The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos, 1933-1945

Pre-1939: Drohobycz, city, powiat center, Lwów województwo, Poland; 1939–1941: Drogobych, raion and oblast’ center, Ukrainian SSR; 1941–1944: Drogobytsch, Kreis center, Distrikt Galizien, Generalgouvernement; post-1991: Drohobych, raion, center, L’viv oblast’, Ukraine

Drohobycz is located 69 kilometers (43 miles) south-southwest of Lwów. According to the census of December 9, 1931, 12,931 Jews were living in Drohobycz.

German troops occupied Drohobycz on June 30, 1941. Beginning in July, a military commandant’s office (Feldkommandantur 676) governed the city. On August 1, authority was transferred to a German civil administration. The city became the administrative center of Kreis Drohobycz. From August 1941 until June 1942, the Kreishauptmann was SS-Sturmbannführer Eduard Jedamzik, who was succeeded by Hermann Görgens. A Stadtkommissar headed the German civil administration in the city of Drohobycz. Vetterman originally held that position; Wilhelm Schübler replaced him at the end of February 1942. The Stadtkommissar reported to the Kreishauptmann in Drohobycz. In addition to the Stadtkommissar’s department, beginning in November 1941, a 20-man municipal police unit (Schutzpolizei-Dienstabteilung) from Vienna was permanently located in the city. Hauptmann Rudolf Hötzl commanded this unit; his deputy was Oberleutnant Ferdinand Holzschuh. The Ukrainian Auxiliary Police (Ukrainische Hilfspolizei) was subordinated to the municipal police; by the summer of 1943 it was 150 men strong. Like their Austrian counterparts, the Ukrainian police took an active role in all the anti-Jewish Aktions.

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Portrait of thirteen-year-old Bernard Mayer taken in Drohobycz, November 1941.

USHMM WS #14244, COURTESY OF BERNARD MAYER

Beginning on July 8, 1941, an SD detachment (SD-Einsatztrupp) was among the punitive units stationed in Drohobycz. It was subordinated to a special-purpose Security Police task force (Einsatzgruppe z.b.V.). SS-Hauptsturmführer Nikolaus Tolle commanded the SD detachment in the city; his deputy was SS-Untersturmführer Walter Kutschmann (who died in 1985 in Argentina).

In September 1941, the German authorities established a Grenzpolizeikommissariat (Border Police Office, GPK) at the base of the SD detachment in Drohobycz. SS-Sturmbannführer Franz Wenzel commanded the GPK from October 1941 to May 1942; SS-Sturmbannführer Hans Block succeeded him. Beginning in the fall of 1942, Block’s deputy, SS-Untersturmführer Lucas Heckl, was in charge of the Criminal Police (Kripo). In June 1942, the Germans also established an outpost of the Security Police (Sipo-Aussendienststelle) in Drohobycz, under the command of SS-Hauptsturmführer Benno Paulischkies. [End Page 774]

On July 1 and 2, immediately after the occupation of the city by German troops, antisemitic sentiments among Ukrainian and Polish inhabitants set off an impromptu pogrom in which German soldiers also participated; 47 Jews were killed.¹ At least two executions of Jews took place soon after the arrival in the city of the SD-Einsatztrupp. On July 12, that unit murdered 23 Jews, including two women, in the woods near the city, and on July 22, 20 more Jews were killed.²

In the second half of July 1941, the German military authorities in Drohobycz required Jews to wear white armbands bearing the Star of David. The Germans confiscated a large number of Jewish possessions, especially valuables. The occupying authorities also deprived the Jews of many basic rights. To assist them with the implementation of the new restrictions, the German authorities established a Jewish Council (Judenrat). The newly created Jewish Police (Jüdischer Ordnungsdienst) served the council. Among the tasks of the Jewish Police was filling the required quota of Jewish workers for the labor office (Arbeitsamt).³

