Protecting Memory

Protecting Memory

Protecting And Memorialising Holocaust Mass Graves In Ukraine

Protecting And Memorialising Holocaust Mass Graves In Ukraine

During the German occupation from 1941 to 1944, over one million Jewish children, women and men were murdered in mass shooting operations and hastily buried in pits throughout the territory of present-day Ukraine. From 2010 to the end of 2019, the international project Protecting Memory transformed a total of 20 neglected and forgotten mass graves of Jews and Roma into dignified places of remembrance and information.

Map of present-day Ukraine showing 300 towns and villages where shootings of 500 or more Jews were carried out between 1941 and 1944. Mass shootings also took place in many other communities. Content: Andrej Umansky/Alexander Kruglow, Cartography: mr-kartographie, Gotha

THE »HOLOCAUST BY BULLETS«

Mizocz (Poland, under Soviet occupation from 1939, now Ukraine), 14 October 1942: members of the Jewish community prior to their shooting. Source: Gustav Hille, Národní archiv, Prague, ČVKSNVZ, Az. 338/75
The shooting of Jews in Dubossary (Moldovan SSR) on 14 September 1941 by marksmen from Einsatzkommando 12 of Einsatzgruppe D. Source: Imperial War Museum, London

The »Holocaust by bullets« is still a little-known chapter in the history of the genocide of European Jews. Around two million Jewish children, women and men died between 1941 and 1945 as a result of mass shootings carried out by German SS, police and military units and their local auxiliaries. The systematic murder began with the invasion of the Soviet Union on 22 June 1941. The National Socialists’ anti-semitic and anti-Bolshevist world view considered Jews to be the driving force behind the Soviet state. Special Einsatzgruppen (mobile killing units) were set up and given the order to shoot Jewish men. They later targeted women and children as well. In some cases, so-called gas vans were also used to commit murder. According to current estimates, more than 1,900 Jewish communities in the occupied Soviet territories between the Baltic Sea and the Black Sea were destroyed as a result of these crimes. The number of mass shooting sites was far greater. Only a small number of Jews were hidden by non-Jews and thereby able to survive. Roma, Soviet prisoners of war and patients with mental or physical disabilities were also murdered in mass shootings.

Zymivnyk (formerly Kuibyscheve), 2016: remains of a memorial at a neglected mass grave in southern Ukraine (Kherson oblast). In many parts of this region Jews were thrown alive into deep wells. Source: Foundation Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe

The mass graves today

There are an estimated 2,000 mass shooting sites on the territory of present-day Ukraine alone. In remote ravines and forests, in the middle of fields, in former anti-tank ditches or in sand quarries, entire Jewish communities were wiped out, often within the space of a few days. Memorials were put up at some of the murder sites during the Soviet era, but other sites faded into oblivion after the war. Today, hundreds of mass graves remain unmarked, unprotected and neglected. Desecration of the graves often lends them a desolate appearance. Many of the sites are used for agriculture.

Khazhyn, 2018: the mass grave on the outskirts of the town of Berdychiv was repeatedly subject to illegal excavations. A representative of the Committee for the Preservation of Jewish Cemeteries in Europe recovers human remains.
Bakhiv (western Ukraine), 2015: the memorial site recalls the mass shootings of more than 8,000 Jews from Kovel in June 1942 and protects four mass graves.

A COUNTRY AT WAR

Since this project to protect the mass graves of the Holocaust began in 2010 the situation in Ukraine has changed dramatically. A war instigated by Russia continues to rage in the east of the country. Plans to carry out work on the project in this part of the country have thus had to be abandoned.

The Project

Six decades after the end of the German occupation, the organisation Yahad-In Unum began to record the geographical location of mass graves in the former Soviet Union. The project is led by the French priest Father Patrick Desbois. His study, which is funded by the German Federal Foreign Office, is based in particular on interviews with contemporary eyewitnesses. Inspired by this project, in 2010 the American Jewish Committee Berlin launched an initiative to protect and memorialise mass graves in Ukraine. By 2015, five sites in the west of the country had been transformed into dignified memorial sites, the work again funded by the Foreign Office. Protecting Memory was originally conceived as a pilot project with the aim of establishing appropriate approaches to deal with Holocaust mass graves. From the start, the project has been accompanied by educational programmes designed for schools in the region.

