Memorial to the murdered Jews of Berdychiv

Пам´ять вбитих євреїв Бердичева

In Berdychiv (Russian: Berdichev), several memorials and memorial plaques commemorate the approximately 17.000 Jews murdered in the city and its surroundings. Two memorials are located at the site of the former ghetto, next to the monastery of the Discalced Carmelites. All other memorials are located at or near the sites of the mass shootings.

History

Berdychiv, located 44 kilometres south of Zhytomyr, was founded in 1546. A few years later Jews settled in the city. Towards the end of the 19th century 41,600 out of 53,300 inhabitants were Jews. In 1919, Ukrainian militias murdered 23 Jews during the civil war in pogrom-like riots. In the 1920s Jewish culture flourished. During this time, Yiddish was recognized as an official language alongside Ukrainian and Russian. When the political situation worsened in the 1930s, many Jews emigrated from Berdychiv. In 1939, only 38 percent of the population remained Jewish.
The German Wehrmacht occupied the city on July 7, 1941. Approximately 10.000 Jews were able to flee beforehand. The occupiers forced the Jews to wear identifying badges and carry out forced labour. At the end of August 1941, the Germans shot Jews for the first time, accusing them of anti-German activities. A few days later, troops from Einsatzgruppe (mobile killing unit) C arrived and murdered more Jews. A series of further mass shootings followed. On August 26, 1941, the German occupiers established a ghetto in the poorest quarter of the city. On September 15, 1941, during the largest mass shooting, the occupiers and their accomplices murdered approximately 12.000 Jews. About 400 Jewish workers were initially spared from the »Aktion«. On November 3, 1941 the ghetto was wiped out by units of the Security Service of the SS (SD) from Zhytomyr and members of the Ukrainian auxiliary police: almost all the ghetto inhabitants were taken to a former monastery by the Ukrainian police and then shot. About 300 Jews from Berdychiv and 700 Jews from liquidated camps in the surrounding area were interned in the "Lisaya Gora" labour camp. The labour camp was liquidated on July 16, 1942 and most of the prisoners were murdered. 60 Jewish workers were initially spared and incarcerated in a prison. Almost all of them were murdered until early January 1944.

Berdychiv, undated, Old city view with synagogue, public domain

Berdychiv, undated, Street scene in the Jewish quarter, public domain

Victims

From July to September 1941 the majority of the Jewish community of Berdychiv was extinguished in a series of mass shootings: at the end of August 1941, members of the Sonderkommando (special unit) 4a shot 148 Jews and a few days later Einsatzgruppe (mobile killing unit) C arrived and murdered 74 Jews. On August 26,1941 a special unit of the Higher SS and Police Leader Russia-South under the command of Friedrich Jeckeln shot 546 Jews. At the end of the month, the Police Regiment South murdered 914 Jews and 22 POWs. On September 4, 1941 a special unit of the Higher SS and Police Leader Russia South shot more than 1.300 Jews. Among the victims were about 870 Jewish women and girls older than 12. During the largest mass shooting on September, 15 1941, members of the SS, the police and Ukrainian municipal police murdered approximately 12.000 Jews at an airfield near the city. On April 27, 1942 the Germans murdered about 70 women and children from so-called »mixed marriages« between Jews and non-Jews. Only 10 to 15 Jews survived the German occupation. A total of about 17.000 Jews were murdered. The majority of the victims came from Berdychiv, the other part came from places nearby.
From August 26, 1941 to September 1941, Friedrich Jeckeln (1895–1946), the SS-Obergruppenführer and General of the Armed SS and Police Leader Centre, organized the mass murders in Berdychiv. He was executed in Riga after the war as a war criminal. At the beginning of 1942 the Security Service of the SS (SD), led by SS-Sturmscharführer (Sergeant Major of the SS) Fritz Siebert (1903–1966) was responsible for the mass shootings. They were organized by the Security Service of the SS (SD) Zhytomyr under Franz Razesberger (1904-1994). Franz Razesberger was acquitted in Vienna in 1961. Ukrainian auxiliary policemen were involved in all »Aktionen«.

