Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Mizocz

Могила розстріляних євреїв гетто Мізоча

Mizocz is a small town in the historical region of Volhynia near the town of Rivne (Ukrainian: Riwne, Polish: Równe) in the northwest of the Ukraine. Since the late 1980s, a memorial near the town commemorates the approximately 1,500 Jews who were shot there by a German killing squad on October 14 and 15, 1942.

History

The first Jewish families settled in Mizocz in the 18th century. Prior to the First World War the region around Mizocz was a province of the Russian Empire. After that, it was part of Poland. About 1920 half of the population was Jewish, the other half was made up of Poles, Ukrainians and Czechs.
As a result of the Molotov-Ribbentrop-Pact the region was occupied by the Soviet Union. By the middle of 1941 the town's Jewish population was 1,050. Few days after the attack on the Soviet Union the German Wehrmacht marched into Mizocz. Some 300 Jews managed to escape to the Soviet Union. Shortly afterwards anti-Jewish riots flared up, encouraged by National Socialist propaganda. In early August German units conducted first mass shootings of Jews in the surroundings of Mizocz. In spring 1942 all Jews from the areas of Mizocz, Ostroh (Polish: Ostróg) and Zdolbuniv (Polish: Zdołbunów) had to move to ghettos by command of the German Gebietskommissariat (District Commissariat). About 1,700 Jewish children, women and men lived in the Mizocz ghetto.
On October 13, 1942 German constabulary and Ukrainian auxiliary police surrounded the Mizocz ghetto. To try to escape, some Jews set fires. Only few managed to escape whereas 200 people fell victim to the flames. The next day a firing squad composed of Security Police (SiPo) and Security Service of the SS (SD) arrived im Mizocz. They dragged the Jews to a ravine out of town and murdered them by a shot in the back of the head. Within two days the unit murdered up to 1,500 Jewish children, women and men. Only very few Jews survived in hiding until the Red Army arrived.

Mizocz, 2016, Memorial to the murdered Jews, Christian Schmittwilken

Mizocz, 1942, Shooting of Jewish women and children on October 14, 1942, Národní archiv Praha, Foto: Gustav Hille

Victims

About 200 Jews died in the fire during the liquidation of the Mizocz ghetto on October 1942. In the following two days the killing squad shot up to 1,500 Jewish children, women and men. The unit was under the command of Dr. Karl Pütz, commander of Security Police (SiPo) and DS (KdS) Volhynia-Podolia. Between 1941 and September 1942 the National Socialists murdered about 95,000 Jews in the whole Rivne area.

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

It is estimated that only 1,5 percent of the Jews in the Volhynia region survived the Holocaust. Only 19 of the approximately 2,000 Jews who lived in Mizocz prior to the mass shootings in October 1942 were still alive when the Red Army liberated them. After their liberation the enclosure of the killing fields was an important matter for the few Jewish survivors in Volhynia. In most cases they had to seize the initiative themselve . In winter 1944/45 many Jews from Volhynia left the Soviet Union. Most of the Jews living in Volhynia after the war had moved there from other parts of the Soviet Union.
The mass shootings in Mizocz were subject to court proceedings in West Germany in the early 1960s. Five photographies by Gustav Hille, a German gendarm present at the shooting of women and children on October 14, 1942, played a key role in the trial.
In the late 1980s a memorial was erected near the site of the mass shootings. In 1992 first delegations from Israel and the United States visited the memorial to commemorate the victims. The victims' descendants erected a memorial plaque with the Ukrainian inscription: »In memory of the victims of the Holocaust in 1942«.
One of the few reminders of the once large Jewish community of Mizocz is the Jewish cemetery. The once up to 100 gravestones are hardly recognizable anymore. On the initiative of an Israeli rabbi an appeal for the preservation of the cemetery was started.

Mizocz, undated, The site of the mass shooting in post-war time, sefer zikaron

Mizocz, undated, The central square in Mizocz between the world wars, Misozka Miska Biblioteka

Open

The memorial is accessible at all times.

Contact

35740 Mizocz

Mizocz, 2016, Ukrainian inscription on the memorial, Christian Schmittwilken

Mizocz, 2016, Site of the mass shootings, Christian Schmittwilken

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