Memorial to the victims of the German occupation in Yanushpol (Ivanopil)

Місце пам’яті жертвам німецької окупації в Янушполі

In Ivanopil (until 1946 Yanushpol) Jews, political opponents, Soviet POWs and a larger group of Roma had been murdered under the German occupation. Since 2019 an information stele is dedicated to all the victims.

History

Ivanopil (until 1946: Yanushpol, Ukrainian: Yanushpil) is an urban-style settlement about 60 kilometers southeast of Zhytomyr. For centuries Ukrainians, Poles, Jews and Russians lived together here. At the end of the 19th century about one fifth of the inhabitants of the village were Jews. In the 1920s and 1930s, the Soviet authorities closed Jewish prayer houses and schools, and many Jews moved away from the countryside. In 1939 approximately 700 Jews lived in Yanushpol.
The German Wehrmacht occupied Yanushpol at the beginning of July 1941 and on August 20, members of Einsatzgruppe (mobile killing unit) C shot and killed a group of 15 Jews. The rest of the Jewish population had to move to a ghetto. Jews from the surrounding villages were also moved into this ghetto. The living conditions were very cramped and favoured the outbreak of diseases. There was not enough food, yet Jews had to conduct forced labour.
In May 1942, 80 Jews were transferred from the ghetto in Yanushpol to the Lisaya Gora camp in Berdychiv, where later they were all murdered. On May 29, 1942 the ghetto was dissolved and its inhabitants were murdered just outside the village. German gendarmes, local policemen and an SS unit stationed in Berdychiv took part in the murder operation.
In early June 1942 a group of Roma was murdered in Yanushpol. The travelling group was apprehended in May near a nearby village and the families were initially imprisoned in the Yanushpol prison. A few days later they were shot dead on the premises of a sugar factory. During the German occupation, actual or supposed political opponents and Soviet prisoners of war were shot at the same place on numerous occasions.

Ivanopil, 2018, The prison where the Roma were held before their murder, Stiftung Denkmal

Ivanopil, 2019, Detailed view of the information stele, Stiftung Denkmal, Anna Voitenko

Victims

Except for a few survivors, all 700 Jewish inhabitants of Yanushpol were murdered, most of them on May 29, 1942 and it is possible that up to 400 other Jews who were not locals were also murdered in Yanushpol. In June 1942 German units shot dozens of Roma on the site of the sugar factory. Political opponents as well as Soviet prisoners of war were also shot here.

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

After the liberation of Yanushpol in 1944 a Soviet commission of inquiry investigated in the village. In the post-war years some local collaborators of the occupying forces were put on trial. One of the cases – against a »Volksdeutschen« (ethnic German) named Hans (Ivan) Kampf, who worked for the Germans during the war as a policeman and translator – was reopened in 1987. The trial ended in 1989 with the execution of the accused.
In the course of these investigations, the mass grave of the murdered Jews was opened and forensically examined in 1987. 811 victims were counted. Subsequently, the human remains were reburied and the communal grave was fenced in. In 1991, the year of the break-up of the Soviet Union, a memorial was erected at the grave. The Russian inscription does not mention the Jewish identity of the victims. On the site of the sugar factory, a first memorial was erected to soldiers of the Red Army who died in the fight for the liberation of the village. In the 1960s the graves of those murdered during the German occupation were opened. The bodies of political opponents could be identified, but not those of the murdered Roma. Even after that, nothing at the site reminded of the murdered Roma. As part of the »Protecting Memory« project in the summer of 2019 a stele was erected at this place, which informs about the crimes in Yanushpol and the victims, including also the fate of the Roma. The stele is dedicated to all victims of the German occupation in Yanushpol. The international »Protecting Memory« project is based at the Berlin office of the Foundation Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe.

Ivanopil, 2019, Inauguration day, Stiftung Denkmal, Anna Voitenko

Ivanopil, 2019, Commemoration ceremony at the inauguration of the information stele, Stiftung Denkmal, Anna Voitenko

Open

The memorial is accessible at all times.

Contact

https://www.erinnerungbewahren.de/ivanopil/

info@erinnerung-bewahren.de

Ivanopil, 2019, View of the information stele, Stiftung Denkmal, Anna Voitenko

Ivanopil, 2018, The monument erected in 1991 at the mass grave of the murdered Jews, Stiftung Denkmal

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