Copaigorod

By Ovidiu Creangǎ and Alexander Kruglov, translated by Kathleen Luft
Used  with permission (CC 4.0)
Source: The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos, 1933-1945

Copaigorod (pre-1941: Kopaigorod; today: Kopaihoroda, Ukraine) is located some 45 kilometers (28 miles) north of Moghilev-Podolsk, in the Moghilev judeţ, in the northwestern area of Romanian-administered Transnistria. Jews had thrived in Copaigorod since the eighteenth century. According to the 1939 Soviet census, there were 1,075 Jews living in this large village, representing 37.4 percent of the population.
German forces occupied the village on July 20, 1941. Before that, some Jews had managed to evacuate eastward, and men liable for military service had been drafted into the Red Army. In July and August 1941, the German authorities governed the village. In September 1941, Romanian civil administration took over and renamed the village Copaigorod, designating it a raion center in the Moghilev judeţ. Ion Voda was praetor in Copaigorod.
In late September 1941, the entire Jewish population of the village was forced into a camp near the Copai railroad station, located 6 kilometers (3.7 miles) northwest of the village. This camp was located in a forest and surrounded by barbed wire. In October 1941, several thousand Jews from Bessarabia and Bukovina were also forced into this camp. A small number of those Jews arriving from Moghilev—usually those who had the means to give a hefty bribe or to buy or rent a cart—were transported by trucks or carts; most deportees, however, walked in columns to Copaigorod and then to the camp.
In late November 1941, all the Jews were driven back to Copaigorod, into a ghetto, and were forced to live in houses that had been devastated and plundered (another attempt to return the Jews to the camp near the train station was made in 1942, but the plan was halted due to the intervention of Jewish leaders in Moghilev). In the ghetto, three to four families lived in each room of the dilapidated houses. The floors in most of the [End Page 644] houses were mud, and they were frequently damp. People searched for old boards in the ruins so they could make them into plank beds. The ghetto was encircled with barbed wire, and leaving it without permission was punishable by death. The chief of the Jewish ghetto was Fabius Ornstein, and the chief pharmacist was Moise Weinstein.
In total, 5,000 to 6,000 Jews were concentrated in Copaigorod. Epidemics of infectious diseases erupted in the ghetto in December 1941 and January 1942, with their spread aided by hunger, cold, polluted water, and unsanitary living conditions. Jews from Bessarabia and Bukovina, who had been robbed of their belongings on entering Transnistria at Atachi (a crossing point on the Dniester River), stood little chance against disease. In the absence of proper care and medicine, typhus and pneumonia claimed 2,800 lives. The dead were buried in the Jewish cemetery in four common graves. In addition, nine Jews were shot: two Jews from Bessarabia and three local Jews in July 1942; one Jew from Bessarabia and two local Jews in March 1943; and one local Jew in February 1944.1
Copaigorod’s praetor repeatedly threatened to deport the Jews across the Bug River unless they acceded to his frequent demands for money. Those who still had money gave him bribes, only to be deported when they could no longer pay. In 1942, a group of young and healthy Jews were sent to a labor camp near the town of Tulcin to dig peat, and in 1943 they were sent to a labor camp at Trihati near the town of Nicolaev to build a bridge over the Bug River. Regular work for which able-bodied men in the ghetto were recruited each day included road maintenance, farming, and demolition. Generally, no payment was made to these laborers.
In January 1943, with the permission of the Romanian government, a delegation from the Relief Commission of the Central Bureau of Romanian Jews (Comisiunea de Ajutorare a Centralei Evreilor din România, CER) visited the Copaigorod ghetto. The delegation ascertained the presence of 2,200 Jews in the ghetto, mostly from Bukovina; the number of orphaned Jewish children was 98. (A smaller figure, 1,161 Jews, appeared in the March 1943 count; the discrepancy could be the result of the absence of Jews who had been transferred for work purposes).2 The delegation also learned that, as of August 12, 1942, a cafeteria existed, which served two meals per day to some 500 people in the ghetto. A small hospital with 10 beds also operated in Copaigorod. The delegation donated 4,500 German scrip (Reichskreditkassenscheine) to be used to augment the food supply and assist orphans.3 Financial help from friends and family was sent to named deportees in Copaigorod via CER.4
On September 1, 1943, not counting local Jews, there were 1,295 Jews in the ghetto (676 from Bessarabia and 619 from Bukovina).5 The Red Army recaptured Copaigorod in March 1944, freeing the remaining Jews.

