Memorials to the murdered Jews of Kherson

Пам'ять убитих евреїв Херсона

In the harbour town of Kherson two memorials and a memorial plaque remember the murdered Jews of Kherson and surroundings.

History

Kherson, located on the Dnieper delta on the Black Sea in southern Ukraine, was founded in 1778 at the instruction of the Empress Catherine II of Russia. Jews began to settle there a few years later. In the early 20th century many Jews perished during famines and anti-Jewish pogroms. Prior to the Second World War approximately ten percent of the 167,000 inhabitants were Jewish. Their number rose after the outbreak of the war in 1939 because of many refugees from German-occupied Poland and later from other parts of the Ukraine.
After their attack on the Soviet Union the German Wehrmacht occupied the city on August 19, 1941. Two thirds of the Jewish population managed to flee beforehand or were evacuated, about 7,000 remained in the city. The German authorities forced them to wear badges and to hand over their valuables. In addition they deployed a Ukrainian police force who actively took part in persecuting the Jews. On August 29, 1941 the Sonderkommando (special unit) 11a of the Einsatzgruppe (mobile killing unit) D shot 200 inhabitants of Kherson who were accused of anti-German activities. Most of them were Jews. A few days later the Kommando shot another 200 Jews. Besides these »Aktionen« the Sonderkommando murdered several Jews who didn't follow the previously imposed instructions.
On September 7, 1941 a ghetto was established near the city centre into which all Jews had to move. According to their own account, the Sonderkommando shot another 400 Jews on September 15, 1941. On September 23 all inhabitants of the ghetto were moved to the prison and incarcerated there. Within the next three days the Sonderkommando 11a under the command of SS-Hauptsturmführer (captain of the SS) Eberhard Heinze murdered all confined Jews and had the victims buried in anti-tank ditches near the village of Zelenivka (Russian: Zelenovka). The following days the Germans murdered further Jews who had earlier managed to escape. On October 2, 1941 the Einsatzgruppe D declared the city to be »judenfrei« (free of Jews). In January and February 1942 the occupiers murdered about 400 Jews who had been spared earlier because they were married to non-Jews.

Kherson, 2006, Memorial in Zeleniwka, S. Yu. Podolskoy

Kherson, 2006, Memorial plaque at the hospital, I. A. Panitch

Victims

On September 15, 1941 the German authorities declared to have killed 400 Jews in two »Aktionen«. Another 17 Jews were shot because they didn't wear badges. From September 23 to September 25, 1941 the ghetto was liquidated by the Sonderkommando (special unit) 11a under the command of SS-Hauptsturmführer (captain of the SS) Eberhard Heinze. The German perpetrators stated the number of 5,000 murdered, after the war the Soviet commission of inquiry stated the number to be more than 8,700 victims. The exact number of Jewish victims is hard to establish since there are also POWs buried in the mass grave in Zelenivka. In January and February 1942 the Einsatzkommando 12 murdered about 400 Jews married to non-Jews.

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

Kherson was liberated by the Red Army on March 13, 1944. In 1959 approximately 9,500 Jews lived in Kherson, accounting for 6% of the total population. Many emigrated to Israel in the 1990s. Today there is a Jewish community and a community centre. Their most important place of worship is the synagogue »Chabad«, built in 1855. It was burned down during the German occupation and rebuilt in the 1950s but wasn't used as a synagogue during Soviet times. The façade of the former »Great Synagogue« is only partly preserved. The building has been used as a planetarium since the 1960s. Beside it there once stood three more synagogues which where demolished by the Soviet authorities.
In 1966 a memorial was erected near a brewery in the city centre where human remains were found during construction work. They were later buried on the Jewish cemetery although the identity of the victims has not been determined beyond doubt. The Ukrainian inscription reads: »On this site the fascist occupiers murdered 1,276 Soviet civilians«. In 1962 the director of the »Ovotchtchnoy« collective farm erected a memorial commemorating the murdered who were buried on the site of the mass shooting near the village of Zelenivka. In 1979 the old memorial was replaced by a new one. It is located on top of an artificial hill. On the slab a torch and a Russian inscription is engraved: »Here in these anti-tank ditches the Hitlerite occupiers shot 11,780 civilians from Kherson (adults and children) and Soviet prisoners of war in September 1941«. In 1998 a memorial plaque bearing an Ukrainian inscription was placed on the building of the Tropin hospital, remembering the Jewish doctors who were murdered in the mass shootings of September 1941.
In 2004 a museum of the Jewish history of the Kherson region was opened in the building of the Jewish welfare organisation »Chesed Shmuel«. »Chesed Schmuel« regularly organises memorial services remembering the murdered Jews of Kherson.

Kherson, undated, Synagogue, myshtetl.org

Kherson, undated, Old city view, public domain

Open

The memorials are accessible at all times.

Contact

http://www.hesed.kherson.ua/en.html

shmuel.kherson@gmail.com

Bohorodytska St, 124
73000 Cherson

Kherson, undated, Nokolayevskaya Synagogue, Yad Vashem

Kherson, 2005, Memorial in front of the brewery, I. A. Panitch

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