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

Pre-1939: Poryck, town, województwo wołyńskie, Poland; 1939–1941: Pavlovka, raion center, Volyn’ oblast’, Ukrainian SSR; 1941–1944: Porizk, Rayon center, Gebiet Wladimir-Wolynsk, Generalkommissariat Wolhynien und Podolien; post-1991: Pavlivka, Volyn’ oblast’, Ukraine

Poryck is located on the Luga River, 29 kilometers (18 miles) south-southeast of Włodzimierz Wołyński. In 1921, there were 1,205 Jews living there. By mid-1941, allowing for an annual increase of 9 to 10 persons per 1,000, there would have been about 1,500 Jews in Poryck and about 1,000 more living in the villages of the Pavlovka raion.¹

Forces of the German 6th Army occupied Poryck on June 23, 1941. At first, in July and August 1941, a German military commandant’s office (Ortskommandantur) ran the affairs of the town. Authority was transferred to a German civil administration in September 1941. Poryck became a Rayon center in Gebiet Wladimir-Wolynsk, where Nachwuchsführer Wilhelm Westerheide was the Gebietskommissar from late 1941.² The leader of the Gendarmerie (SS- und Polizei-Gebietsführer) from July 1942 was Leutnant der Gendarmerie Grigat. He was in command of 18 Gendarmerie officials spread over several Rayons, including Poryck. Several German Gendarmes and a local Ukrainian police unit (consisting of a few dozen members) were stationed in the town. [End Page 1447]

At the beginning of September 1941, the first anti-Jewish Aktion was carried out in Poryck. German forces arrested about 100 Jewish men and then shot them.³

In the summer and fall of 1941, German forces implemented a series of anti-Jewish measures in Poryck. A curfew was imposed on the Jews at night, and they were ordered to wear distinctive markings, initially armbands bearing the Star of David, then later a yellow circle sewn onto their chests. They were called on to perform heavy forced labor, prohibited from leaving the limits of the village, and subjected to systematic beatings by the Ukrainian police. The Germans also established a Jewish Council (Judenrat) to transmit their orders to the Jewish population. From the summer of 1941 and into 1942, the German authorities imposed a series of “contributions” on the Jewish population, compelling them to surrender all valuables and fur clothing.

In the winter of 1941–1942 or the spring of 1942, the Germans established some form of ghetto in Poryck (possibly an “open ghetto”), as they resettled the Jews from the surrounding villages into the town. This resulted in considerable overcrowding and the spread of disease, including cases of typhus. A hospital existed inside the Jewish quarter of Poryck to deal with those who fell sick.

On September 1, 1942, Ukrainian local police, supervised by the German Gendarmerie, encircled the Jewish houses early in the morning. Then the Ukrainians burst in, driving out the Jews, shooting immediately the elderly and those too sick to walk, including all the occupants of the hospital. The remaining Jews were escorted to a farm surrounded with barbed wire, about 3 kilometers (1.9 miles) outside the town. The Ukrainian militiamen beat them and stabbed them with bayonets on the way, killing anyone who fell down wounded, such that the route was littered with corpses. At the farm the Jews were held for three days in the open air without food or drink and were brutally beaten and humiliated by the Ukrainian guards, who also robbed them of any remaining valuables. About 300 Jews, including many babies, died under these conditions or were shot during the course of these humiliations. Then the Ukrainian police chief, Pasalski, gave the order for the remaining Jews to be taken to the pits that had been prepared. Pasalski and his assistant Mojch then shot the Jews personally, after the small children had been bayoneted and thrown into the grave first. Ukrainians had gathered from the surrounding villages in search of loot and assisted the German forces by filling in the graves. One Ukrainian woman even asked for the pretty woolen dress that one of the Jewish victims was wearing as she waited to be shot.⁴

The Aktion was concluded on September 5, 1942, and in total at least 1,800 Jews from Poryck and the surrounding Rayon were murdered.⁵ About 100 Jews had fled from Poryck at the start of the Aktion, but most were soon recaptured and brought back into the town. There the Ukrainian police murdered them in a most brutal way, cutting off their hands or other limbs and then burning them alive in the remaining Jewish houses.⁶ This report appears to be corroborated in the diary of Michael Diment, who records an encounter with another Jewish survivor, Yankel, who had briefly hidden in the burned-out homes in Poryck after the mass killing there.⁷ Sonie Rubinsztejn, who fled successfully at the last moment before the mass shooting, found refuge with a local priest whom she knew near Łokacze, who gave her shelter and trained her to pass as a Christian.⁸ The Red Army liberated Poryck on July 18, 1944.