Jewish workers who had permanent jobs, for example, with the city administration, other German offices, or private firms, were supposed to receive regular wages that were 80 percent of those paid to non-Jews performing the same task, as payment was vital if their ability to work was to be maintained.⁴ They were also registered for social security payments, to be deducted from their wages. In addition, there was the daily quota of casual laborers (Hilfsarbeiter), supplied by the Jewish Council. These men were not paid directly, but their meager pay was supposed to be remitted entirely to the Jewish Council, which then issued larger rations to these workers’ families. Unfortunately, many offices and companies paid these “wages” to the Jewish Council very late or not at all, such that payments were some 20,000 złoty in arrears by the end of October 1941.⁵ In July 1942, the Jewish Council also imposed a tax on those Jews earning wages directly, requesting their employers to deduct 10 percent and remit it to the Jewish Council to help pay for welfare services.

The Germans carried out their first Aktion in Drohobycz on November 22, 1941. From a list provided by the Jewish Council, on that day the Security Police, with the help of the Schutzpolizei and Ukrainian policemen, seized and executed some 400 Jews, who were either sick or otherwise unfit for labor.⁶ After that massacre, according to data for February 1942, 12,781 Jews remained in Drohobycz.⁷ By that count, the number of Jews in the city had dropped by more than 1,000 in the first seven months of the occupation.

The first so-called deportation Aktion was carried out in Drohobycz on March 25, 1942. In that operation, some 1,000 “poor” Jews were seized, transported, and then murdered in the Bełżec extermination camp.⁸ The Jewish Council compiled the list of those destined for deportation. After that Aktion, some 11,400 Jews still remained in Drohobycz in May 1942.⁹

The Germans carried out a second deportation Aktion on August 7 and 8, 1942. Before it began, they gathered in the city Jews from the villages of Medenica, Stebnik, and Truskawiec. In the course of this Aktion, in which the German, Austrian, Ukrainian, and Jewish policemen participated, about 100 Jews were killed on the spot, and some 4,000 Jews were deported to Bełżec.¹⁰

Although it appears that plans existed for the creation of a Jewish residential area in Drohobycz from at least the beginning of 1942, it was reported in March 1942 that no closed (or consolidated) residential area (geschlossener Wohnbezirk) for the Jews had yet been established.¹¹ From October 1941, Jews were forbidden to leave the city, on pain of death, and they were also prohibited from using certain streets in the city center. However, the formal creation of a ghetto was not implemented until the end of September 1942.¹² According to the yizkor book, the Jews were given until October 1, 1942, to move into the ghetto and could take with them only up to 50 kilograms (110 pounds) of possessions. The ghetto was organized on the following streets: Zuzki, Kuvolska, Gabarska, Krashevski, Ribia, Skutnizki, and part of Sienkiewicz. A large number of Jews were also brought into Drohobycz from the surrounding area at this time. About 100 Jews died during the operation, either shot or from hunger and exhaustion. Two or three families had to share a small room. Jews were forbidden to leave the ghetto. However, many Jews disobeyed this order to go in search of food to ward off starvation.¹³ The order issued by the Higher SS and Police Leader (HSSPF), SS-Obergruppenführer Friedrich Wilhelm Krüger, on November 10, 1942, confirmed retrospectively the establishment of the ghetto in Drohobycz.¹⁴

A third Aktion on October 23 and 24, 1942, led to the deportation of another 1,179 Jews.¹⁵ An Aktion on November 30 sent about 1,000 more Jews to Bełżec.¹⁶ Rounding up the Jews took about two weeks, in the course of which Jewish Police, on the orders of the Gestapo, were obliged to deliver 100 victims daily to an assembly point (a former synagogue). In several cases, Jewish policemen reportedly turned over their own mothers.¹⁷

In the interval between the third and fourth Aktions, an event took place in Drohobycz that came to be known as “Wild Thursday.” In retaliation for the wounding of SS-Oberscharführer Karl Hübner by a Jewish pharmacist, Reiner, on November 19, 1942, 230 Jews were seized on the streets and killed. Among those slaughtered was the well-known writer and artist Bruno Schulz, who was shot on the street by SS-Oberscharführer Karl Günther.¹⁸

