Accomplices to Extermination: Municipal Government and the Holocaust in Kharkiv, 1941–1942

During the Germans’ census of December 1941, local officials in Kharkiv played a crucial role in identifying Jews, evicting them from their apartments, and forcing them into a temporary ghetto in the barracks of the Kharkiv Machine-Tool Factory and the Kharkiv Tractor Factory. The tenth district council was particularly closely involved in ghettoization, and formed a security team to help German soldiers prevent escapes. Employees of that council, along with former ghetto guards, looted the possessions of the Jews after the Germans and, with other indigenous accomplices, helped murder them and dispose of the bodies. The behavior of these local actors sheds new light on the “Ordinary Men” debate.