The Jews in Djurin during the Holocaust

The presence of Jews in the locality is attested since 1765, the year in which the Jewish community had 84 people. Their number increased in the following century, reaching 1,320 in 1889. In that year, there were two synagogues in Djurin. In 1939, Soviet data showed that 1,027 Jews lived in Djurin, which meant 19% of the population. Until the establishment of the Soviet regime, the occupations of the Jews were in agriculture, handicrafts and industry. Many Jews worked in the sugar factory, built in the 1880s, and then in the brick factory, which was put into use at the beginning of the 20th century. During the Soviet period, the Jews of Djurin worked on several collective farms.

According to some sources, during the Russian Civil War (1917-1921), the Jews here were the victims of several pogroms, and some were taken hostage by the fighters of the two camps.

In 1941, after the Germans entered the locality, the Jews were asked to mark their houses with the “Star of David” and to wear a banner on their arm. In the autumn of 1941, during a religious holiday, German and Romanian soldiers, accompanied by Ukrainian police, entered the synagogue. All the Jews found in the place of worship were beaten.

During the same period, the city came under the Romanian administration, and a ghetto was set up. Between October 1941 and January 1942, 3,500 Jews from Bukovina, originally from Chernivtsi, Vijnița, Suceava, and other localities, were brought here. About 2,000 of them were housed in the homes of local Jews in exchange for a tax, and the remaining 1,000, for whom there were no more vacant homes, were housed in the synagogue, barns, or warehouses. One of the main problems of this ghetto was the lack of water. There was only one place where the deportees were supplied with water and it was on a hill. The approximately 4,000 inhabitants of the ghetto carried their water from this place.

In the spring of 1941, a Jewish Council and Jewish police were established. Later, a hospital with 56 beds and a pharmacy were organized, which did not have any medicine, a dispensary, and a canteen, where a soup/day was offered for 850 people.

Using the corruption of the members of the administration, the leaders of the ghetto managed to obtain the amelioration of some restrictions and, often, to avoid the relocation of those in the ghetto from Djurin in the camps from Peciora or Scazineț. The Jews in the ghetto were used to work in agriculture or constructions or to build roads. Poor hygiene, overcrowding, lack of medication caused typhus and the death of 400 people in 1942.

Although compared to other ghettos in Transnistria, the one in Djurin is described as “a good ghetto” because there were no mass executions, in Djurin people died of starvation, typhoid fever and the miserable conditions in which those interned there lived. In January 1943, according to a report by the Romanian Jewish Central, whose representatives visited several Transnistrian ghettos, there were 4,050 Jews in Djurin, of whom 3,053 were from Bukovina and Bessarabia, and the rest were Ukrainians. There were also 249 orphans. Of these, 51 had lost both parents. In October 1943, an orphanage was set up in Djurin, where 60 orphans were brought. The orphanage had a kitchen, laundry, kindergarten, and a classroom for school-age children. The ghetto was dismantled in March 1944, when the Soviets entered the region and the Jews from the ghetto were liberated.

Ovidiu Creangă, Alexander Kruglov, Djurin, in Geoffrey P. Megargee (general editor), Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos 1933-1945, Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2018, pp. 666-667. 

Cosmina Gușu, Interviu cu Miriam Korber-Bercovici [Interview with Miriam Korber-Bercovici], accessible online at http://www.inshr-ew.ro/miriam-korber-bercovici-interviu/ 

Ana Bărbulescu, “The Djurin Ghetto: Official Order, Internal Structure, and Networking Strategies”, in Holocaust. Studii și cercetări [Holocaust. Studies and research], an XI, nr. 12/2019, pp. 99-100, 102.

AINSH-EW, fond RG-25.004M (SRI), reel 9, file 2710, vol. 33, pp. 130–131.

***, DZHURIN, accessible online at http://iajgscemetery.org/eastern-europe/ukraine/dzhurin