CHAPTER ONE
Babi Yar is a small ravine on the outskirts of Kiev, the Ukrainian capital. It is also the site of massacres conducted by German forces during their violent military operations against the Soviet Union. The first and best chronicled massacre occurred on 29–30 September 1941, killing nearly 34,000 Jews. The commitment to slaughter all the Jews in Kyiv was made by the military governor General-Major Kurt Eberhard, police commander for Army Group South. The operation was carried out by the Wermacht, the SS (Schutzstaffel a very powerful Nazi paramilitary organization headed by Heinrich Himmler), Ukrainian auxiliary police; the Einsatzgruppen, headed by Reinhard Heydrich, were mobile killing units whose purpose was to kill political enemies, Polish government officials, gypsies, Jews, and any other undesirables. The Einsatzgruppen (Einsatz) consisted of 4 Groups (A,B,C,D); group C was involved in the Babi Yar massacre. The Einsatz performed -their killing duties without mercy or curtailment.
The German Army did not wait long to begin their mass slaughter. Only 10 days after taking Kiev, roughly 30 thousand Jews, consisting of small groups, were taken to the Babi Yar ravine. The men, women, and children were forced to toss all of their belongings. The first group was gunned down without mercy. The second group was forced to lie down on the first, many were shot in the neck by a marksman, repeating the process until there was no one else to shoot. The corpses were covered with dirt and rocks. This mass murder was the largest of its kind, to date, under the umbrella of the Nazi regime and its collaborators throughout its campaign against the Soviet Union. The Odessa Massacre of October 1941, would take the lives of 40,000 Jews.
Between 1941 and 1943, Babi Yar would be the site of additional massacres, taking the lives of thousands of Soviet officials, and Russian POWs. When the tide of Operation Barbarosa turned, the retreating German armies attempted to conceal their crimes against humanity by exhuming the bodies and burning them in bonfires. As is the case regarding the Jewish Holocaust, there were too many victims, independent witnesses, physical evidence, and thorough investigations that resurrected the truth. To put it simply, the Nazis committed too many war crimes in too many places; impossible to hide all atrocities. The Soviets claim that a total of 100,000 people from all the targetted groups were killed in Babi Yar.
The Jewish victims had no choice or viable options. As this stern, direct order, written in Russian and German indicates:
` “Kikes {a highly insulting, racist term} of the city of Kiev and vicinity! On Mon day, September 29, you are to appear by 7:00 A.M. with your possessions, money, documents, valuables and warm clothing at Dorogozhitshaya Street, next to the Jewish cemetery. Failure to appear is punishable by death.” (Jewish Virtual Library; The Einsatzgruppen: Babi Yar).
Local anti-Semitism often made the Nazi policy towards the Jews easier:
"The bitter hostility of the Ukrainian population against the Jews is extremely great, because it is thought that they were responsible for the explosions in Kiev. They are also seen as NKVD informers and agents, who unleashed the terror against the Ukrainian people. All Jews were arrested in retaliation for the arson in Kiev, and altogether 33,771 Jews were executed on September 29th and 30th. Gold, valuables and clothing were collected and put at the disposal of the National-Socialist Welfare Association (NSV), for the equipment of the Volksdeutsche, and part given to the appointed city administration for distribution to the needy population". (Yitshak Arad, Yisrael Gutman, Abraham Margaliot, eds., Documents on the Holocaust, Jerusalem, 1981, p. 416).
The Black Death Pogroms (also known as the Pestilence, the Great Plague, or the Plague) were a series of pogroms against Jewish communities during the plague in Europe, occurring from 1348 to 1351. Naturally, someone had to be blamed. The Jews had long been the punching bag of Europe, they were a weak and vulnerable target, and within reach. Although the official church policy was to safeguard the safety of Jews, the hatred and loathing of the masses was too widespread to curtail.
The plague was a terrifying worldwide pandemic that took the lives of over 100 million people. It devastated Europe, killing one-third to one half of Europe's population (20 to 30 million). The plague's onset in Europe is believed to have occurred in October 1347. A dozen ships from the Black Sea docked at the Messina Port in Sicily. The plague is believed to have originated in Asia 2,000 years ago. Europeans were ill-equipped to deal with this devastating enemy. Many of its victims were healthy in the morning, and then sickly or dead at night. The plague is bacteria-based (Bacterium Yersinia Pestis), emanating from fleas. The fleas commonly infected humans and rodents, and sometimes other animals, through bites.
