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Rovno Ghetto

Coordinates: 50°37′N 26°15′E / 50.617°N 26.250°E / 50.617; 26.250
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Rovno Ghetto
Location of Sosenki (Сосонки) Forest massacres of the Rovno Ghetto prisoners, 2014
Rovno
Rovno
Ghetto's location at Rovno (Równe in pre-war eastern Poland)
Rovno (Rivne) is located in Ukraine
Rovno (Rivne)
Rovno (Rivne)
Rivne in modern-day Ukraine
LocationNear Rivne in western Ukraine (Równe in pre-war eastern Poland)
50°37′N 26°15′E / 50.617°N 26.250°E / 50.617; 26.250
DateOctober 1941
Incident typeForced labor, mass shootings
PerpetratorsEinsatzgruppe C, Order Police battalions, Ukrainian Auxiliary Police
OrganizationsSS
Ghetto5,000–7,000 population
Victimsabout 23,000 Jews

The Rovno Ghetto (also: Równe or Rivne Ghetto)[1][2][a] was a World War II Nazi ghetto established in October 1941 in the city of Rovno, western Ukraine, in the territory of German-administered Reichskommissariat Ukraine. On 6 November 1941, about 21,000 Jews were massacred by Einsatzgruppe C and their Ukrainian collaborators. The remaining Jews were imprisoned in the ghetto. In July 1942, all remaining 5,000 Jews were trucked to a stone quarry near Kostopol and murdered there.[1][3]

Before the beginning of the war, about 25,000 Jews lived in Równe, Wołyń Voivodeship. Located in 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 upon the Soviet invasion of Poland on September 17, 1939 and incorporated into the Ukrainian SSR. When Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941, the city fell to the Wehrmacht on June 28, 1941. 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]

Background

Further information: Jewish ghettos in Europe

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 Order Police battalions 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 Police Battalion 320 in coordination with the Einsatzgruppe 5th Division.[12]

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

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]

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. ^ a b 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. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
  2. ^ a b c d Altman, Nolan (January 2010). "Równe (Rovno) Victims Killed in the Kostopol Forest". JewishGen.org. Introduction. {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
  3. ^ Megargee, Geoffrey P., ed. (2009). The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum encyclopedia of camps and ghettos, 1933–1945. Vol. Volume II: Ghettos in German-occupied Eastern Europe. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. pp. 1147–1152. ISBN 978-0-253-35599-7. {{cite book}}: |volume= has extra text (help); Unknown parameter |editorlink1= ignored (|editor-link1= suggested) (help)
  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.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location (link) CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
  8. ^ Burds (2013), Acknowledgments, xiii.
  9. ^ Musiał, Bogdan (October 1999). Bilder einer Ausstellung: Kritische Anmerkungen zur Wanderausstellung "Vernichtungskrieg. Verbrechen der Wehrmacht 1941 bis 1944. Vol. 47. Jahrg., 4. H. pp. 563–581. ISBN 978-0712622790. JSTOR 30195546. "David Lee Preston collection." See: David Lee Preston, The Sewer People of Lvov. {{cite book}}: |journal= ignored (help)
  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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