About 3,000 Jews still remained in Drohobycz at the beginning of December 1942. Some 1,500 were in the ghetto, and about the same number were in the forced labor camp of the Karpathen-Öl AG and several other labor camps. At the end of December 1942, the German civil administration ordered a reorganization of the Jewish Council. At this time, many of the Jews in the ghetto were in possession of official passes (Passierscheine) issued by the German police, permitting them to go unhindered to their places of work outside the ghetto. By March 1943, however, this was still possible only when accompanied by a non-Jewish escort who had been issued the pass on the Jew’s behalf. At the end of March 1943, the Jewish Council was still concerned about obtaining a Passierschein that would [End Page 775] remain valid for some time for one of its employees who left the ghetto every day to collect the post.¹⁹

The next Aktion took place on February 15, 1943, in the ghetto. Some 500 Jews were seized and murdered.²⁰ The final liquidation of the ghetto began on May 21, 1943. On that day the Germans murdered the members of the Jewish Council, as well as about 500 Jews from the Rawa Ruska region. On June 6, 1943, the Germans killed the Jewish policemen. However, the search for Jews hiding in bunkers continued for several weeks. On July 15, 1943, the Germans put up signs declaring that Drohobycz was officially cleansed of Jews (judenrein).²¹

After the liquidation of the ghetto, there remained in Drohobycz the labor camp at the petroleum extraction company, Karpathen-Öl AG, and several other work crews, such as that at the Klinker cement factory (600 workers), including various kinds of craftsmen and gardeners. SS-Obersturmführer Friedrich Hildebrand was in charge of the labor camp from July 1943 until July 1944. The former head of the camp, SS-Unterscharführer Erich Minkus, was removed from this position for drunkenness but remained as a subordinate of Hildebrand. By order of the SS- und Polizeiführer (SSPF) for Distrikt Galizien, as early as June 12, 1943, local German authorities removed some 170 women and children from the labor detachments and murdered them. On August 25, 1943, the SSPF ordered the liquidation of the labor detachment at the cement factory. At Karpathen-Öl AG, the German authorities selected between 80 and 100 individuals to continue working for the company; the rest were killed; 40 Jews who had worked previously at Karpathen-Öl were slaughtered with them.²² The labor camp crew at the petroleum company was disbanded on April 14, 1944. The German authorities then took 489 Jews, together with 533 Jews from Borysław, to the Krakau-Plaszow concentration camp in Poland.²³

When Soviet troops liberated Drohobycz in August 1944, some 400 Jews emerged from hiding. A number of them had been saved through the efforts of non-Jews—Ukrainians and Poles. Maria Strutinskaia, a schoolteacher, and her sister saved 13 Jews, including 5 children.²⁴ Even some German officials were known to have concealed Jews. In Drohobycz, for example, the head of the Arbeitsamt hid labor crews in his own house in 1943.²⁵

On May 6, 1953, a court in Bremen sentenced former SS-Obersturmführer Friedrich Hildebrand to eight years in prison. In his capacity as commander of the Jewish forced labor camp in Drohobycz, he had taken part in killing Jews. On May 12, 1967, also in Bremen, the court sentenced Hildebrand to life imprisonment for crimes in other locations and camps.

In Vienna, on March 18, 1959, a court issued a life sentence to former SS-Hauptscharführer Josef Gabriel. As a member of the German Security Police in Drohobycz in 1942 and 1943, Gabriel took part in the persecution and extermination of Jews in the city; he was released from prison in 1963. On March 16, 1962, a court in Stuttgart sentenced former SS-Hauptscharführer Felix Landau to life in prison. As a member of the Security Police in Drohobycz, Landau had taken an active role in the murder of Jews. A court in Munich sentenced former SS-Rottenführer Hans Sobotta to life imprisonment on December 2, 1971, for taking part in killing inmates of the Jewish forced labor camp in Drohobycz in 1942–1943.

In the early 1990s, survivors erected a memorial to the Jewish victims in the Bronnitsky Wood on the outskirts of Drohobycz.