Ostrozhets (western Ukraine), 2015: memorial site with a memorial plaque and information stele dedicated to the approximately 800 Jews shot in October 1942.
Location of the Protecting Memory project sites. Cartography: mr-kartographie, Gotha

Identifying The Graves

Vakhnivka, 2016: Members of the Centre of Archaeology at Staffordshire University using ground penetrating radar at the New Jewish Cemetery. A section of the mass grave had been marked with a red metal fence.

The sustained impact of the pilot phase led the Foreign Office to continue the project in 2016. Supervised by the Foundation Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, the Protecting Memory project entered a new phase in its work to protect and identify mass graves. In conjunction with its Ukrainian partners, the Foundation designed fifteen memorial sites, three of which are dedicated to murdered Roma.

Non-invasive methods were used to identify the boundaries of the graves in order to comply with Jewish religious law (Halacha) and so as not to disturb the graves. The graves and the immediate vicinity received administrative protection by transferring the plots concerned into communal ownership, redesignating their function as memorial sites and making corresponding changes to cadastral maps.

Chukiv, 2016: using the ground penetrating radar

GROUND PENETRATING RADAR

Archaeologists send electromagnetic (radio) pulses into the ground via a transmitter antenna. The return signal is received by a second antenna. A mass grave has different electromagnetic properties to the environment around it and can often be detected by experts. The location of the grave could not be established at two sites.

Historical Research

Historical research has been a central feature of the project from the outset. The analysis of early reports by the Soviet Extraordinary Commissions and of documentation from German court proceedings helped to establish the possible location of the mass graves before the start of the archaeological investigations. However, along with identifying and protecting the graves, Protecting Memory also aims to remember those who were murdered and the communities in which they lived as well as to provide details of the crimes. For this reason, steles have been put up at all of the memorial sites, featuring information about the victims, perpetrators and crimes. The academics involved in the project have carried out groundbreaking work in this respect as in most cases the places selected for the memorialisation of Holocaust mass graves are in small communities into which there has been little to no research to date. The lack of sources on places where Roma were murdered presents an additional challenge.

Kolodianka, 2016: project coordinator Aleksandra Wróblewska with Ananii Makarchuk. He and his brother Arkadii witnessed the mass shooting while working as cowherds. Source: Foundation Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe
Chukiv, 2016: the historian Mykhaylo Tyaglyy with an eyewitness who could remember Jewish forced labourers in the village. Source: Foundation Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe
German Embassy, Kiev, 2019: meeting between the Protecting Memory project team and the Interdepartmental Commission for the Commemoration of the Participants in the Anti-Terror Operation, the Victims of War and the Victims of Political Repression. The two-hour discussion was concerned with the inscriptions on the memorials in the Vinnytsia region. Source: Deutsche Botschaft Kiew

THE POLITICS OF HISTORY

The decision over the wording of the inscriptions on the memorials involved tough negotiations with the Interdepartmental Commission. The contentious issue was the nationalities of the perpetrators – the German occupiers and the locals who assisted them. The commission initially argued that the origins of the perpetrators should be left out and that reference be made simply to »Nazi occupiers and their helpers«. Finally a consensus was reached on the wording »German occupiers and their subordinate authorities«.

Educational Activities

Kyiv, 2017: seminar for teachers as part of the Protecting Memory project
Oral history project with students from the Ivan Franko State University in Zhytomyr, 2018

The results of the historical research are also used in the educational activities run in schools in the regions where the project sites are located. An educational programme has been developed with the aim of motivating teachers, pupils and students to explore their local history independently and to become ambassadors for the new memorial sites. In May 2018 students from Zhytomyr and Vinnytsia universities conducted interviews in the project localities. They wanted to find out how individuals and collectives in communities affected by the Holocaust remember what happened. With guidance from the Ukrainian Center for Holocaust Studies, a project partner, the results are being analysed and written up for use in additional educational and historical programmes beyond the remit of the project.

