MOROCZNA
[End Page 1430] Pre-1939: Moroczna, village, województwo poleskie, Poland; 1939–1941: Morochnoe, Rovno oblast’, Ukrainian SSR; 1941–1944: Morotschnoe, Rayon center, Gebiet Kamen Kaschirsk, Generalkommissariat Wolhynien und Podolien; post-1991: Morochne, Zarechnoe raion, Rivne oblast’, Ukraine
Moroczna is located about 32 kilometers (20 miles) south-southwest of Pińsk. On the eve of the German invasion of June 1941, in what was then the Morochnoe raion, there lived around 2,000 Jews. Many of these Jews resided in the village of Serniki (987 people, according to the 1921 census) and in the village of Pohost-Zarzeczny (264 people, according to the same census).
German forces first passed through the village at the start of July 1941, but authority in the region was initially seized by local Ukrainians. In August 1941, a German military administration ran the settlement. In September 1941, authority was transferred to a German civilian administration. Moroczna became a Rayon center in Gebiet Kamen Kaschirsk, which in turn became part of the Generalkommissariat Wolhynien und Podolien. Kameradschaftsführer Fritz Michaelis was named Gebietskommissar in Kamień Koszyrski.1
A local Ukrainian administration was formed in the village, along with a Ukrainian auxiliary police squad, which served under the German Gendarmerie.
In the summer and fall of 1941, a series of anti-Jewish measures were implemented in Moroczna: Jews were ordered to wear distinguishing marks in the shape of the Star of David (later a yellow circle). They were compelled to perform forced labor. They were not permitted to leave the boundaries of the settlement without permission. Finally, the Ukrainian police robbed and beat them more or less at will.
In early 1942, a ghetto was created into which the Jews of Moroczna and some of the surrounding villages were forcibly resettled. According to the Soviet Extraordinary State Commission (ChGK), the ghetto was liquidated in August or September 1942, when a unit of the Security Police and SD from Brześć shot 542 Jews in the village (121 men, 147 women, 274 children) with the help of the German Gendarmerie and Ukrainian police.2 At around the same time, 140 Jews were killed in the village of Pohost-Zarzeczny, where, according to Pinkas ha-kehilot, an open ghetto also existed,3 and the ghetto in the village of Serniki was liquidated a few weeks later.
According to another source, however, Jews brought in from Moroczna were among some 1,600 to 1,700 Jews who were murdered by the Security Police and SD from Brześć in mid-August 1942 during an Aktion conducted against the ghetto in Lubieszów.4 Some corroboration for this version of events is given by a report of the Security Police based in Równe that a verbal communication had been received from the Security Police outpost in Brześć that 3,399 Jews in Gebiet Kamen Kaschirsk had been given “special treatment” (Sonderbehandlung).5
SOURCES
Documents and testimonies regarding the annihilation of the Jews of Moroczna can be found in the following archives: BA-L (B 162/6338); DARO; GARF (7021-71-121); and IPN.
NOTES
1. BA-BL, BDC, SSHO 2432, Organisationsplan der besetzten Ostgebiete nach dem Stand vom 10. März 1942, hg. vom Chef der Ordnungspolizei, Berlin, March 13, 1942.
2. GARF, 7021-71-121, p. 7.
3. Ibid.; Shmuel Spector, ed., Pinkas ha-kehilot. Encyclopaedia of Jewish Communities: Poland, vol. 5, Volhynia and Polesie (Jerusalem: Yad Vashem, 1990), p. 275.
4. BA-L, B 162/6338, p. 350; see also GARF, 7021-55-11, p. 111, which dates the Aktion in Lubieszów on August 15, 1942.
5. IPN, GKŚZpNP Zbior Zespolow Szczatkowych Jednostek SS i Policji, Sygn. 77, report dated August 17, 1942.