Symptoms include swollen lymph nodes, vomiting, puss-filled boils and tumours, rotting black skin, swellings on the groin or under the armpits often attaining the size of a golf ball and less commonly that of an apple; pus drained out of the swellings. Other unpleasant symptoms include vomiting, fever and chills, horrible pain in different parts of the body, lung and blood problems, and finally death. The plague did not discriminate against any person; rich and poor alike could be infected; even Pope Clement VI (Born Pierre Roger; 1291 December 6, 1352), feared for his own life.
As the plague quickly spread throughout Europe, and with a wholesale lack of scientific and medical knowledge available, Jews became the number one target for scapegoating. They were accused of poisoning drinking wells. It is true that in some Jewish communities the effects of the plague were noticeably less or non-existent. But this was likely due to community isolation (ghettos) and the sanitary habits of Jews concerning the washing of one's hand before eating bread, and cleansing the corpse’s body before burial. This made no difference those who were intent on punishing the Jews. Jews were tortured into confessing that they did in fact poison drinking wells. This led to large-scale murders and brutality against Jews; in addition much of their properties were taken as booty. Pope Clement VI spoke out in defence of the Jews:
"He forbade violence against Jews, issuing two papal bulls for this purpose. He said that those who blamed the plague on the Jews were 'seduced by that liar, the Devil'. He urged the clergy to protect the Jews." (June 2012; 1352: The Pope who Protected Jews during the Black Death; history.info).
Massacres occurred in Toulon Province, the Jewish quarter was decimated, dozens of Jews were murdered in their homes. Thereafter, another massacre occurred in Barcelona, Spain. Massacres of Jews began to spread in earnest across Europe, in particular but not limited to Germany, France, and Switzerland. Erfurt, Germany's Jews were massacred on March 21, 1349. Estimates of dead vary considerably, from over 100 to 1000. In a 10-week period in 1350, 16,000 people in Erfurt died of the plague.
Even in places where no plague-related deaths had yet occurred, Jews were punished. On February 14, 1349, in Strasbourg, a city located at the border between France and Germany (today in France), a horrible catastrophe occurred; it was a precursor of things to come, centuries later. Hundreds of Jews (some historians estimate up to 2,000) were assembled and then corralled to a cemetery, where a wooden stand had been built. They victims were burned to death, those who were not burned were expelled from the area. This atrocity is known as the 'Valentine's Day' Strasbourg Massacre.
Mainz, Germany had a population of 3,000 Jews; all were murdered. In 1350, the Jewish communities of Antwerp and Brussels, Belgium were wiped out. Massacres also occurred in Aragon, Spain, and in Flanders. Basel's Priests tried to protect the Jewish residents, to no avail; 600 Jews, including the local Rabbi, were burned at the stake. In all, hundreds of Jewish communities were obliterated; what usually followed the murders was the acquisition and distribution of former Jewish properties. In addi tion, all debts to Jews were annulled. The plague massacres of Jews were a continuing of violent anti-Semitism that had been in existence and would last for centuries more.
“The European Jewry were no strangers to persecution preceding the Black Death. The Black Death of 1348 led to a more widespread persecution as the European Jewry became the scapegoats for the cause of the plague,”writes historian Catherine M Porter in her article, ‘The Black Death and the persecution of the Jews’. (By Adriha Roychowdhury, New Delhi, Updated May 13, 2020; Black Death: How Jews were blamed for the plague and massacred; indianexpress.com).
The plague massacres and tortures had a long-term effect on Jewish populations in Europe. Large populations of Jews migrated from Western Europe to the east, in particular, Poland. During this period Poland had a more tolerant attitude towards Jews. Later generations of Jews would return to Western Europe. It would take about 400 years for Western Europe to be a hub for Jews again.
Bogdanovka was a concentration camp housing Jews in the Transnistria Governate by the Romanian authorities during the Second World War. Three concentration camps were used near the villages of Bogdanovka, including Domanovka, and Acmecetca. Note that the term Transnistria was used during the Second World War that refers to a part of Ukraine conquered by German and Romanian armed forces in the summer of 1941. There were an estimated 300,000 Jews in the area before the war.
Bogdanovka contained 54,000 inmates by the end of 1941. During this period there were several flare-ups of typhus (an infectious disease caused by bacteria contracted by humans through fleas, lice, and chigger bits) occurred. Fleas and lice were prevalent in concentration camps, given the horrible sanitation and densely packed nature of housing. Naturally, the inmates were blamed and suffered the consequences.
A decision was made by the German adviser to the Romanian administration of the district and the Romanian District Commissioner to kill all the inmates. The brutality began on December 21, carried out by Romanian soldiers and gendarmes, Ukrainian police and civilians from Golta, and local ethnic Germans under the commander of the Ukrainian regular police, Kazachievici.
