1942 massacre of Jews in Artemivsk, Ukraine, Soviet Union (now Bakhmut, Ukraine)
The Artemivsk massacre, also referred to as "Bakhmut's Babi Yar", was a 1942 massacre of the Jewish inhabitants of the city of Artemivsk, in the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic of the Soviet Union (now Bakhmut, Ukraine). Somewhere between 1,200 (according to German reports) and 3,000 (according to Soviet numbers) Jews were killed or left to die within the city's alabaster mines.
Background and massacre.
In 1939, the city of Artemivsk (now Bakhmut) had a Jewish population of 5,299, comprising 10% of the city's total population. Following the beginning of Operation Barbarossa, many of Artemivsk's Jews fled eastwards to escape the German offensive. Between 31 October and 1 November 1941, German forces took the city, and subsequently began to issue edicts restricting the Jewish population, such as an order on 19 November 1941 requiring Jews to wear armbands indicating their Jewish ancestry. On 7 January 1942, the following order was issued to Jewish residents of Bakhmut, signed by the collaborationist mayor Holovnia:
Following the convocation of Artemivsk's Jewish population on 9 January 1942, they were herded onto trucks and transported to the abandoned alabaster mines within the city on 11 January 1942. After the Jews were taken into the mines, shots were fired, and the mine was sealed, leaving those who had not been killed by gunfire to suffocate. According to German and Romanian reports following the incident, 1,317 people were killed, of whom 1,224 were Jews.
Aftermath.
Immediately after the massacre, Bakhmut Raion was declared to be "judenfrei"; that is, all Jews in the area had been killed. In September 1943, the city was recaptured by Soviet forces, and the mines were exhumed. Soviet documentation estimated around 3,000 killed, of whom only a dozen were identifiable. The massacre was mentioned in the Nuremberg trials, though it placed the date as between February and March 1942.
Following the war, the Artemivsk Champagne Factory was built over the mines. In 1999, following efforts by the city's Jewish community and support from the factory's director, a monument was established at the site of the massacre, known as the Wall of Sorrow. The memorial, also referred to as the "Wailing Wall" after the Western Wall in Jerusalem, is part of the State Register of Immovable Landmarks of Ukraine, numbered 14-103-0025. It may have been destroyed by Russian shelling in the Battle of Bakhmut during the Russian invasion of Ukraine, according to one leader of Bakhmut's local Jewish community.