Kamieniec Podolski

Kamieniec Podolski is a town of about 100,000 people not to far north of Chernivtsi. It is a historic area of Ukraine and Poland. The first mention of Kamieniec Podolski is in 1025 as a part of the Kievan Rus kingdom. In 1241 it was destroyed by the Mongols, and in 1352 it was by Poland, and after that, the fortress there was greatly expanded and used to protect Poland’s southern border from Ottoman and Tatar invasions. The main attraction in the city is the fortress, and I’ll post those pictures separately. But it’s also a historic city with some famous landmarks that we visited. You can see my pictures here: http://poland.leonkonieczny.com/Poland%202011/Kamieniec%20Podolski/index.html.

Kamieniec Podolski is a large city and has some fairly nice buildings, but also a lot of old buildings that are fairly well taken care of, and some under restoration and reconstruction. On the first evening there, we journeyed across the river (you can see parts of the massive fortress from where we were) and came upon an Independence Day celebration in the park.

One note about the picture of the padlocks on the bridge: this is a custom of the area. You take a padlock and engrave the initials of your loved one, or a message, or some sign of love, then lock it on the bridge (or in other parts of the world a gate or something) and throw away the key. It’s a sign that your love will last forever.

There were several old churches and other buildings we visited, and now you can visit them too through my photos.

A bit about some of the more somber history of the area. It was near Kamieniec Podolski that the first mass-murder of the holocaust happened on August 27-28, 1941, when the Nazis murdered 23,600 Jews, mostly Hungarian Jews but also many Ukrainian Jews, outside the city in what was the beginning of the “final solution.” It was done out in the open with no attempt to hide what was going on from the local populace.

But today, it’s a pretty city that contains some very historic sites. In another post I will show my pictures from the Fortress/Castle there, as it is well persevered and I was able to visit it for several hours one day and got lots of great photos. But that’s another post for another day.