Rovno Ghetto

Równe Ghetto
Location of Sosenki (Сосонки) Forest massacres of the Równe Ghetto prisoners, 2014
Równe
Równe
Równe Ghetto location during the Holocaust in Poland (map of the Polish Republic from before the attack with the Nazi German administrative districts)
Rivne (Równe)
Rivne in modern-day Ukraine (compare with above)
Location Near Równe in eastern Poland, now Rivne in western Ukraine.
Coordinates: 50°37′N 26°15′E / 50.617°N 26.250°E / 50.617; 26.250
Date October 1941
Incident type Forced labor, mass shootings
Perpetrators Einsatzkommando, Orpo battalions, Ukrainian Auxiliary Police
Organizations Einsatzgruppen, Ordnungspolizei, Ukrainian Auxiliary Police
Ghetto 5,000–7,000 population
Victims about 23,000 Jews

The Ghetto in Równe, or the Rovno Ghetto,[1][2][lower-alpha 1] was a Jewish World War II ghetto established in October 1941 by Nazi Germany in the prewar Polish city of Równe in the territory of Nazi-administered Reichskommissariat Ukraine (now Rivne, sovereign Ukraine). On November 6, 1941, about 21,000 Jews of Równe were led to a pine grove in Sosenki by the Ukrainian Auxiliary Police and massacred there by Einsatzgruppe C and their Ukrainian collaborators. The remaining Polish Jews were packed into a Nazi ghetto. Several months later, in July 1942 all 5,000 local Jews were trucked to a stone quarry near Kostopol and murdered there.[1][3]

Before the beginning of war, about 25,000 Jews lived in Równe. Located in Wołyń Voivodeship of the south-eastern region of Kresy, about 80 kilometres (50 mi) west of the interwar border between Poland and the Soviet Union, Równe was occupied by the Red Army immediately upon the Soviet invasion of Poland on September 17, 1939. Two years later, on June 28, 1941, the city was overrun by the German army in the course of Operation Barbarossa. The Jewish ghetto in the city of Rovno, was set up by the German administration soon after the Reichskommissariat Ukraine was formed.[4][5][6][7]

The ghetto was liquidated on July 13, 1942. Only a handful of Jews managed to escape deportations. They joined the partisans and later took part in the liberation of Rovno by the Red Army in the Battle of Rovno, in February 1944. The surviving Jews began to gather in the city after the arrival of the Red Army, and by the end of 1944, some 1,200 Jews were accounted for in Rovno; among them, future author David Lee Preston (The Sewer People of Lvov) and his family.[8][9]

Historical background

Rivne (Rovno) is the center of Rivne Raion in western Ukraine. At the onset of World War II, the city was overrun by the Red Army during the Nazi-Soviet invasion of Poland.[10] On June 28, 1941 the city was occupied by German troops. On August 20, 1941, Rovno was declared the capital of German Reichskommissariat Ukraine. Statistically, at the beginning of German occupation, around 25,000 Polish Jews resided in Rovno along with refugees from western Poland,[2] which made up half the population of the city.[11]

When the Nazis took over the city from the Soviets, they had carried out several executions of Jewish population in order to inflict terror and fear for the sake of coercion. On 9 and 12 of July 1941 the SS-Einsatzkommando 4A of Einsatzgruppe C shot 240 Jews; in the official German report, the victims were dubbed 'Bolshevik agents' and 'Jewish functionaries'. On August 6, a battalion of security police conducted a second campaign in Rovno, in the course of which about 300 Jews were shot. The most bloody shooting took place on November 6–7, 1941, whereas 15,000-18,000 Jews were killed by the Germans along with Ukrainian Auxiliary Police and members of OUN in the Sosenki forest near Rovno ('Sosenki' means 'Little Pine Trees' in Polish). Jews were shot by the Reserve Police Battalion 320 in coordination with the Einsatzgruppe 5th Division.[12]

The remaining 5,000 Jews who possessed the necessary for the occupation administration professions, were taken away from their families and placed in the ghetto. The ghetto was created in December 1941.

On July 13, 1942 the ghetto was liquidated and the Jewish prisoners were taken out and shot at Kostopol. On February 2, 1944 Rivne was liberated from German troops by Soviet troops of the 1st Ukrainian Front during the Rovno-Lutsk operation.[13]

Life in the Ghetto

The ghetto had a Judenrat of 12 people. The head of the Judenrat were appointed Moses and Jacob Bergman (Leon) Suharchuk, they committed suicide at the end of 1941 because they did not want to give the Jews by the Nazis demand. The Jews living in the ghetto had to pay levies to the German authorities . In one operation to seize the money, the Jews were required to pay exactly 12 million Rubles. Also any gold, jewelry, furniture and clothing were taken from the Jews. Jews were selling clothes in order to get some food. The most valuable items were sent to Germany, the rest was given or sold at symbolic prices to German soldiers and Ukrainian policemen. In the ghetto numerous restrictions were imposed on the Jews, including the obligation to wear a distinctive sign.

