From the 14th century Kamianets-Podilskyi was a royal city, the capital of the Podolia Province and the seat of local bishops. The first mention of Jews in the town comes from 1447, when they were restricted from staying within the town walls for more than three days. In 1589 King Zygmunt III Waza allowed the city council of Kamianets to give town privileges to Jews, but they could not settle in the walls. The city previously obtained the de non tolerandis Judaeis privilege.

In the early periods Jews could settle in the suburbs of Karwansara. During the Ottoman rule in 1673-1699 the Turks allowed them to move into the city. A synagogue was built within the walls, but its location remains unknown. When Kamianets-Podilskyi returned to the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, from 1733 the Christian townspeople exerted pressure on the local royal authorities and the Church to remove the Jewish community from the area of city walls. In 1750 King Augustus III issued a relevant decree restoring the law preventing the Jews from staying in the city for longer than 3 days; Jewish settlement was again limited only to Karwansara.

In 1755 a self-proclaimed Messiah named Jacob Frank appeared near Kamianets-Podilskyi. He was looked after by the bishop of Kamianets-Podilskyi - Mikołaj Dembowski. Frank, however, had to leave the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth once the rabbinical curse was put on him. In 1757 a famous debate organised by the bishop took place in the city between the supporters of Frank and the rabbis. Bishop Dembowski decided that it was won by the Sabbateans. The ruling of the Kamianets-Podilskyi court ordered to publicly burn the Talmud, and the nobles were asked for providing official care for the supporters of Frank. However, the bishop died the same year, thus ending a period of intensified persecution of the Jews in the city and in its vicinity. Jacob Frank himself was abroad at the time for fear of persecution by the Jews. He returned to the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth in 1758 with a letter of safe conduct from King August III. The Sabbateans were ensured care by the king, hoping that the sect would attract numerous Jews to the Catholic Church and give arguments for organising trials in connection with ritual murders. Frank himself lived in the estates of Bishop Dembowski's brother, near Chocim, where he was free to preach his teachings. In 1759 there was a second debate, this time held in Lviv, during which the Sabbateans agreed to be baptised. The baptism took place in Warsaw during a special ceremony. Approximately one thousand Sabbateans led by Frank converted to Catholicism.

In 1772 Kamianets-Podilskyi came under the Russian rule. It became the capital of Podolia Governorate. Jews were allowed to settle within the entire city. At that time, a Jewish district, also called the "Kamianets-Podilskyi Jerusalem" was established in the Old Town. Two synagogues were built there. In the first half of the 19th century some of the Jews in the city remained under the influence of the Russian faction of the Haskalah. Two secular Jewish schools were established in Kamianets-Podilskyi in 1851. An eminent Jewish writer, Mendele Mocher Sforim, was a teacher in one of them. Two synagogues and 21 houses of worship existed in the city in 1882.

According to data from 1860, the number of inhabitants was 19,175, including 7,340 Jews (38.3%). In 1880 Jews were already 50% of the total population of 30 thousand [[ref.:|[Rolle] A.J., Kamieniec (Camencia)... [in:] Słownik geograficzny Królestwa Polskiego i innych krajów słowiańskich, vol. III, Warsaw 1882, p. 759.]].

During World War I, Kamianets-Podilskyi came under the rule of Austria-Hungary in 1916, and from 1918 it was taken over by successive Ukrainian governments. In 1919, when the army of Semen Petlura stationed here, there was a pogrom leading to the death of 200 Jews. When Kamianets-Podilskyi became the temporary capital of the Ukrainian People's Republic in 1920, Semen Petlura gave a speech in which he announced that he was officially against pogroms and treated Jews on equal terms with Ukrainian citizens. Briefly, in 1920, the city had been captured by Polish troops, but in the aftermath of the Treaty of Riga it became a part of the Soviet Union, despite the fact that many Poles lived in Kamianets-Podilskyi and in its vicinity.

Under the Soviet rule, the Jews were not persecuted until 1936. The Jewish community was not active, but all the synagogues were open. 12,774 Jews lived here in 1926. The wave of Soviet persecutions began in 1936. All the synagogues were closed, except for one small establishment. Religious accessories were confiscated to enrich the collection of the Museum of Historical Treasures in Kiev. At the same time, Jewish schools teaching in Yiddish and the Jewish Community Centre were closed down. All this was done as part of the fight against nationalist deviation. Only 30 Torah scrolls were saved and hidden within Kamianets-Podilskyi.

At the beginning of July 1941, the Hungarian and German troops entered Kamianets-Podilskyi. Only a small group of Jews managed to escape them and moved to the east. At the same time, resettlements of Jews initiated by the Hungarian authorities began in the Carpathian Ruthenia annexed by Hungary. The Jews who were not able to prove their Hungarian citizenship before 1918 were displaced. These were often people with Polish passports or coming from Polish areas, but they were fully assimilated into Hungarian culture. Hungarian Jews were moved to Galicia, then through Kolomyia, Horodenka, Stanislaviv and areas at the Zbruch River (they were driven into Kamianets-Podilskyi. The displacement affected approx. 18 thousand people, of which 15 thousand went to Kamianets-Podilskyi. Many Hungarian Jews were murdered by Ukrainian peasants in Galicia.

