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In the three and a half months following the initial German invasion of the USSR, a considerable number of Jews from Pavlograd fled east. Jewish men of military age were conscripted into the Red Army or enlisted voluntarily.
On October 11, 1941, units of the German 6th Army occupied the city. From mid-October 1941 until August 1942, a German military commandant’s office (Ortskommandantur I/829) controlled the city. The Ortskommandantur established a local administration and recruited a Ukrainian auxiliary police force. Shortly after the occupation of the city, the commandant issued an order calling for all Jews to be registered and required them to wear armbands bearing the Star of David on their left arms. In addition, Jews were ordered to appear in front of city headquarters each morning for mandatory labor.
Pavlohrad Holocaust Memorial
Pavlohrad was destroyed in 1941 during the German occupation. The occupying forces operated the Dulag 111 and Dulag 124 transit prisoner-of-war camps and a Jewish ghetto. A large part of the community died during the war and during the mass executions. The first shooting of Jews in the city was apparently carried out at the end of 1941. During the spring of 1942, the German authorities established the Jewish prison camp or “ghetto” on the grounds of factory no. 359. Local Jews from Pavlohrad, as well as Jews from surrounding areas and possibly some refugees, were resettled there. The camp was liquidated in June 1942, and all the prisoners were shot. In total, around 2,000 Jews were murdered. The German forces conducted the shootings with the help of Latvian collaborators.
There were Jews who returned to Pavlohrad after 1945, however, it was not until the 1990’s, that the Jewish community was revived. During the Soviet era, the synagogues were closed and used for municipal needs, but since the independence of Ukraine, a charitable fund "Or Avner", as well as the Joint Distribution Committee operate in Pavlohrad. Chabad-Lubavitch is also actively operating.
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