Thousands of physically challenged and ailing inmates were placed into 2 locked stables, then were doused with kerosene and were set on fire, burning alive the victims therein. Other inmates were forced into a ravine in a nearby forest; they were shot in the neck, a common method of killing during this period.
Other Jewish inmates were forced to dig pits with their bare hands, in the freezing cold, then putting corpses into the pits. Thousands of Jews died of exposure. A brief respite occurred for Christmas, but the murders continued on December 28. By the end of the year, the death toll had reached 40,000.
The memory of the tragedy of Bogdanovka has been somewhat silenced in Belarus, a former Soviet republic located between Poland and Russia, an area where 800,000 Jews perished during the Second World War. Worse yet, in 2007, Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko compared Jews to pigs.
"In school textbooks, the history of the Holocaust is told in several paragraphs ... In encyclopedias and academic literature, the history of the Jews is still suppressed.,” says Belarusian Jewish community leader Yakov Basin. (By Ron Vossler, Fold3.com: Bogdanoka Stories).
But there was some justice. In early 1945, Col. Modest Isopescu, the district commissioner, Vasile Manescu, the military government official in charge of the affected district, and the camp commandants, were put on trial. Initially, the men responsible for the war crimes were sentenced to death, later, their sentences were commuted to life in prison. The other defendants received lengthy sentences.
Most people still believe that the Jewish Holocaust was the large-scale killing of people in extermination camps and that the numbers of people killed elsewhere or in a different manner is minimal. In fact, the brutality of the final solution reached into many homes, ghettos, the streets of towns and cities, synagogues, cemeteries, forests, ravines, in line-ups, and death marches; victims could be shot while standing, kneeling, lying down, or running away. Even babies weren’t spared. Wherever and however the Nazi killing machine could do its dirty work, it did, and overwhelmingly with coldness and brutality.
It was on January 20, 1941, at a conference in Wannsee, a suburb of Berlin, that the master plan was formulated for the complete extermination of European Jewry, but not before much forced Jewish labour was acquired. I sometimes wonder what Adolf Hitler would have done to the Jews of the Middle East and Ethiopia if he had entered and completely conquered those lands, unhindered.
Following the implementation of Operation Barbarosa (the attack-invasion on the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941), and the retreat of Soviet forces from Buczacz, the Jews of the area faced an onslaught of problems. Even before the arrival of German forces into the town, Ukrainian vigilantes murdered Jews who were active participants of the Soviet administration.
Members of the Ukrainian police attacked Jews as part of a mass riot, looted property, and killed. The riot was lead by a Ukrainian school teacher. According to the rioters’ beliefs, the Jews were rebuked for being protagonists of communism and as supporters of Soviet Russia in the persecution suffered by Ukrainians. What’s more shocking is that many of the perpetrators and victims were neighbours and friends prior to the sudden turnaround. In the 1860s the Jews were granted citizenship under the Austro-Hungarian constitution, but by the beginning of the First World War trouble and nationalism began to tear off the normal ties among the ethnic groups.
There was much more violence to come, following the arrival of German troops. The Einsatz called up local anti Semites to aid in the round-ups, to brutalize and murder the Jews of Buczacz and nearby communities.
“The Einsatz unit would enter a village or town and order the prominent Jewish citizens to call together all Jews for the purpose of "resettlement." They were requested to hand over their valuables and shortly before execution to surrender their outer clothing. They were transported to the place of execution, usually an anti-tank ditch, in trucks always only as many as could be executed immediately. In this way it was attempted to keep the span of time from the moment in which the victims knew what was about to happen to them until the time of their actual execution as short as possible.” (By Martin Rudner, 1993; THE HOLOCAUST IN BUCZACZ).
“The normalization of murder, the removal of Jews as part of a day’s work, as entertainment, as background noise to drinking bouts or amorous relationships, along with puzzlement at the Jews’ conduct, mixed with anger at making it so easy to kill them {in the overall picture of Operation Barbarosa, many of the other victims included Russians, Poles, other Slavs, Roma and Sinti; so-called sub-human inferiors} they were part and parcel of the German experience of genocide, rarely reflected in post-war ruminations, let-alone historiography. (By Jonathan Steinbers, January 20, 2018; Massacre of the Innocents).
Jews were living in Ejszyszki from the mid-18th century. By the mid-1920s there were approximately 2,800 Jews residing in the town, comprising over two-thirds of the residents. Jews were successful in agricultural dealings, small business, and trade. A powerful Zionist movement, along with Jewish culture, and educational activities were present therein. This success lasted until 1939.
