Memorial to the murdered Jews of Lypovets

Меморіали жертвам Голокосту у полі біля с. Вікентіївкa

In the small Ukrainian town of Lypovets, several memorials commemorate the Jews murdered there.

History

Lypovets is a small town founded in the Middle Ages, located on the river Sob 35 kilometers east of Vinnytsia. After the partition of Poland, Lypovets belonged to the Russian Empire. At the end of the 19th century almost half of the approximately 8,500 inhabitants of the town were Jews. In 1919 and 1920 there were at least two anti-Jewish pogroms in Lypovets. Thereafter, the Soviet policy of collectivization and the suppression of religions led to many Jews moving to larger cities. Whereas in 1926, 3,605 Jews were still counted in Lypovets, representing 42 per cent of the total population of 8,638, by 1941 there were probably only about 1,200 Jews living in the city.
The German Wehrmacht occupied Lypovets on July, 13 1941. Only a few Jews managed to flee before the arrival of the German troops. The Germans set up a local Ukrainian police force to assist them, among other things, in implementing anti-Jewish measures.
On September 12, German units – presumably members of Einsatzkommando (subgroup of Einsatzgruppe) 6 of Einsatzgruppe (mobile killing unit) C – shot and killed at least 200 young Jewish men and women from Lypovets near the village of Bereziwka.
In the autumn of 1941 a ghetto was established in Lypovets to which all Jews had to move. The living conditions were so catastrophic that many inhabitants of the ghetto died of hunger, disease and exhaustion. In April or May 1942 German units, supported by local police, murdered almost all the inhabitants of the ghetto in a field near the village of Vikentiivka. Previously, workers on a farm had to dig a large pit. The victims had to undress and lay down in the pit, after which they were shot with submachine guns. The murderous action dragged on for days. Afterwards only about 50 specialized Jewish workers remained in the ghetto, who were probably murdered in the autumn. Later on, Jews from outside Lypovets were brought on several occasions to the town to be shot.

Lypovets, about 1900, Street scene on a postcard, public domain

Lypovets, 2019, Memorial and information stele at the mass grave, Stiftung Denkmal, Anna Voitenko

Victims

In the first murder operation, members of German units murdered at least 200 Jews, mainly young men and some young women. Approximately 750-800 Jewish children, women and men from the ghetto fell victim to the large mass shooting in spring 1942. Later, smaller and larger groups of Jews, several hundreds in all, were brought to Lypovets and murdered there.

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

The Red Army finally liberated Lypovets on March 13, 1944. Only a few Jews managed to survive in hiding until then. After the liberation, a Soviet commission of inquiry investigated the situation on site. Several local collaborators were arrested, but the crimes themselves were only incompletely documented. In the Federal Republic of Germany some perpetrators were investigated, but in the trials of the 1960s and 1970s hardly anyone was convicted of crimes committed in the Vinnytsia region.
In the early post-war years, the survivor Leontii Usharenko ensured that memorials were erected at the mass graves in the field near the village of Vikentiivka. At two mass graves earth mounds were raised and obelisks were erected. Their inscription remembered the »Soviet citizens« who had been murdered there. As was customary in the Soviet Union at the time, the Jewish identity of the victims was not mentioned. In the 2010s, thanks to the initiative of a local businessman, these obelisks were supplemented by commemorative plaques bearing Stars of David to indicate the Jewish identity of the victims. It is remarkable that the monuments survived the decades until the end of the Soviet Union unscathed, although they were located on an agricultural field, because in many other places similar monuments were levelled.
In 2016 and 2017, a team conducted non-invasive archaeological investigations in the field as part of the »Protecting Memory« project, which is based at the Berlin office of the Foundation Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe. This enabled the exact location of the mass graves to be determined. Finally, in 2019, the old monuments were repaired and supplemented with new elements and information steles as part of the »Protecting Memory« project.

Lypovets, 2019, Inauguration ceremony of the memorial, Stiftung Denkmal, Anna Voitenko

Lypovets, 2019, Second mass grave in the field, Stiftung Denkmal, Anna Voitenko

Contact

https://www.erinnerungbewahren.de/lypowez/

info@erinnerung-bewahren.de

Lypovets, 2019, Old and new elements of the memorial complex, Stiftung Denkmal, Anna Voitenko

Lypovets, 2017, Archaeological investigations and obelisk from the post-war years, Stiftung Denkmal, Anna Voitenko

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