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Ghetto in Kobeliaky, Ukraine

According to the data of 1939, about 360 Jews lived in Kobeliaky. They made up 4% of the local population. Data on those evacuated and drafted into the Red Army has not been preserved.

The city was occupied in early September 1941. 10 days after the capture of the settlement, the Nazis conducted a census of the male population. People who suffered from the Soviet regime or ethnic Germans were appointed to leadership positions. For example, Justin Tarnavsky, a former school teacher who served three years in Soviet camps in the case of the Ukrainian military organization, became the district burgomaster. The German Herman became the Gebitskommissar, and the German Gosh became the commandant of Kobeliaky.

By early 1942, the Nazis had completed the registration of the Jewish population of Kobeliaky. Then the Jews were moved to the ghetto on Korolenko Street. According to the recollections of eyewitnesses, the Jews were accommodated in houses No. 16 and 18. The police officers, who were resettling the Jews, confiscated valuable things from them. The prisoners were used for physical work.

In January 1942, the occupation authorities ordered the Jews of Kobeliaky to gather on Oktyabrskaya Street near the Osaviakhim building to be sent to work. According to the recollections of eyewitnesses, the Jews were sent in batches of 15-20 people for several days to the Peski tract, located a kilometer from the city on the left bank of the Vorskla River. Jews were forced to undress and shot in an anti-tank ditch. About 20 local police officers took part in the shooting. According to eyewitnesses, every day police officers brought carts with Jewish clothes to Kobeliaky.

According to Yad Vashem, 110 to 126 Jews were shot in the Peski tract.

After the shootings, Jewish children remained in the city. They lived in houses No. 9 and 12 on Korolenko Street. According to eyewitnesses, from 23 to 25 children lived on Korolenko Street, who were looked after by three to five Jewish women.

At the end of January 1942, a closed meeting was held in the office of the burgomaster Tarnavsky, which was attended by the district sanitary doctor Mikhail Khodotov and the doctor Vasiliy Smirnov. At the meeting, Tarnavsky said that he had received an order from the German command to kill Jewish children. It is known that Smirnov prepared the solution of morphine.

At the end of January 1942, doctors and police officers went to the houses where the children lived, but could not obey the order. Paramedic Gorban and nurse Gal disappeared in an unknown direction. In early February 1942, doctors Khodotov and Smirnov administered lethal doses of morphine to children under the guise of vaccination. In January 1944, they were publicly hanged in Kobeliaky for a crime committed.