Liquidation of the Ghetto

Underground organizations operated in the ghetto and accumulated weapons. On the night of July 13, 1942 at 22:00 in the ghetto was carried out "share" division of the SS and Ukrainian police units surrounded the ghetto established around the spotlight and turn them on . Brigade SS and Ukrainian police were divided into small groups, broke into houses and pushed the people out, herded them into a freight train which took them to Kostopol where they were shot to death. 5000 Jews were killed this way.[2][14]

Altogether during the occupation more than 20 thousand Jews of the city have been shot. Some fled underground, many killed in the forests by the Germans and Ukrainian nationalists, but some were able to join the great Soviet partisans Dmitry Medvedev, Vladimir Begma and Rovensky guerrilla №1; some of them participated in the battles for the liberation of the city.

In Rivne, as well as in many other cities and towns in Western Ukraine mass shootings of Jews took place thanks to the active assistance of like-minded people from the Ukrainian police, the gendarmerie and the UPA.

See also

Aktionen: mass killing operations of Jews in neighboring settlements

Notes

  1. ↑ The name Równe is from the Polish language. In the Holocaust literature, the modern city of Rivne is known predominantly as Rovno, from the Russian language. Prior to Nazi-Soviet invasion of Poland at the onset of World War II, the city of Równe (Yiddish: ראָװנע) was the largest agglomeration in the Polish province of Volhynia (Wołyń).[2]

References

  1. 1 2 Burds, Jeffrey (2013). Holocaust in Rovno: The Massacre at Sosenki Forest, November 1941 (PDF). Northeastern University. Sponsored by the YIVO Institute of Jewish Research, New York. ISBN 978-1-137-38839-1 – via Internet Archive, direct download 6.6 MB.
  2. 1 2 3 4 Altman, Nolan (January 2010). "Równe (Rovno) Victims Killed in the Kostopol Forest". JewishGen.org. Introduction.
  3. ↑ Megargee, Geoffrey P., ed. (2009). The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum encyclopedia of camps and ghettos, 1933–1945. Volume II: Ghettos in German-occupied Eastern Europe. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. pp. 1147–1152. ISBN 978-0-253-35599-7.
  4. ↑ World War II today (2017). "Horror of the 'liquidation' of the Rovno ghetto". From the evidence of Hermann Graebe, during “The Einsatzgruppen Case”, Nuremburg, 1947. Around 23,000 people murdered shortly after the German invasion in June 1941. Between 5,000 and 7,000 Jews remained in the ghetto that was established there.
  5. ↑ Jewish Telegraphic Agency (February 8, 1942), All Jews Expelled from Zgierz; Nazis Introduce Ghetto for Jews in Rovno.
  6. ↑ YIVO, Rivne. Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe.
  7. ↑ Palgrave.com (2018). "J. Burds, Holocaust in Rovno: The Massacre at Sosenki Forest, November 1941". New York: Palgrave Pivot, 2013 Edition.
  8. ↑ Burds (2013), Acknowledgments, xiii.
  9. ↑ Musiał, Bogdan (October 1999). Bilder einer Ausstellung: Kritische Anmerkungen zur Wanderausstellung "Vernichtungskrieg. Verbrechen der Wehrmacht 1941 bis 1944. Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte. 47. Jahrg., 4. H. pp. 563–581. "David Lee Preston collection." See: David Lee Preston, The Sewer People of Lvov, ISBN 0712622799.
  10. ↑ Teicher, Leah (2012). "Rivne History". JewishGen, Inc. Alternate names: Rovne (ואװנע) [Yid]; Rivne (Рiвне) [Ukr]; Rovno (Ровно) [Rus]; Równe [Pol]. The Równe Ghetto survivors & descendants; with maps and photographs of the 2012 Równe visit.
  11. ↑ Yad Vashem (2012), Volhynia and Rovno. Historical Background, via Internet Archive.
  12. ↑ Burds (2013), pp. 22, 49 (39, 57 of 151 in PDF).
  13. ↑ Askey, Nigel (2014), The Lutsk-Rovno-Dubno-Lvov Border Battle. OperationBarbarossa.net.
  14. ↑ A Forgotten Story: The Race Against Time to Unearth the Holocaust by Bullets – 1941-1944. ActiveHistory.ca.
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