Oral history project with students from the Ivan Franko State University in Zhytomyr, 2018

FADING COMMUNICATIVE MEMORY

In the course of the oral history project, the students were able to interview elderly eyewitnesses but found very few young people able to report on how the history of their local area has been transmitted from generation to generation. Nonetheless, the Holocaust remains part of collective memory, be it simply in the form of talk in the village about supernatural occurrences at the mass graves. Other-worldly interpretations of the persecution of the Jews and the Holocaust can also be encountered in rural Germany.

Inauguration Of Memorial Sites

Kolodianka, June 2019: Zehava Dotan and her family talking to villagers. Her mother was from the village and survived the Holocaust. At the front of the picture to the right is Ananii Makarchuk. He witnessed the shootings, in which some of his Jewish classmates were murdered.
Vakhnivka, September 2019: the well-attended inauguration of the memorial site at the New Jewish Cemetery.

The Protecting Memory project has established fifteen memorial and information sites in twelve communities. Twelve of the sites are dedicated to the murdered Jews and three to the murdered Roma. The memorial sites were inaugurated in June and September 2019. Relatives of families who used to live in the communities travelled from the US, Israel and Australia to attend. Large numbers of people from local communities and schools were also present at the deeply moving ceremonies, despite blazing heat in June and high winds and low temperatures in September. The speakers at the various sites repeatedly pointed out that Jewish history is part of Ukraine’s national history.

The memorial site in the middle of a forest outside Vakhnivka. In the spring of 1942 at least 400 Jews from the village were killed here in a single day.
Between 1941 and 1943 the perpetrators mainly used the former livestock cemetery outside Plyskiv to carry out shootings of Jews from this village and the surrounding area. The biggest such »operation« took place in October 1941, when over 500 Jews were shot here in a single day.
Memorial site at the New Jewish Cemetery in Vakhnivka. It is dedicated to the approximately 40 Jewish victims buried in a mass grave here.
On the initiative of a local businessman, a section of the mass grave in Plyskiv has been protected by a concrete fence. During the project, a memorial stone and information stele have been added to the memorial site.
In February 1943 around 300 Jews from the Chukiv forced labour camp who were considered unfit for work were shot or beaten to death at a nearby site. Most of the victims were from the Romanianoccupied parts of Ukraine.
On 4 June 1942 at least 500 Jews, half of them children, were shot in a field outside Samhorodok. Fifteen Soviet prisoners of war were also murdered there.
Around 100 Jews from Kolodianka and the surrounding area were murdered in a nearby field. Archaeological investigations have been unable to determine the exact location of the graves. An information stele has been put up alongside the memorial dating from the 1990s.
In autumn 1941 more than 170 Jews from Barashi and the surrounding area were murdered in a field about 4 km from the centre of the village and hastily buried in two mass graves
At the time of the 1939 census, over 1,800 Jews were living in the small town of Liubar (around 70 per cent of the total population). Most of them were murdered in autumn 1941 in a nearby sand quarry. An information stele has been added to the existing memorial site.
From the end of April 1942 more than 950 Jews were shot in a field near Lypovets and hastily buried in two mass graves. One of the graves was protected by large trees, while the other was repeatedly damaged as a result of agricultural activity.
Around 500 Jewish men from Liubar were shot outside the town in August 1941. Archaeological investigations have been unable to determine the exact location of the graves. An information stele erected as part of the project and a memorial stone placed at the site by a local resident serve to commemorate the victims.
From the end of April 1942 more than 950 Jews were shot in a field near Lypovets and hastily buried in two mass graves. One of the graves was protected by large trees, while the other was repeatedly damaged as a result of agricultural activity.
The mass grave in Khazhyn is one of several located in and around Berdychiv. From mid-August 1941 this site was repeatedly used to carry out mass shootings of Jews, and most likely also of Soviet prisoners of war. The high number of victims, which the Soviet Extraordinary Commission put at 10,656, along with the regular looting of the graves, made the protection of this site a priority.
The newly-designed memorial site in Khazhyn, October 2019.
Representatives of the Committee for the Preservation of Jewish Cemeteries in Europe, the local rabbi, the chairman of the Jewish Community of Berdychiv and two archaeologists from the Centre of Archaeology at Staffordshire University survey the desecrated graves in Khazhyn, April 2017.
Khazhyn. The ravine was reinforced and covered with stones in order to better protect the graves.

