliaries)
  • Hungarian gendarmerie (State)
Killed (estimate)
23,600[1]Jews murdered in the shooting, according to Friedrich Jeckeln's report. Yad Vashem states that 14,000–16,000 of the victims were Jews deported from Hungary and the rest were local Jews. USHMM's timeline article adds that two-thirds of the local Jewish community was killed and that more than half of all victims were Jews deported from Hungary.
Locality

170% of the Jewish population of Kamianets-Podilskyi[7]The killed estimate is higher than the population estimate.

Country

1.5% of the Jewish population of Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic (c. 1939)[13]

Worldwide

0.14% of the worldwide Jewish population (c. 1939)[8]

Category
Massacre
Confidence
High

Summary

After Hungary declared war on the Soviet Union in June 1941, Hungarian authorities and the Hungarian gendarmerie rounded up Jews who could not prove Hungarian citizenship, including entire communities in Subcarpathian Rus, and deported them into German-held territory. USHMM records about 18,000 deported by the end of August; they were handed over near Korösmező (Yasinya) and marched from Kolomyia to Kamianets-Podilskyi. Between 26 and 28 August (Yad Vashem: 27–29 August), Einsatzgruppen detachments and troops under Higher SS and Police Leader Friedrich Jeckeln, with locally recruited auxiliaries, shot the deportees together with local Jews. Jeckeln reported 23,600 murdered. USHMM calls this the first large-scale mass murder in pursuit of the "Final Solution" and, at the time, the largest massacre of Jews yet carried out in German-occupied Europe.

Sources

  1. Kamenets-Podolsk. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Holocaust Encyclopedia
  2. Massacre at Kamenets-Podolsk. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Holocaust Encyclopedia
  3. Deportations from Hungary to Eastern Galicia and Ukraine in 1941. Yad Vashem
  4. Kamenets-Podolski. Yad Vashem, Shoah Resource Center
  5. Gendarmerie, Hungarian. Yad Vashem, Shoah Resource Center
  6. The Holocaust in Subcarpathian Rus and Southern Slovakia. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Holocaust Encyclopedia
  7. Benyamin Lukin, Kam’ianets’-Podil’s’kyi. YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe

Jewish population (estimates)

  • Worldwide: 16,500,000 – 16,633,675[8]c. 1939DellaPergola's revised core estimate for 1 January 1939 is 16.5 million. The American Jewish Year Book 1948–49 compiled 16,633,675 at the end of 1939.
  • Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic: 1,532,776[13]c. 1939Jewish nationality in the Ukrainian SSR in the 17 January 1939 All-Union census (5.0% of the republic).
  • Kamianets-Podilskyi: 13,796[7]Jews in Kamianets-Podilskyi in 1939 (38 percent of the town), two years before the August 1941 massacre. This is the pre-occupation local community. Jews deported from Hungary in the weeks before the massacre were shot with them and are not part of this town figure.

Sources for population estimates

  1. Sergio DellaPergola, World Jewish Population, 2024. American Jewish Year Book 2024, via Berman Jewish DataBank (2025)
  2. Sergio DellaPergola, Notes toward a Demographic History of the Jews. Genealogy 8(1) (2024)
  3. Jewish Population of Europe in 1933. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Holocaust Encyclopedia
  4. Jewish Population of the World. American Jewish Year Book 1948–1949, via Berman Jewish Policy Archive (1949)
  5. Maristella Botticini and Zvi Eckstein, Voluntary Conversions and Diaspora: A Human Capital Interpretation of Jewish History. American Economic Association annual meeting paper (2007)
  6. Jews in the USSR (1926–1959). Demographic Changes. JewishGen Belarus SIG (table compiled from the 1939 All-Union census)
  7. Mandate for Palestine. Report of the Mandatory to the League of Nations (Palestine Administration, 1922). United Nations UNISPAL (British mandatory report) (1922)
  8. José Hinojosa Montalvo, La sociedad y la economía de los judíos en Castilla y la Corona de Aragón durante la Baja Edad Media. Espacio, Tiempo y Forma, Serie III, Historia Medieval (1993)
  9. The Contagion of Violence. 1391 and the Jews of the Spanish Kingdoms. Palgrave / Springer chapter (preview) (2021)
  10. Maristella Botticini and Zvi Eckstein, Religious Norms, Human Capital, and Money Lending in Jewish European History. Handbook chapter PDF via zvi-eckstein.com
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  13. Joseph Jacobs, Statistics. Jewish Encyclopedia (1906)
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  17. Russia (Census Statistics). Jewish Encyclopedia (1901–1906)
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  20. Sergio DellaPergola, World Jewish Population, 2024. American Jewish Year Book 2024, via Berman Jewish DataBank / Israel CBS host (2025)
  21. Sergio DellaPergola, Demographic Trends in Israel and Palestine: Prospects and Policy Implications. American Jewish Year Book 2003, via Berman Jewish DataBank (2003)
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  23. US Jewish Population Pocket Demographics 2.0. Berman Jewish DataBank / Jewish Federations of North America (2018)
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  31. Maristella Botticini and Zvi Eckstein, Appendix A: Sources and Methodology for Section 2 (Jewish and total population in Germany-Austria and Poland-Lithuania). Authors' appendix PDF (citing Weinryb, Stampfer, Kupovetsky, Guggenheim, Toch, Battenberg, Israel) (2018)
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  37. Davis Trietsch, Die Juden der Türkei. Länder und Völker der Türkei, Heft 8 (Leipzig) (1915)
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  50. Greece. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Holocaust Encyclopedia
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  53. Statistics of Jews (World and US Jewish Population). American Jewish Year Book 1946–1947, via Berman Jewish DataBank (1947)
  54. Jacqueline Shields, Jewish Refugees from Arab Countries. Jewish Virtual Library
  55. Lebanon Virtual Jewish History Tour. Jewish Virtual Library
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  57. Algeria (Vital Statistics). Jewish Encyclopedia (1906)
  58. Archives juives n°45/2 — Les Juifs d'Algérie. Archives Juives / Les Belles Lettres (2012)
  59. EHRI Country Report — Tunisia. European Holocaust Research Infrastructure
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  62. Sara Koplik, The Demise of the Jewish Community in Afghanistan, 1933–1952. SOAS University of London (PhD thesis abstract / deposit page) (2001)
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  64. All-Union 1959 census — ethnic composition of the USSR. Demoscope Weekly (РГАЭ РФ fond 1562)
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