On September 17, 1939, owing to the Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact (in reality, it was the Hitler-Stalin Pact, 2 tyrants who dictated all major agreements in this arena), Enszyszki was incorporated into Lithuania. In June of the following year, Lithuania was incorporated into the Soviet Union. Hence, private property, much of it owned by Jews, was nationalized. Furthermore, Jewish political, educational, and cultural activities were outlawed.
Things took a drastic turn for the worse, on June 23, 1941, with the German occupation of Ejszyszki. Hundreds of Jewish men were sent to forced labour (brutalized slavery), a place to be shamed, disgraced, and tortured.
On September 24, 1941, the remaining Jews of Ejszyszki, in addition to Jews from Olkieniki, Lejpuny, Desznia, and Salo were shot in the Jewish cemetery of Ejszyszki. The Red Army liberated Ejszyszki on July 13, 1944.
Fastov, a city in the Ukraine, was founded in the late 14th Century. In 1919, the Jewish community suffered immensely from several pogroms. The most savage of which were the workings of the Deniken Volunteer Army, more than 1,000 Jews were murdered. The first Deniken pogrom took place on August 25, 1919. The savage riots started as soon as Deniken’s forces entered the city. Some of the volunteers were Cossacks. These men forcefully entered Jewish homes under the catchphrase:
“Kike, get us money or we are going to hang you!” (Kniga pogromov. Sbornik documentov (Book of pogroms. Pogroms in Ukraine, Belorussia and European part of Russia during the civil war of 1918-1922. Collection of documents); pp. 241–255 (in Russian). Moscow, 2007).
For several days hoodlums attacked and robbed many Jews, killing and sexually assaulting many. Some individuals and families invited officers or commanders to live in their homes, and gave them up to 10,000 rubles per night, a large sum for the day. These homes were off limits to Cossacks. The violence ended when Deniken’s volunteers left the city, retreating from the Bolsheviks.
Deniken’s Volunteer Army retook Fastov, entering the city on September 8, 1919. Another, more brutal pogrom began the following day. For nearly a week, hoodlums robbed and brutally slaughtered Jewish residents. When all was done, the attackers had acquired a large sum of money. Many families were burned alive in their own homes. Many who sought protection in synagogues were gunned down, but the attackers preferred killing babies and children with bayonets or sabres.
Girls as young as 8, and adults, were gang-raped in front of terrified, helpless family members. Attempted escape from the area was punishable by execution in nearby ravines. Other escapees made it to the train, posing as Russians. Those who were caught were removed from the train and shot. The arrival of the military authorities put an end to the pogrom.
The final result was catastrophic. The Jewish quarter of Fastov was reduced to a state of utter decay. Fastov market was stripped of goods and burned down, dead men, women, and children were scattered throughout the streets. In the opinion of Emma Goldman, as many as 4,000 people died in the pogrom. Many others were maimed, wounded, and mentally traumatized.
Emma Goldman (June 27, 1869 May 14, 1940), a native Lithuanian-born in Kovno, Russian Governate, Russian Empire, was a renowned anarchist, political activist and writer. She immigrated to the United States in 1885, and was deported back to the Soviet Union in 1919. She wrote, spoke, and travelled for the remainder of her life.
Goldman saw the devastation of Fastov during a trip while touring Russia from 1919 to 1921.
“That Town [Fastov], once prosperous, was now impoverished and reduced to less than one third of its former population. Almost all activity was at a stand-still. We found the market place, in the centre of the town, a most insignificant affair, consisting of a few stalls having small supplies of white flour, sugar, and butter. There were more women about than men and I was especially struck by the strange expression in their eyes. They did not look you full in the face; they stared past you with a dumb, hunted animal expression…” (Goldman, Emma. My disillusionment in Russia { initially printed in 1923}. Dover Publications, 2003).
Glukhov is a town located in Sumy region of Ukraine, its origin is at least 1,000 years. In the second half of the 19th Century Glukhov was a sprouting, seemingly quiet town of roughly 10,000 inhabitants, including Ukrainians, Russians, and Jews in similar proportion. For the time being, the town was open-minded. Several churches and a synagogue were located next to another. The calm and ease between the ethnic groups shattered in the early 20th Century. The Russian Revolution of 1905 brought about a wave of pogroms in regions of the Russian Empire. Some of the hostility was directed by political and social turmoil that spread through vast areas. The First World War resulted in increased hardship, deprivation, and anger resulting in food riots. Jews were blamed, becoming targets of anti-Semitism and violence.