SOURCES

Information on the fate of the Jewish community of Copaigorod during the Holocaust can be found in these publications: “Copaigorod (Kopaygorod),” in Jean Ancel et al., Pinkas ha-kehilot: Romanyah; Entsiklopedyah shel ha-yishuvim ha-Yehudiyim le-min hivasdam ve-‘ad le-ahar Sho’at Milhemet ha‘olam ha-sheniyah (Jerusalem: Yad Vashem, 1969), 1: 501f.; “Kopaigorod,” in Rossiiskaia Evreiskaia Entsiklopediia (Moscow: Rossiiskaia Akademiia Estestvennykh Nauk, Nauchnyi fond “Evreiskaia Entsiklopediia,” “Epos,” 2005), 5: 148–149; and “Kopaygorod,” in Shmuel Spector and Geoffrey Wigoder, eds., The Encyclopedia of Jewish Life before and during the Holocaust (New York: New York University Press, 2001), 2: 656; for census information, see Mordechai Altshuler, ed., Distribution of the Jewish Population of the USSR 1939 (Jerusalem: Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Centre for Research and Documentation of East-European Jewry, 1993), p. 47; Matatias Carp, ed., Cartea Neagră: Fapte şi Documente; Suferinţele Evreilor din România, 1940–1944, vol. 3b: Transnistria (Bucharest: Societatea Naţională de Editură şi Arte Grafice “Dacia Traiană,” 1947); Radu Ioanid, The Holocaust in Romania: The Destruction of Jews and Gypsies under the Antonescu Regime, 1940–1944, foreword by Elie Wiesel, preface by Paul A. Shapiro (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee in association with USHMM, 2000); Jean Ancel, Transnistria, 1941–1942: The Romanian Mass Murder Campaigns, vol. 1: History and Document Summaries (Tel Aviv: Goldstein-Goren Diaspora Research Center, Tel Aviv University, 2003); and Jean Ancel, ed., Documents concerning the Fate of Romanian Jewry during the Holocaust, vol. 5: Bessarabia, Bukovina, Transnistria: Extermination and Survival (New York: Beate Klars-feld Foundation, 1986).
Documentation regarding the extermination of the Jews of Copaigorod can be found in the following archives: GARF (7021-54-1239); DAVINO (file r2966-2-691: lists of prisoners in the ghetto); DAOO (r2255-1-1178, 1180, 1359, 1360, 1362–1366, 1373, 1377, 1400, 1403, 1407; r2264-1-8, 15: lists of prisoners of the ghetto); and YVA. At USHMMA, money transfer records to the Copaigorod ghetto can be found in RG-31.004M (DAOO), reel 4, fond 2242, opis 1, delo 1501, p. 165, and opis 1, delo 1496, p. 93. Fred Şaraga’s report on Copaigorod can be consulted at USHMMA, RG-25.004M (SRI), reel 9, file 2710, vol. 33, pp. 125–126. Published survivors’ testimony can be found in Vestnik: Vypusk 1; Liudi ostaiutsia liud’mi. Svidetel’stva ochevidtsev (Chernovtsy: Prut, 1991) for Rosa Sterenberg; and in Vestnik: Vypusk 2; Liudi ostaiutsia liud’mi. Svidetel’stva ochevidtsev (Chernovtsy: Prut, 1992) for Haim Rosental; Vestnik: Vypusk 4 (chast’ pervaia); Liudi ostaiutsia liud’mi. Svidetel’stva uznikov fashistskikh lagerei-getto (Chernovtsy: Prut, 1995) for Ronia Royzen.

NOTES

1. GARF, 7021-54-1239, p. 1.

2. “Tabloul numeric al evreilor deportaţi în Transnistria pe localităţi, raioane şi judeţe,” reproduced in Ancel, ed., Documents, 5: 344.

3. See Fred Şaraga’s final report, “Raportul Oficial al Comisiunii Evreieşti care a fost în Transnistria,” USHMMA, RG-25.004M (SRI), reel 9, file 2710, vol. 33, pp. 125–126.

4. See “Tabel de remiterile făcute evreilor din ţară deportaţi în Transnistria şi aflaţi la Copaigorod (Jud. Moghilev),” USHMMA, RG-31.004 (DAOO), reel 4, fond 2242, opis 1, 1501, p. 165 (USHMMA, RG-31.004M/4/2242/1/1501, p. 165), and “Tabel de remiterile făcute evreilor din ţară deportaţi în Transnistria şi aflaţi la Copaigorod (Jud. Moghilev),” USHMMA, RG-31.004/4/2242/1/1496, p. 93.

5. “Situaţie numerică de numărul evreilor aflaţi astăzi în Transnistria pe judeţe şi localităţi, dintre cei ce au fost evacuaţi din Basarabia şi Bucovina. Situaţia la 1 Septembrie 1943,” reproduced in Carp, Cartea Neagră, 3b: 441.