Memory of the murdered Jews of Drohobych

Пам'ять вбитих євреїв Дрогобича

In the centre of the Ukrainian town of Drohobych (polish: Drohobycz), , located in Galicia, a memorial commemorates the victims of the German occupation of the town. Between 1941 and 1943, the SS murdered almost all the Jewish residents of Drohobych. The former Jewish history of the city is visible to this day in various ways.

History

Drohobych, then part of the Galicia province of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, experienced its heyday at the end of the 19th century when oil had been discovered in the region. After the First World War, Drohobych belonged to Poland. Shortly before the outbreak of the Second World War, about 15.000 Jews lived in Drohobycz, constituting around 40 percent of the total population. The other two large ethnic groups were Poles and Ukrainians. In September 1939, following the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, Drohobych was occupied and then annexed by the Soviet Union. After that, several hundred Jews from the German occupied territories of Poland seeked refuge in Drohobych.
After the German invasion of the Soviet Union, the German Wehrmacht occupied Drohobych on June 30, 1941. As soon as on the following day, Ukrainians from Drohobych staged a pogrom in which they murdered 300 Jews. The occupied territories came under civil administration and were from hereon referred to as »Distrikt Galizien«. In July 1941, the German administration begann introducing restrictions agains the Jewish population: they had to wear arm bands with a Star of David, their freedom of movement was restricted and they received lower food rations than the rest of the Drohobych population. At the same time a Judenrat was established. On November 30, 1941, the Sicherheitspolizei (security police) and units of the Schutzpolizei (municipal police) murdered around 300 Jews in Bronitsa forest outside the town. In March and August 1942, the SS and Ukrainian auxiliary police deported at least 4,500 Jews to the Bełżec extermination camp. At the beginning of October 1942, a ghetto was established - around 10,000 Jews were forcibly relocated into it. The ghetto residents had to perform forced labour at industrial sites in the vicinity. Jews were regularly arrested and shot or deported from the ghetto to the Belzec extermination camp. Between May 23 and June 10, 1943, Sicherheitspolizei and Schutzpolizei dissolved the ghetto: they set fire to the buildings, chased the Jews outside of the town and shot them there.

Drohobych, 2015, The renovated front of the Great Synagoue, Bartłomiej Michałowski

Drohobytsch, around 1905, Postcard, Tomasz Wiśniewski

Victims

Members of the Sicherheitspolizei (security police) and the Schutzpolizei (municipal police) murdered around 10,000 Jews in Drohobych. Thousands were deported to Bełżec extermination camp. Only about 400 Jews lived to see the liberation by the Red Army in 1944. The total number of Jewish victims is around 15,000.

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 war, Drohobych remained within the Soviet Union, where it was not customary to commemorate Jewish victims explicitly. Memorialization of Jewish victims specifically only became possible with the end of communism and the independence of Ukraine.
Since 1974, a memorial complex dedicated to the victims of the German occupation is located at one of the former shooting sites at a wall in the city centre. At this wall, across the street from Hotel Europe where the Gestapo established its local headquarters, people were executed regularly in public during the German occupation. The memorial consists of several elements: a sculpture of two arms stretched upwards and a stone relief in the wall depicting faces. Among the executed there were many Jews, but also members of other victim groups such as Ukrainian nationalists who turned against the German occupiers. At the memorial itself the victims are not specified, and there is no information plaque explaining the monument's background.
In Drohobych's centre the main reminder of the city's Jewish history is the Great Synagogue, built in the 1860s. After the Second World War, the gradually strongly run-down building was used as a furniture store. After decades of decay, the building was extensively renovated from 2014 onwards. Other Jewish sites of memory include the Jewish cemetery (another Jewish cemetery was destroyed during Soviet times and used as a construction site), the building of the former Jewish orphanage, another synagogue, the former villas of Jewish industrial entrepreneurs and the birth house of the Jewish-Polish writer and artist Bruno Schulz (1892–1942) who was murdered in the ghetto.
In the forest of Bronitsa are the mass graves of Jews who had been murdered there. The mass graves have been covered with concrete and decorated by a Star of David. Nearby there is a memorial stone dedicated in the 1990s.

Drohobych, 1943, Execution at a wall, Yad Vashem

Drohobych, 2004, Execution wall in the city centre, Stiftung Denkmal

Open

The memorials in the city centre and the Bronitsa forest are accessible at all times.

Contact

+38 (0)322 520 301

vul. Kowalska
82100 Drohobytsch

Drohobych, 2004, The once pompous Great Synagogue in the city centre before restauration, Stiftung Denkmal

Drohobych, 2015, View of the synagoue during its renovation, Bartłomiej Michałowski

Drohobych, 2017, The former Osei Hesed Synagogue, Christian Herrmann

Drohobych, 2017, Birth house of the writer Bruno Schulz, Christian Herrmann

Drohobych, 2017, Jewish cemetery, Christian Herrmann

Drohobych, 2017, Mass graves in the Bronitsa forest, Christian Herrmann

Drohobych, 2017, Memorial near the mass graves in the Bronitsa forest, Christian Herrmann

Drohobych, 2017, Mass grave in the Bronitsa forest, Stiftung Denkmal, Sarah Kunte

Drohobych, 2017, Memorial at the parking lot near the mass graves in the Bronitsa forest, Stiftung Denkmal, Sarah Kunte

Drohobych, 2004, Execution wall in the city centre, Ilja Kabanchik

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