Pogroms became more frequent, when hoodlums and retreating or deserting Red Army soldiers passed through Glukhov. On March 15, 1918, “Renaissance” newspaper wrote:
“GLUKHOV. Peasants from the nearby villages together with gangs of Red soldiers brought “Massacre of St. Bartholomew Day” to Glukhov. Up to 500 of the local intelligentsia were killed, mostly Jews. Property were looted, many houses on the main streets were bombed. Murders were committed with unusual cruelty; children were killed in the eyes of the parents. No one family is without victims ...” (My Travel Mosaic: Remember Glukhov).
Jews have lived in Ilyintcy, Ukraine since the second half of the 18th Century. In 1897, there were approximately 5,000 Jews in the town. The Jews suffered immensely from the turmoil of the revolutionary years and civil war in Russia. In early Fall of 1920, Russian Army troops from Semyon Budyonnyi’s red cavalry attacked Ilyintcy 3 times, plundering 40 houses.
During the initial years of Soviet rule the occupational makeup of Jews changed dramatically. The Soviet social blueprint forced many Jews, particularly those who were employed in commerce, to search for new occupations. Some Jews found employment in the local sugar factory and in agriculture.
In 1939, Ilyintcy had about 2,300 Jewish residents, comprising just under two-thirds of the town’s population. Following the German Army’s invasion of the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941, a number of Ilyintcy’s Jews fled eastward into the Soviet interior.
German military occupation of Ilyantcy began in August 1941. Jewish homes were plundered by German soldiers and local Ukrainians. Several weeks later, a four-member Judenrat (Jewish Council) headed by Gersh Usyatinskiy, was formed. It was despised by local Jews owing to the belief that its members were corrupt. A Judenrat is a council representing a Jewish community, particularly in German-occupied territory during the Second World War.
In August 1941, Ilyintcy Jews were forced to enter a ghetto established in the most poverty-stricken section of the town near the river Sob. They were forced to wear white arm bands with a Star of David. The ghetto residents were shamed and disgraced, physically assaulted, robbed of their belongings, and forced to perform manual labour. Many females, young and old were raped. Ghetto residents had to appear every morning for roll call executed by Germans and local auxiliary policemen. In early November 1941 around 40 Jewish men were taken to the outskirts of Ilyintcy and shot; several more massacres were committed the following year.
In late Fall of 1941 able-bodied Jews were sent to a state farm near Balakhovka, therein, a labour camp was established. Some Jews went into hiding, but if they were discovered, punishment was brutal. On December 15, 1942 Germans burned down a house that was used as a hiding place; there were people inside the house. The murders did not abate until the first half of 1943. Today there is a tiny Jewish presence in Ilyintcy.
The Iasi Pogroms were a series of pogroms committed by government forces commanded by Marshal Ion Antonescu (June, 1882 June 1, 1946), a Romanian soldier and authoritarian Prime Minister, who ruled Romania from 1940 to 1944.
In Iasi, Romania the targetting of its Jewish community began on June 29 to July 6, 1941. At the time, Jews had a 400 year history in the town, but this didn’t make any difference. Nearly 13,270 Iasi Jews , or roughly one-third of the Jewish inhabitants, were initially slaughtered in this pogrom, many were deported.
For months, unproven rumours promulgated by the Romanian authorities had been circulating accusing the Jewish inhabitants of aiding the Soviets in bombing Iasi.
The lies were accepted by many non-Jews. From 1940 until 1944, Romania was an ally of the Nazis. Iasi’s inhabitants knew what was going to happen. The Romanian government did not grant Jews citizenship, even though the government was obliged to do so under the terms of the 1919 Versailles Conference.
“Christians protected themselves from the inevitable violence by displaying signs on their homes: ‘Here live Christians: NOT Jydani!’(Article referenced from the Shabbat Shalom site via Rabbi Dr. Eliyahu Safran, July 2, 2011; The Iasi Pogrom: aish.com).
Iasi was located near the Soviet border and had a large Jewish population, was considered troublesome, a fifth column of sorts by Marshal Ion Antonescu. In mid-June 1941 Antonescu ordered:
"All the Judeo-Communist coffee shops in Moldavia be closed down, all kikes, Communist agents and sympathizers be identified by region..." (Ioanid, Radu "The Holocaust in Romania: The Iasi Pogrom of June 1941" pages 119-148 from Contemporary European History, Volume 2, Issue # 2, July 1993 page 122).
In June of 1941, Antonescu signed an order that all Jews between the ages of 18 and 60 residing between the Siret and Pruth Rivers be deported to the concentration camp in Targu Jiu, southern Romania. As was the case with numerous other deportations during the Second World War, many deportees did not survive the trip to the camps. It was meant to be that way. In addition to their pre-existing problems, deportees taken by train were usually stuffed in carts like sardines packed in a can, with minimal breathing holes, perhaps just one, one bucket for relieving oneself, to be shared by all occupants, no food