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Vinnytsia - also known by other names) is a
city located on the banks of the Southern Buh River, in central
Ukraine. Vinnytsa is also known by a variety of other names,
such as Vinnytsya, Vinnitsa (Russian: Винница), Vinnica (Polish:
Winnica), German Winniza, and Romanian: Vinnita. All of the
variations of the city's name originate with the Slavic word for
Vineyards, ultimately derived from Latin vinea for the word
vine. Some of these reflect names in foreign languages that have
had historical influences on the city. Vinnytsia has been an
important trade and political center since the fourteenth
century, when Fedir Koriatowicz, the nephew of the Lithuanian
Duke Olgerd, built a fortress (1363) against Tatar raiders on
the banks of the Southern Bug. From that time on, the town
became a factor in ongoing disputes between Lithuania, Tatars
(who burnt the fortress in 1580), Poland, Turkey (which ruled
the city and region from 1672 to 1699), Cossacks and eventually
Russia, which annexed the city and region following the Second
Partition of Poland in 1793. Russia moved to expunge the Roman
Catholic religion - Catholic churches in the city (including
what is now the Transfiguration Cathedral) were converted to
Russian Orthodox churches. Victim's graves from the Vinnytsia
massacre during the Stalinist repression of 1937-1938 were
exhumed by the invading Germans in 1943. Adolf Hitler sited his
easternmost headquarters FHQ Wehrwolf near the town and spent a
number of weeks there in 1942 and early 1943. Nazi atrocities
were committed in and near Vinnytsia by Einsatzgruppe D.
Estimates of the number of victims run as high as 28 thousand.
This included the virtual extinction of the town's large Jewish
population. One infamous photo, The Last Jew of Vinnytsia, shows
a member of Einsatzgruppe D about to execute a Jew kneeling
before a mass grave. |
