Memorial to the victims of the Holocaust in Bershad

Пам'ятний знак загиблим євреям

In the Ukrainian small town of Bershad four memorials remember the victims of the Bershad ghetto. Three of them are located on the Jewish cemetery southeast of town, another is situated in the town centre, where between 1941 and 1944 the second largest ghetto in the Romanian occupied area of Transnistria was located.

History

In Bershad, located in the historical region of Podolia, Jews started to settle at the end of the 16th century. The Jewish community was nearly annihilated during the uprising led by Bohdan Khmelnytsky in 1648. In the early 20th century when Bershad was part of the Russian Empire there were anti-Jewish excesses. Afterwards about 4,000 Jews lived in the place, equating to three quarters of the population.
Between the two world wars Bershad was part of the Soviet Union. The German Wehrmacht and the Romanian Army occupied Bershad on July 29, 1941. The town became part of the Romanian occupied region called Transnistria. The Romanian occupiers forced the Jews to hand over their valuables, to wear badges and to conduct forced labour. In September they established a ghetto. During the following months approximately 20,000 Jews from the northern part of Romania, from Bessarabia, the northern part of the Bukovina and from the Odessa region were interned in the ghetto. More than half of them perished already during the first year because of the catastrophic living conditions. Initially the ghetto wasn't fenced in but leaving it was punishable by death. At first the ghetto was under the authority of the Romanian officer Gheorghe Petrescu who was regarded to be humane and who organised disinfectants during a cholera epidemic. After his dismissal in summer 1942 the ghetto was fenced in with barbed wire and provisions became scarcer. In spring of 1943, when a Gestapo outpost was deployed on site, violence and persecution increased. At the same time living conditions improved somewhat since aid from Romania and from the Red Cross were permitted and a hospital and a school were established. In August 1943 the Gestapo abducted 1,203 Jews to conduct forced labour. Resistance formed in the ghetto. After it's discovery some of the participants were murdered. When the Red Army came nearer, the Romanians retreated. The Germans stayed and in February 1944 they murdered further Jews and non-Jews who they blamed to be supporters of partisans.

Bershad, 2015, Old memorial from the time of the ghetto, Edgar Hauster

Berschad, undated, Interior view of the synagogue, Yevgenniy Shnayder

Victims

From September 1941 to August 1942 more than 15,000 people died in the ghetto from hunger, cold and diseases. During the winter of 1941/42 between 150 and 200 people died every day. After the infrastructure had improved somewhat in 1943, resistance formed in the ghetto. Some of them supported partisans in the vicinity. In January 1944 a list with the names of 53 members of the resistance fell into the hands of the Gestapo. They shot approximately half of them, others managed to escape and join resistance groups outside the ghetto. The corpses were buried in two mass graves near Byrlovka (Ukrainian: Byrliwka). In February 1944 as much as 400 Jews and non-Jewish workers were murdered by the Germans. They buried the corpses near a bridge at the river Dohna. After the end of the war former inhabitants of the ghetto reburied the corpses in a mass grave on the Jewish cemetery. When the Red Army liberated the ghetto on March 14, 1944, about 10,000 Jews were still alive.

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

About 2,000 Jews remained in Bershad after the war. 300 of them re-established a Jewish community in 1946 and re-opened the 200 years old synagogue which had been closed after the founding of the Soviet Union. It is in use until today. Because of its construction from clay and straw it is considered to be unique.
Four memorials commemorate the victims of the Holocaust in Bershad. Three are located on the Jewish cemetery. There are several mass graves in which dead from the Bershad ghetto are buried. The cemetery is still in use today. The oldest memorial in the shape of an obelisk was erected in 1943 by the inhabitants of the ghetto themselves. The names which had been engraved back then are now almost illegible. It bore the Hebrew inscription »Here are buried several thousand deported Jews, who died of hunger, cold and epidemics and who were murdered by human monsters. […]«
Another memorial was erected on the Jewish cemetery in 1977 by a survivor from the village of Sorok. Inscribed on the marble plate are the names of about one hundred victims from Bershad. The Russian inscription reads: »For the victims of Fascism«, and »Nobody is forgotten, nothing is forgotten«. The survivor Klara Lyubarskaya who initiated the memorial has captured her memories in a book which was published in Israel in 2003.
In 2002 relatives of victims came from Australia, visited the cemetery and decided to erect another memorial. It was inaugurated at the cemetery in 2006. In 2007 a memorial was erected on the site of the former ghetto in the town. The English and Russian inscription remembers the »26,000 Jewish men, women and children who died during the Holocaust by the hands of German Nazis and Romanian Fascists«.
The Jewish community today only has about 70 members. Many Jews emigrated to Israel or the USA between 1980 and 2000.

Bershad, undated, Exterior view of the synagogue, Yevgenniy Shnayder

Bershad, 2008, Memorial from the 1970s, Yad Vashem

Open

The memorial is accessible at all times.

Contact

http://myshtetl.org/vinnitskaja/bershad.html

velvl770@gmail.com

Jüdischer Friedhof an der Marija-Sankowezka-Straße
24400 Berschad

Bershad, 2013, Memorial on the site of the former ghetto, Kathrin Power

Bershad, undated, Old memorial from 1943, Yad Vashem

Bershad, 2015, On the Jewish cemetery, Edgar Hauster

Bershad, 2015, Memorial from 1943, Edgar Hauster

Bershad, 2015, Old part of the cemetery, Yevgenniy Shnayder

Bershad, 2015, Memorial from 2006, Edgar Hauster

Hanover / Hannover

Ahlem Memorial of the Hanover Region

Since 1987, the Ahlem Memorial on the premises of the former Israelite School of Horticulture at Ahlem commemorates the Jews from the region of Hanover who were deported from the school grounds betwee...

Oranienburg

Memorial and Museum Sachsenhausen

The Memorial and Museum Sachsenhausen commemorate the over 130,000 prisoners from all over Europe, held captive in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp between 1936 and 1945. During that time, over 20...

Düsseldorf

Memorial to the Victims of National Socialism in Düsseldorf

Since 1987, the Düsseldorf »Stadthaus« has been home to the »Düsseldorf Memorial«, which is dedicated to all victims of National Socialism from Düsseldorf. The same building housed the Düsseldorf poli...