Kamyanets-Podilsky, a small town in south-west Ukraine, close to the borders with Moldova and Romania, is one of the most beautiful in the country. Its geographical position, on a plateau surrounded by a deep gorge cut by the Smotrych river as it loops around the old town, explains its longstanding strategic importance. The castle, linked to the old town by a bridge across the gorge, dates to the period when the region, along with much of present-day Ukraine, was part of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. In its heyday, it was one of the Commonwealth’s most important fortresses, defending against repeated Tatar and Ottoman invasions.
Kamyanets-Podilsky Castle
Kamyanets-Podilsky holds an important place in Polish literature, portrayed as a bulwark of Christian Europe. The final part of Polish Nobel Laureate Henryk Sienkiewicz’s historical trilogy, “Fire in the Steppe” features the Ottoman siege of Kamyanets-Podilsky in 1672. The fall of the town was followed by nearly three decades of Ottoman rule. The period of Ottoman rule was brief, but it left its mark on the Roman Catholic Cathedral of Saints Peter and Paul. Following the Ottoman conquest, the cathedral was converted into a mosque, and a minaret was added near the entrance. When the town was returned to Poland in 1699 under the Treaty of Karlowitz (present-day Sremski Karlovci, in Vojvodina, Serbia), the mosque was converted back into a cathedral. The minaret was retained however, and a few decades later was topped by a statue of the Virgin Mary, a quirky and incongruous sight.
Cathedral of Saints Peter and Paul, with minaret
The fortress has undergone restoration, but is quite well preserved. The arches of the bridge were completely encased in thick stone walls during the period of Ottoman rule, so that it looks like a solid causeway across the gorge, linking the town with the fortress. The castle, with its towers, sitting on its rocky plateau, is a fine sight from across the bridge. Walking around the gorge surrounding the old town, with its steep rocky escarpments and its profusion of greenery, one comes across the remnants of other medieval fortifications, stone towers and gates. This was once a strongly fortified town. In the 18th and 19th centuries the castle served as a prison, first under Polish rule, and then under Imperial Russia, which took possession of the town in 1793 as part of the second partition of Poland.
Historically, Kamyanets-Podilsky was an ethnically diverse town, with significant populations of Jews, Poles and Armenians as well as Ukrainians. In the Middle Ages, the Armenian community had played a central role in the commercial life of the town. Shortly after the Ottoman conquest, the Armenians were expelled. Some of them returned after Kamyanets-Podilsky was restored to Poland, but they were a diminished community. Over time, the wealthy Armenian merchants assimilated into Polish society. Traces of the community remain, however, in the names of landmarks such as the Armenian Market Square and the Armenian Bastion, echoes of a time gone by.
The Smotrych Gorge and fortifications
The Polish population of Kamyanets-Podilsky and the surrounding Podillia region was devastated by Stalin’s purges in the 1930s. Suspected of being a potential fifth column, ethnic-Poles were targeted by the NKVD’s “Polish Operation.” Thousands were executed and tens of thousands more deported to Central Asia. As many as a hundred people per night were shot in the basements of the former Dominican convent. As in other such operations, the NKVD had quotas to fill, and the killings and deportations had no connection with any concrete actions by the victims. Poles who survived Stalin’s purges and the Second World War often chose to assimilate with the Ukrainian community in order to preserve themselves, although a small Polish community has re-emerged since Ukraine’s independence. I noticed that many of the Masses at the Cathedral of Saints Peter and Paul are conducted in Polish.
For much of the town’s history, Jews had faced restrictions on their residence and commercial activities in Kamyanets-Podilsky. But under Imperial Russia, the town was part of the Pale of Settlement, where Jews were permitted to reside. In the 19th century there were flourishing Jewish communities in the town and the surrounding region. By the early 20th century, Jews made up nearly half of the town’s population. In the late-19th and early 20th centuries, many left the town for America. For those that remained, Kamyanets-Podilsky was the scene of one of the first mass-killings of Jews of the Holocaust. On 27-28 August 1941, 23,600 Jews, including people who had recently been deported from Hungary as well as locals, were shot over pits by German SS Einsatzgruppen as well as Hungarian soldiers and Ukrainian Auxiliary Police. The Ukrainian Auxiliary Police had been formed that month, largely out of member of the Ukrainian People’s Militia. The Ukrainian people’s Militia had been formed in June by the Bandera faction of the Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN), and had already played a leading role in the massacres of Jews in Lviv immediately after the German invasion of the Soviet Union. Today there is a street in Kamyanets-Podilsky named after Stepan Bandera, the leader of the OUN, as in many other towns and cities in Ukraine.
