Vapniarka concentration camp

Vapniarka
Concentration camp

The Vapniarka concentration camp was a concentration camp established in Vapniarka, Ukraine.

Soon after Romania, under the leadership of Ion Antonescu, joined the war on the Axis side and took part in the invasion of the Soviet Union, its administration extended over the Dniester and areas up to then forming part of the Ukrainian SSR (see Romania during World War II). By that time, the 700 local Jewish inhabitants had fled or had been killed by the Nazi German or Romanian troops. In October 1941, the Romanians established a detention camp in Vapniarka. One thousand Jews were brought to the site that month, mostly from the city of Odessa. Some 200 died in a typhus epidemic; the others were taken out of the camp in two batches, guarded by soldiers of the Romanian Gendarmerie, and shot to death.

In 1942, 150 Jews from Bukovina were brought to Vapniarka. On September 16 of that year, 1,046 Romanian Jews were also brought to the camp. About half had been banished from their homes on suspicion of being communists, but 554 had been included without any specific charges being brought against them. This was the last transport to arrive at the camp; its status was changed to that of a concentration camp for political prisoners, under the direct control of the Romanian Minister of the Interior, Dumitru I. Popescu. In practice, Vapniarka was a concentration camp for Jewish prisoners, since no other political suspects were held there—the only other inmates were several Ukrainian convicts. Of the 1,179 Jews in the camp, 107 were women, who were housed in two huts surrounded by a triple-apron barbed-wire fence.

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