Memorial to the murdered Jews of Proskurov

Меморіал Жертвам Голокосту

In the major Ukrainian city of Khmelnytskyi, which until 1954 was called Proskurov (Ukrainian: Proskuriv, Polish: Płoskirów), several memorials remember the murdered Jews of the city.

History

Proskurov, located in the historical region of Podolia on the bank of the Southern Bug, was founded in 1431. Jews settled there from the 17th century. In the 19th century Proskurov developed into an important trading centre. In 1897 about half of the population was Jewish. In the turmoil after the October Revolution in 1917, about 1,600 Jews were murdered in anti-Jewish pogroms. In 1939 the city numbered about 14,500 Jews, which corresponded to approximately 39 percent of the population.
The German Wehrmacht occupied the city on July 8,1941. Some 2,500 Jews had fled before to the interior of the Soviet Union. The German occupiers forced the Jews to surrender their valuables, to bear identification marks and to form a Jewish Council to carry out the German orders. They appointed a woman, Lisa Lindenbojm, as chairman of the Jewish Council. She often became violent against Jews when they defied German orders. At the beginning of September, all Jews had to move into a ghetto. It was located on the eastern outskirts of the city, surrounded by a barbed wire fence and guarded by Ukrainian and Lithuanian policemen. In the following weeks Jews from surrounding villages moved in to protect themselves from anti-Jewish riots by the local population. On November 4, 1941 the Einsatzkommando 6, a sub-group of the Einsatzgruppe C (mobile killing unit) shot the majority of the ghetto's inhabitants at a depression in the east of the city. By the end of the year, the ghetto had been wiped out. All Jews who were spared from the »Aktion« had to relocate to a new ghetto. Approximately 3,000 Jewish workers and their families lived there and conducted heavy forced labour. In May 1942, the German occupiers founded another ghetto in Lesnewo five kilometres east of the city. The Jews worked on the construction of roads and the central railway station for the »Organisation Todt«. At the end of November and beginning of December, the Germans shot almost all of the Jews of the two ghettos and declared the area to be »judenfrei« (free of Jews).

Proskurov, undated, The ruins of the Great Choral Synagogue demolished in 1991, public domain

Khmelnytskyi, 2017, Memorial complex »Radiant Souls«, Khesed Besht

Victims

In mid-July 1941, Sonderkommando (special unit) 4b, which stayed in the city for a few days, by their own account shot 146 »Communists«. Among them were also Jews. Between August 19, 1941 and the beginning of September 1941, Police Battalion 320 shot several hundred Jews. Many of the ghetto's inhabitants perished because of the catastrophic living conditions, while others were murdered by members of the local and German police units. During the »Großaktion« on November 4, 1941 the Einsatzkommando 6 of the Einsatzgruppe C (mobile killing unit) under the command of SS-Obersturmführer Theodor Salmanzig murdered about 5,300 Jews. At the same time, the men murdered another 2,500 Jews from surrounding villages. On November 30,1942 members of the SD together with local and German police units shot all inhabitants of the second ghetto, approximately 6,000 Jews. Some Jews resisted in vain.

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

Proskurov was liberated by the Red Army on March 25, 1944. Some Jews returned to the city after the war and erected a monument to the murdered Jews at the mass shooting sites in the north-eastern part of the city. Initially, the inscription spoke of Jewish victims but it was changed in the 1960s, concealing the Jewish identity of the victims. Only since the 1990s has the inscription expressly named Jews as victims again. Today, the memorial complex »Radiant Souls« with several monuments and commemorative plaques, erected and financed by the Jewish community of Khmelnytskyi and the charitable fund »Chesed Bescht«, is located at the mass shooting sites. They also set up a museum in the Jewish community centre »Tikhiya« to commemorate the victims of the Holocaust and look after the preservation of the Jewish cemetery, which is also part of the memorial complex. A commemoration ceremony is held annually on the site. In 2009, a memorial plaque remembering the former historical Jewish cemetery, which once stood on this site, was attached to a building.
Of the numerous places of worship and Jewish institutions belonging to the Jewish community at the beginning of the 20th century, only one synagogue is still owned by the Jewish community, which still has about 2,000 members today. The synagogue was restored in 2009.

Khmelnytskyi, 2017, Jewish cemetery, Khesed Besht

Khmelnytskyi, 2017, Entrance to memorial complex, Khesed Besht

Contact

www.hesedbesht.org.ua

hesedbesht@ukr.net

+ 38(382) 702 054

wul. Silskohospodarska
29000 Chmelnyzkyj

Proskurov, undated, Old city view, public domain

Khmelnytskyi, 2014, Construction of the memorial complex, Khesed Besht

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