(Pages 188-189)

Translated by Shlomo Sné
Edited by Francine Shapiro

Population Table

Winniki is mention by the fifteenth century as a village. The town developed as an urban settlement in the nineteenth century, when a tobacco factory and then a yeast factory opened in a nearby village. Many of Winniki's people were employed as workers in both factories. Other worked in agriculture, and sold their products in Lviv, a distance of eight kilometers.

The Jewish settlement paralleled the transformation of the village to a town, and during its existence, the number of members was 40-50 families. The settlement was under the authority of the Lviv community. Because the Jewish community was so small it had just one kosher slaughterer, who was also an authority on the problems of kashrut.

The Jews of Winniki buried their dead in the Lviv cemetery. The main source of income of the local Jews was trade (shops and stalls that served farmers and factory workers), plus peddling (buying agricultural produce and selling it in Lviv). In 1928 a charitable lending society was established, and it gave four loans of 400 zlotys in 1929. A branch of Betar, and a Menorah Association were organized in it in 1930. For this reason the majority of those who bought Shekels voted for the Revisionists. It seems as if these organizations had a brief life, because two years later for the elections of the Nineteenth Zionist Congress, 24 of the 25 votes were given to the list of Eretz Yisroel HaOvedet.

Rich Jews from Lviv came to Winniki after the outbreak Second World War when the area was occupied by the Soviets. Those emigrants were forbidden to live in Lviv. For this reason the number of Jews in Winniki grew to about 500. At the beginning of the war between Germany and the Soviet Union, the town was occupied by the Germans on June 29, 1941. Local Ukrainians made a pogrom, stole from apartments, and murdered some Jewish men, while German soldiers also took part in robbery. German soldiers began to kidnap Jewish men from houses and streets after the pogroms. Those who were kidnapped were forced into very harsh labor.

A few weeks after the entrance of the Germans, all the Jewish men aged 13 or above were ordered to report for a few days work. And really, they all came to the square near the community building, as they were ordered, with food and work implements. They were organized into rows of four, and were ordered to march and sing accompanied by the Polish Fire Department band, which played marches and Polish national songs. When the men left the town the band returned to Winniki and the Ukrainian policemen took the column to Pyaski, near Lviv, seven kilometers from Winniki. The Jews were ordered to dig deep pits, undress, and all were shot to death. With them was a company of Jews from Lviv who were also taken there to be murdered.

Only a few men survived in Winniki, while women and children remained. All of them were concentrated in one quarter. (Apparently this happened in the autumn of 1941.) A Judenrat was established in this ghetto, but all that is known is that most of its members were women.

In October or December 1941 a work camp for Jews was established in Winniki.

Some 100 men were arrested in it, and sent there from Lviv, Sokal, Jaryczow Novy, and other towns of the vicinity, and also a few other Jews and a few souls left in Winniki. The prisoners paved roads, were porters at the railroad station, and cut wood and performed a variety of other labors. A small group of women worked in the camp kitchen. This camp had strict discipline. The morning inspection all the infirm were in the yard or outside the camp. The Judenrats of the vicinity (such as Sokal or Jaryczow Novy) supplied the camp with food.

The Jewish settlement in Winniki was exterminated in the first quarter of 1942. Ukrainian policemen surrounded the Jewish quarter. The women and children were loaded onto trucks and were taken to an unknown place. It seems quite sure that they were murdered in Pyaski, near Lviv.

The camp in Winniki existed until the summer of 1943. In its end a group or a few groups of prisoners were sent to other work camps. On July 23, 1943 the camp was liquidated, and the Jews who remained there were murdered.

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