Ukraine, the second-largest Republic in the European part of the former Soviet Union, was at the centre of the Second World War and the Holocaust. It is estimated that five to six million Ukrainians died during the war, including around 630,000 Jews. In mid-September 1939, following the Soviet occupation of eastern Poland in accordance with the Hitler-Stalin Pact – a secret German-Soviet agreement –, the south-east of Poland became part of the Soviet Ukraine. The oppression of the local population was now an everyday occurrence. In summer 1941, the German attack on the Soviet Union initially affected these very regions. Right from the start of the invasion the Jewish population was accused of supporting the Soviet powers and became the target of brutal attacks. These attacks were often the work of nationalist Ukrainians, who initially welcomed the advance of the Wehrmacht. German SS Einsatzgruppen and allied Rumanian units soon began to carry out mass shootings of Jews. The Babyn Yar ravine near Kiev, where German units and Ukrainian militia murdered over 33,700 Jews over two days in September 1941, has since become a global symbol of the genocide of Jews. The non-Jewish population was also a target for persecution. National Socialist racist ideology classed Ukrainians, as all »Slavs«, as »subhuman«. The occupiers looted the country, deported way over one million civilians to carry out forced labour and publicly executed hostages. By 1943 a partisan war against the Wehrmacht was raging along with the campaign of the nationalist »Ukrayinska Povstanska Armiya« (Ukrainian Rebel Army or UPA) against the Soviets and the Polish population in western Ukraine. The number of Poles to die in the process lies way over 100,000. From 1944 the Ukraine was again part of the Soviet Union and also encompassed former territories in eastern Poland. The UPA continued its campaign until the mid-1950s. The Soviet authorities deported around 300,000 Ukrainians to Siberia to counter the resistance. The Ukrainian culture of memory was aligned with the symbolic forms of remembrance found in the Soviet Union. Monumental sites of memory were constructed to celebrate the »victory« in the Great Patriotic War. It is only recently that victims have been remembered alongside the venerated heroes. In addition, a culture of memory centred on the campaign of the UPA has emerged in western Ukraine, with the UPA’s legacy being interpreted as a struggle for independence. Confrontation with anti-semitism and the collaboration with the German occupiers has only begun around 2000. With just a few exceptions, the mass shootings of Jews were ignored until the 1980s. It was not until 1991 that the government of independent Ukraine acknowledged Babyn Yar as a »symbol of Jewish martyrdom«. Long after gaining independence, Ukraine was still on the search for its national identity. The documentation of Soviet crimes – for example the state’s responsibility for the Great Famine (Holodomor) in 1922-23 that led to millions of deaths – has more significance in the establishment of a Ukrainian identity than learning about the Holocaust. Nevertheless, new memorial sites for the murdered Jews were established throughout the country, such as Drobitskiy Yar in Kharkiv or the Holocaust Museum in Odessa. On many mass grave sites new memorials were created, partially with German support. In Kiev, a new grand memorial site with global relevance was planned at Babyn Yar. These plans were put on hold with the beginning of the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022. What impact the current defensive war will have on Holocaust remembrance in the future remains to be seen.

Remembrance

Berdychiv was liberated by the Red Army on January 5, 1944. In 1950 6,300 Jews lived again in Berdychiv. Immediately after the end of the fighting, a Soviet commission of inquiry inspected two mass graves between Khashin and Bistrik and the mass grave of the biggest single mass shooting on site (September 15, 1941) near the village of Radienskoye. For a long time the Soviet authorities refused to allow the Jews of Berdychiv to erect memorials at the sites of mass shootings. They were only allowed to erect a memorial and memorial plaques in the Jewish cemetery. In 1953, however, the Jewish community erected an obelisk at the site of the mass shooting of September 15, 1941, but this memorial was dismantled by the authorities shortly afterwards. Decades later it was rediscovered and in 1990 it was re-erected on the Jewish cemetery.
In 1983, a monument was erected at Shlemerka airfield where the »Lisaya Gora« labour camp used to be. The Russian inscription reads: »In this area 18.640 innocent Soviet citizens were brutally tortured and shot by the Hitlerists in September 1941.«. Although Jews were not mentioned by name, the figure refers to all the Jews who were murdered in Berdychiv during the German occupation. Later, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, a memorial stone bearing an engraved map of the mass grave was added. Within a radius of 200-400 meters from the memorial there are five mass graves, each of which is marked with a memorial stone.
After the collapse of the Soviet Union two memorials were erected on the site of the former ghetto in today's borough of Yatki. The first one bears the Ukrainian and Russian inscription: »In 1941 there was a Jewish ghetto in this area in which 30,000 Jews were shot by fascists«. The second memorial commemorates locals who saved Jews. In the 1990s a memorial was erected on the site of the former monastery complex of the Discalced Carmelites, the site of many mass shootings.

Berdychiv 2017, Memorial at the Jewish cemetery – originally erected at the airfield in 1953, Stiftung Denkmal

Berdychiv, 2017, Memorial in the monastery complex, Stiftung Denkmal

Open

All memorials are accessible at all times apart from one memorial in the monastery complex of the Discalced Carmelites.

Contact

http://myshtetl.org/zhitomirskaja/berdichev.html

velvl770@gmail.com

Molodogwardijska Str. 3
13300 Berditschew

Berdychiv, 2017, Memorial from the year 1983 near the site of the former airfield where 12.000 Jews were shot, Stiftung Denkmal

Berdychiv, 2017, Site of mass shootings and memorial plaque near the airfield Shlemerka, Stiftung Denkmal

Berdychiv, 2017, Jewish cemetery, Stiftung Denkmal

Berdychiv, 2017, Gravestone on the Jewish cemetery, Stiftung Denkmal

Romanivka, 2017, Memorial stone at the site of a mass shooting, Stiftung Denkmal

Berdychiv, 2015, Site of the former labour camp Lisaya Gora, Yad Vashem, Mikhail Tyaglyy

Berdychiv, 2017, Map with the sites of the mass shootings near the mass shooting site at the former airfield, Stiftung Denkmal

Myrne near Berdychiv, 2017, Memorial at a mass grave at the site of the biggest mass shooting, Stiftung Denkmal

Berdychiv, 2017, Former monastery of the Discalced Carmelites, Stiftung Denkmal

Berdychiv, 2017, Memorial for the victims of the ghetto, Stiftung Denkmal

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