In the city, the Hungarian Jews were gathered in the fortress. Initially, the Jews of Kamianets-Podilskyi tried to help the displaced. But with the migration of further groups, such help was impossible. A Hungarian unit passing through the city reported the following to the headquarters on 18-19 August 1941:

There are very many Jews here, especially women who walk in rags, but they ask for bread in exchange for valuables, and their lips are painted red. They would give any money for food. Some have desperation written all over their faces, others crawl along the streets, dying from exhaustion and hunger. Some bandage wounds on their legs using rags torn from their own clothing. The Jewish district is full of Jews, many of them are from Budapest: they live in terrible and indescribable filth, walk around in ragged clothing; the streets stink, and unburied bodies can be found in some houses. The water in the Dniester [[ref.|Kamianets-Podilskyi is located at the Smotrych River - ed.]] is infected, bodies are washed on the shore here and there.

The plight of the Jews from Kamianets-Podilskyi and the deported turned into a real tragedy, when the occupying Hungarian forces were replaced by German troops. This happened at the end of July 1941. The Germans were preparing the massacre for weeks, but it seems that at first they actually had not been quite sure what to do with thousands of Jews, especially after the deportations from Hungary. Although officially Hungarians were ordered not to send more people, those were still coming in. Initially, the Hungarians wanted to resettle one thousand Jews to Ternopil, but the Germans would not allow them to do that. Some of the Jews were shot at the border. In the end, the SS-Obergruppenfuhrer Friedrich Jackeln, commander of the SS and police in the region promised that the Jews gathered in Kamianets-Podilskyi would be "eliminated" within a month. On 27 August his units began the execution in Kamianets-Podilskyi. Local and Hungarian Jews were brought to the outskirts of the city and shot in mass graves. At that time, a column of Hungarian trucks was passing through Kamianets-Podilskyi. Most of the drivers were Jews. They became witnesses to the death of their fellows. Gabor Mermelstein was one of them. The execution took place in the forest:

We saw hundreds of people taking off their clothes there... we walked through a row of clones - a mass of naked bodies... and suddenly we discovered a wide trench with people on all four sides. Hundreds of innocent people were shot with machine guns. I will never forget what I saw: the terrified faces of men, women and children marching to their own graves without any resistance. I felt a combination of fear, disgust and pain.

The Jewish drivers were crying while they watched the massacre. The German officer tried to console them: "Don't worry. There are still enough Jews in the world." The lives of Hungarian drivers were also in danger. Hermann Frimmer recalled:

When we arrived there by trucks, they [the Hungarian Jews] were already gathered and we almost were also taken, but we decided to do everything so that the Germans did not recognize us as Jews, and therefore they left us unharmed. When we were coming back through that place, there was not a single living Jew.

In three days of execution, the members of SS led by Jackeln murdered 23.6 thousand people, including 10,000-15,000 Jews deported from Hungary. It was the first execution of that proportion carried out during the Holocaust.

Soon, the survivors who had managed to escape the massacre started to arrive in Hungary, mostly using transport through Galicia with the help of Ukrainian and Polish peasants, who were paid for smuggling people to the Hungarian side of the Carpathians. Hungarian soldiers also helped. News of the events in Kamianets-Podilskyi reached Budapest. The Hungarian opposition politicians began the protests aimed at the Minister of Internal Affairs. In November 1941 the Prime Minister László Bárdossy informed the government that he would willingly continue the deportations, but the "friendly German Reich" did not wish it. Approximately 2,000-3,000 Hungarian Jews managed to return to Hungary.

Despite these terrible events, a ghetto still existed in the city, and gathered approximately five thousand people, primarily Jews from surrounding towns: Orynin, Zhvanets, Lanckoruń, Kitajgród, Chemerivtsi, Smotrych and Stara Ushytsia. Many were killed, and only the craftsmen who could be useful were spared. On 30 October 1942 it was decided to liquidate the ghetto. On that day, units of SD, German and Ukrainian police and military police shot approx. 4 thousand people. Approx. 500 people managed to escape, but in the years 1942-1943 the vast majority of them were rounded up and murdered. Approximately 30,000 people in total were killed in all the genocide crimes committed in Kamianets-Podilskyi [[ref.|Krugłow A.I., Kamieniec-Podolskij, [in:] Hołokost na tieritorii SSSR. Encikłopiedija, Moscow 2009, pp. 382–383.]]. The community did not revive after the war.

Bibliography:

• Braham R.L., The Kamenets-Podolsk and Delvidek' Massacres: Prelude to the Holocaust in Hungary, "Yad Vashem Studies" 1973, No. 9.
• Kamenets-Podolsk u-sevivata, ed. A. Rosen, Tel Aviv 1965.
• Krugłow A.I., "Kamieniec-Podolskij", [in:] Hołokost na tieritorii SSSR. Encikłopiedija, Moscow 2009, pp. 381–383.
• Rosen A., Kamenets-Podolsk. A memorial book, Washington 1990.