Berdychiv, September 2019: Holocaust commemoration at the town‘s central memorial site and inauguration of the open-air exhibition.

The Exhibition In Berdychiv

View of Berdychiv, around 1900. To the left is Uspenski Cathedral, to the right the Discalced Carmelites Monastery, and at the front of the monastery to the left is the three-storey Old Town Synagogue. Source: Foundation Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe
Berdychiv, Great Choral Synagogue, the place of worship for the town’s non-orthodox Jews. The building has been used a factory since the 1960s. Source: Foundation Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe

Located in central Ukraine, in the 19th century Berdychiv was a multicultural town. By around 1900 Jews made up some 80 per cent of the town’s population. Crafts and trades flourished. The town was a centre for the Hasidic religious movement. The Polish-Catholic population also played a signifcant role in the life of the town. According to the Soviet Investigation Commission some 30,000 Jews were murdered during the German occupation in mass shootings in the town and surrounding area. In conjunction with the town’s annual Holocaust commemoration, on 16 September 2019 an open-air exhibition was inaugurated at the central memorial site in Berdychiv. German and Ukrainian project partners worked closely together to produce the exhibition. Along with diplomatic representatives from Germany, Israel and the US, a large number of local residents attended the inauguration. The exhibition consists of information panels in three languages. These describe Jewish life in the town and how it was destroyed, as well as the difficult process of establishing fitting ways of commemorating the murdered Jews.

MYKHAYLO VAINSHELBOIM

MYKHAYLO VAINSHELBOIM

Mykhaylo Vainshelboim was born in 1928 and lived with his family in Berdychiv. In summer 1941 the family’s home was destroyed in a Wehrmacht air raid and they moved to live with an aunt in the ghetto set up by the Germans. On 15 September 1941 members of the Ukrainian auxiliary police entered the house. The German occupiers had decided to murder the vast majority of the Jewish population. Mykhaylo managed to escape. His mother and three siblings were taken to the airfeld and shot. The Germans initially spared his father as he was a skilled craftsman. On 3 November 1941 he was forced to walk to Sokulino with Mykhaylo. There they had to undress. They said their last goodbyes. The 13-year-old boy hid in tall grass, crawled away and was ultimately received help from the Savelkos, a non-Jewish family. After liberation he returned to Berdychiv.

The Yudanin and Vainshelboim families before the war. More than 30 members of Mykhaylo Vainshelboim’s family were murdered in and around Berdychiv. Source: Privately owned

GALINA SCHULJATYZKA

GALINA SCHULJATYZKA
Galina (left), with her mother, father and sister Violetta. Source: Privately owned

Galina Shulyatytska was born in 1932 to Yuhim Sendler – a Jew from Berdychiv – and his Christian wife Raissa Shulyatytska. At the time of the German invasion the family was living in Belarus, where Yuhim Sendler ran a factory. He was called up to serve in the Red Army, while Raissa fled with her three children. Galina‘s two younger siblings, Violetta und Heinrich, died due to a lack of food and other essentials. Galina only narrowly escaped a mass shooting in Bobruisk. In December 1941 Raissa and Galina reached Berdychiv. It was hard for them to find anyone to take them in. They lived in constant fear of being discovered. However, they survived. Yuhim Sendler went missing during the war and is presumed to have died. After the war Galina graduated from the teacher training institute in the town and worked in a evening school.

