Memory of the murdered Jews of Rohatyn

Меморіали на місцях Масових Поховань у Рогатині

In the city of Rohatyn (Ukrainian: Rohatin, Rusian: Rogatin) two memorials and a memorial plaque remember the murdered Jews of Rohatyn and surroundings. The memorials are located at the presumed sites of the mass shootings.

History

Rohatyn, located in the historical region of Galicia, belonged to Austria-Hungary before the First World War, became Polish in 1919 and in 1939 fell to the Soviet Union in consequence of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact.
Jews settled there from the middle of the 16th century. In 1939 the Jewish community counted approximately 3,250 members, accounting for around 40% of the population. Prior to the German attack on the Soviet Union the number rose to approximately 4,000 because of the influx of Jewish refugees from the German occupied part of Poland. Some Jews fled to the interior of the Soviet Union or had already been forcibly resettled by Soviet authorities.
In early 1941 the German Wehrmacht occupied Rohatyn. Shortly afterwards Ukrainian policemen mistreated and killed some of their Jewish neighbours. First casualties were Orthodox Jews and their rabbi. In the surrounding villages there were anti-Jewish excesses with casualties as well. By the end of 1941 the Jews of Rohatyn and the surrounding villages were confined by the German authorities into an overcrowded ghetto in the western part of the city. Many died of typhus and other diseases which spread rapidly due to the atrocious conditions.
On March 20, 1942 members of the Einsatzkommando C (Subgroup of a mobile killing unit) and members of the Ivano-Frankivsk Gestapo aided by local auxiliaries murdered Jewish children, women and men near the railway station. On September 2, 1942 the Germans conducted another »Aktion« where they deported about 1,000 Jews to the extermination camp of Bełżec. In early December 1942 they murdered approximately 300 Jews, among them all staff and patients of the ghetto's hospital. At the end of the »Aktion« more than 1,000 were deported to Bełżec again. Afterwards 2,700 – 3,000 Jews still lived in the ghetto. In the beginning of May 1943 the Jews in the ghetto started to organise resistance. This was crushed by the Germans and their helpers on June 6, 1943 and the ghetto was set on fire. During the next three days they shot all surviving Jews and buried their corpses near the New Jewish Cemetery north of the city centre.

Rohatyn, 2013, On the Old Cemetery, Christian Herrmann

Rohatyn, undated, Historical photograph of the Old Cemetery, New York Public Library

Victims

According to information provided by the official Soviet investigative commission 9,846 Jews were murdered in Rohatyn. As much as 3,000 further Jews were deported to the extermination camp of Bełżec. Almost the entire Jewish community was among the victims. There are at least two sites of mass shootings in Rohatyn.

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

On July 24, 1944 the Red Army liberated Rohatyn. Only about 30 Jews from Rohatyn had survived the war. Most of them left the city. Today there is no Jewish community in Rohatyn, the descendants live abroad. Very little reminds of the once diverse Jewish life in Rohatyn. The Old Jewish Cemetery dating back to the 17th century and the New Jewish Cemetery opened in the early 20th century have almost fallen into oblivion.
In the 1990s descendants of Jewish survivors erected a memorial at the New Cemetery to remember the murdered Jews. In 2015 a further memorial was erected. The organisation »Rohatyn Jewish Heritage« attempts to restore the cemeteries with the help of private donors. At the sites of the mass shootings two memorials remind of the annihilation of the Jewish community. These are located 1,5 km south and 1 km north of the city centre.
In 1987 the first two memorials dedicated to the »victims of Fascism« were erected by the Soviet administration. Here lie the victims of the first mass murder of March, 20, 1942. Two further memorials were erected at the same place in 1998 by descendants of Jewish survivors from Rohatyn. The inscriptions commemorate in three languages the Jewish victims who were murdered in the Rohatyn region in 1942 and 1943. The mass graves are not yet enclosed since to date their exact position hasn't been precisely established. In spring 2017 the organisation »Rohatyn Jewish Heritage« starts to determine their exact position with the help of forensic examinations. Another memorial plaque is located at the former building of the Judenrat (Jewish Council) in the Michail Kozobinskov Street. Today the building houses a school.

Rohatyn, 2008, Old Cemetery, Rohatyn Jewish Heritage, Jay Osborn

Rohatyn, 2015, New Cemetery with two memorials, Rohatyn Jewish Heritage, Jay Osborn

Open

The memorials are accessible at all times.

Contact

http://rohatynjewishheritage.org

marla.r.osborn@gmail.com

Rohatyn, 1917, View of the city with a synagogue, public domain

Rohatyn, 2011, Memorial »To The Victims of Fascism« at the Old Jewish Cemetery, Rohatyn Jewish Heritage, Jay Osborn

Rohatyn, 2014, Memorial south of the city, Jason Francisco

Rohatyn, 2013, At the New Jewish Cemetery, Christian Herrmann

Rohatyn, 2015, New Jewish Cemetery, Rohatyn Jewish Heritage, Jay Osborn

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