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

Pre-1939: Poczajów (Yiddish: Potchayev), town, województwo wołyńskie, Poland; 1939–1941: Pochaev, Tarnopol’ oblast’, Ukrainian SSR; 1941–1944: Potschajew, Rayon center, Gebiet Kremenez, Generalkommissariat Wolhynien und Podolien; post-1991: Pochaiv, Ternopil oblast’, Ukraine

Poczajów is located 101 kilometers (63 miles) north of Tarnopol’. According to the 1921 census, 1,083 Jews lived in the town. By mid-1941, assuming a natural growth of 0.9 percent [End Page 1444] per decade, there were probably about 1,300 Jews in Poczajów. After the beginning of the war, in late June 1941, several dozen Jewish men were drafted into the Red Army, and a number of others were able to evacuate to the east, so that just over 1,000 Jews came under German occupation in the town.

The Germans occupied Poczajów on June 30, 1941. During July and August, a German military administration governed the town, and in September 1941, authority was transferred to a civil administration. Poczajów was a Rayon center in Gebiet Kremenez, within Generalkommissariat Wolhynien und Podolien. The Kremenez Gebietskommissar was Regierungsrat Müller.¹ A Ukrainian local administration and police were created in Poczajów. The Ukrainian police were subordinated to the German Gendarmerie post in the town, which was manned by several German Gendarmes.

Soon after the establishment of the German administration, three Jews from Poczajów went to the Gebiet center in Krzemieniec on behalf of the Poczajów Jewish community. Here they received instructions to create a Judenrat consisting of 12 members and a Jewish police force of 30 people in Poczajów.²

The first German repressive measures were directed against members of the Communist youth organization, whom they rounded up, tortured, and shot. Then on July 8, 1941, the Ukrainian police and a few Germans collected 106 Jews and imprisoned them in the cellar of the police station. After being beaten, the victims were taken out at night and shot in a nearby forest.³

In the summer and fall of 1941, a succession of anti-Jewish measures were implemented in Poczajów: Jews were required to wear distinctive symbols (a Star of David), they were compelled to engage in forced labor, they were forbidden to leave the village, and they were subjected to systematic robberies and beatings by the Ukrainian police. In addition, an order was issued to establish a brothel for the Germans, employing 20 girls aged 18 to 20. Fathers and mothers bribed the authorities to keep their daughters from being taken. On another occasion, 10 alleged young Communists were arrested, and a ransom of 50,000 Reichsmark (RM) was demanded from the Jewish community. When the money was paid, however, it was discovered that the 10 victims had already been shot.⁴

In January 1942, a ghetto was established in the town, which contained approximately 1,000 Jews.⁵ The ghetto was surrounded by a 2-meter-high (6.6-feet-high) wooden fence with barbed wire on top. The Jews were compelled to erect the fence themselves. Inside the ghetto, conditions were very overcrowded, and there was a severe shortage of water. Jews were permitted to get water from the well outside the ghetto only during a two-hour period each day. Some Jews paid bribes to get permission to use horses for the collection of water.

As Jews no longer had access to the mills, inside the ghetto people used stones to make flour from wheat. At the beginning, residents of the ghetto received 150 grams (5.3 ounces) of bread per day. Subsequently, for two months the ration was reduced to 120 grams (4.2 ounces) per day, and finally it was abolished altogether. To prevent Jews from smuggling food into the ghetto, there were Ukrainian guards on the outside of the ghetto and Jewish Police on the inside. Sometimes the Jewish Police bribed the Ukrainian guard to allow people to smuggle in food. About 200 or 300 men performed forced labor daily, usually working on road construction or cleaning up vacated Jewish houses. Work outside the ghetto presented an opportunity to find food or firewood. Nothing could be bought for money. However, despite strict regulations to the contrary, Jews were able to barter food from the peasants in exchange for clothing or other items.

On one occasion, 40 people who were working near a village paid off the guard to let them go to the village to forage for food. In the village, Ukrainian policemen caught them and took them to the German civil administration. The German official then selected 19 of the youn gest people and ordered the Judenrat to dig a grave in which the victims were buried alive.

After the Germans denied the ghetto further bread rations, the Jews formed a committee that collected money from those who still had some left and set up a soup kitchen. People waited daily outside the canteen in long lines for a bowl of soup. In this way the ghetto inmates were able to ameliorate the effects of starvation.⁶

At the beginning of August 1942, 200 Ukrainian policemen arrived in Poczajów and stayed for several days. On Saturday, when everyone had returned from work, they sealed off the ghetto. When the Judenrat asked why nobody was allowed to leave, they were told that it was a punishment for smuggling food into the ghetto.

On the following Tuesday, two vehicles containing 30 men under the command of the Security Police (Sipo) and SD arrived. The head of the Sipo ordered the Judenrat and Jewish Police to come to the gate of the ghetto. He asked the Judenrat how many Jews were in the ghetto. The Judenrat and Jewish Police then received instructions to gather all the Jews at the ghetto gate. Not all Jews came voluntarily, however, and members of the German and Ukrainian police drove people out of their homes, beating and killing those who refused to come along.

At the ghetto gate, the men and women were separated, and the sick were loaded onto wagons. The people were then escorted through the fields to a grave that had been prepared in advance. Here they had to undress. Then the Germans lined them up in groups and shot them into the grave. Finally, a few grenades were thrown in to finish off any people who were only wounded.⁷

According to internal German documentation, the ghetto was liquidated on August 12, 1942,⁸ when a squad of the SD, with the assistance of the German Gendarmerie and Ukrainian police, shot 794 people (182 men, 374 women, and 238 children).⁹ About 30 Jewish craftsmen were kept alive for various tasks. Once they had cleaned out the ghetto, they were made to dig their own graves and were also shot. Some of the Jews hid and were able to escape the shootings on August 12. The German Gendarmerie and Ukrainian police hunted for these people and shot any Jews they found at the Jewish cemetery. Only a few young Jews managed to survive until the arrival of the Red Army. [End Page 1445]