Map of 139 documented sites where Roma were murdered between 1941 and 1944 on the territory of present-day Ukraine. The three Protecting Memory memorial sites dedicated to murdered Roma are highlighted. Content: Mykhaylo Tyaglyy, Cartography: mr-kartographie, Gotha

Remembering The Murdered Roma

Roma were also victims of mass shootings between 1941 and 1944. Around 12,000 children, women and men died in German-occupied Ukraine. 139 sites of these crimes have been recorded so far. The Romanian leadership, which was allied with the German Reich, had around 25,000 Roma deported to the Romanian-controlled regions in southern Ukraine between the Dniester and Southern Bug rivers. More than 11,000 Roma perished there. To remember the crimes against Roma, in June 2019 the Protecting Memory project dedicated two memorial sites with information steles near the villages of Kalynivka and Divoshyn in northern Ukraine. In Ivanopil the project put up an information stele by the site of a grave where Roma have been reburied. The emotional inauguration ceremonies were of great significance for Roma in Ukraine, who are often subject to harassment in the society.

Ivanopil, June 2019, inauguration of the information stele.
Divoshyn, June 2019: a large number of people attended the ceremony, including local residents and guests who had travelled there specially.
Kalynivka, June 2019: villagers attend the official opening of the memorial site in the searing heat.
Divoshyn, June 2019: actors from Romans, a Roma theatre ensemble from Kyiv, perform at the inauguration of the memorial site along with their director, Igor Krykunov. In 1942 around 80 Roma were shot on the outskirts of the village of Divoshyn.
Kalynivka, June 2019: according to information from the Soviet Extraordinary Commission, during the German occupation 32 Roma were burnt alive in a barn near the village.
Ivanopil, October 2019: between 40 and 80 Roma were murdered in Ivanopil in 1942. The information stele is dedicated to all victims of the German occupation of Ivanopil: Jews, Roma, Soviet prisoners of war and genuine or alleged political opponents of National Socialism.

VIOLENCE AGAINST ROMA TODAY

Roma in Ukraine are still repeatedly the targets of violence today. This mainly takes the form of arson attacks on informal settlements, often carried out by masked men. In June 2018 members of a nationalist group killed Davyd Pap, a 24-year-old Roma, in Lviv. As elsewhere in Europe, Roma are also subject to harassment by the authorities, for example through eviction orders.

In August 2019 the German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas opened an exhibition on the Protecting Memory project in the Federal Foreign Office. It is planned to show it in Ukraine too as a touring exhibition. Source: Foundation Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, Photo: Marko Prieske

REMEMBRANCE AND INFORMATION

In August 2019, the exhibition about the project Protecting Memory was opened in the building of the German Foreign Office in Berlin. In his moving speech, German foreign minister Heiko Maas stressed the project’s importance for the present and the need for taking action to combat anti-Semitism.

The Ukrainian Ambassador in Germany Andriy Melnyk spoke of Jewish history as an integral part of Ukrainian national history. The exhibition is also to be shown in Ukraine as a travelling exhibition.

Credits

The Protecting Memory project is run by the Foundation Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe in conjunction with the Ukrainian Center for Holocaust Studies in Kyiv. It is funded by the German Federal Foreign Office.

The Foundation Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe is a federal foundation, which is responsible for the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, the Memorial to the Homosexuals Persecuted under the National Socialist Regime, the Memorial to the Sinti and Roma Murdered under the National Socialist Regime and the Memorial and Information Point for the Victims of National Socialist »Euthanasia« Killings. The law establishing the foundation additionally requires it to contribute to »ensuring that all victims of National Socialism are remembered and honoured appropriately«.

The Foundation receives institutional funding from

on the basis of a resolution by the German parliament.

Text: Dr Ulrich Baumann, Dr Svetlana Burmistr
Editing: Uwe Neumärker
English translation: Dr Caroline Pearce
Design: Susanne Benzing
Protecting Memory project team: Aleksandra Wróblewska, Dr Svetlana Burmistr, Bozhena Kozakevych, Mariya Goncharenko-Schubert, Ray Brandon (2016 – 2018)
www.erinnerungbewahren.de/en
www.stiftung-denkmal.de/en

Unless specified, all photos are by Anna Voitenko, Foundation Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe.