Kamianets-Podilskyi commemorates the victims of the Holocaust
August 2026 marked 85 years since the Kamianets-Podilskyi massacre, one of the first mass executions of Jewish people in the territory of the Soviet Union.
On August 28, residents gathered at the mass graves in Rodynnyi Square. A memorial prayer, the Kaddish, was recited, followed by the sound of the shofar. The commemorative ceremony, organised by the Kamianets-Podilskyi Jewish community, was attended by representatives of the city authorities, the district veterans’ organisation, and the Ukrainian Church of Christians of Evangelical Faith.
Following the ceremony in the square, the victims were also commemorated at the mass grave in the city’s new Jewish cemetery.
Representatives of the Zionist Federation of Ukraine also took part in the commemorative events.
According to the historical and tourist route Jewish Kamianets, created by Eugene Levinzon and Hanna Kivilsha, SS-Obergruppenführer Friedrich Jeckeln arrived in Kamianets-Podilskyi at the end of August 1941. Under his command, 23,600 Jews were murdered on August 26, 27 and 28, 1941.
It was not until 1956 that the first memorial was erected at the mass graves in what is now Rodynnyi Square. The monument was assembled from fragments of granite tombstones from the Jewish cemetery.
In the summer of 1942, more than 800 Jewish children and elderly people were shot at the new Jewish cemetery. At the time, their family members were being held in forced labour.
