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

Pre-1939: Rafałówka, town, województwo poleskie, Poland; 1939–1941: Rafalovka, Volyn’ oblast’, Ukrainian SSR; 1941–1944: Rafalowka, Rayon center, Gebiet Sarny, Generalkommissariat Wolhynien und Podolien; post-1991: Rafalivka, Rivne oblast’, Ukraine

Rafałówka is located about 40 kilometers (25 miles) west of Sarny. According to the 1921 census, 556 Jews lived in the town: 224 people resided in Nowa Rafałówka (the new part of the town) and 332 people in Wielka Rafałówka (the large part). The two parts were about 12 kilometers (7.5 miles) apart. Based on an average natural growth rate of 9 persons per 1,000 per year, it is estimated that in 1941 about 660 Jews would have been living in Rafałówka at the time of the German invasion.

Following the German invasion of Poland on September 1, 1939, many Jewish refugees from western Poland arrived in Rafałówka. After the Soviets occupied the area in mid-September, private enterprise was abolished. After war broke out on June 22, 1941, the Soviets did not allow people to cross the former 1939 border of the USSR. However, as the Soviet forces began their withdrawal on July 4, a number of Jews managed to escape to the east. Most of these people survived the war.

Units of the German 6th Army did not occupy Rafałówka until mid-July 1941, several days after the Soviet authorities had left. In the interregnum, a Ukrainian authority and local militia took charge. In these days, robbery, abuse, and occasional murders of Jewish townspeople were widespread. When representatives of the Jewish community sought protection, the response was scornful and negative. During the remainder of July and August 1941, a German military administration controlled the area. In September 1941, a German civil administration took charge of local affairs. The town of Rafałówka was incorporated into Gebiet Sarny, and Kameradschaftsführer Huala was appointed as the Gebietskommissar. In Rafałówka, a police station comprising several German Gendarmes was established, which also supervised the local Ukrainian auxiliary police, commanded by Rivachevski. Among other Ukrainians remembered for their crimes were the brothers Vladimir and Arsenti Panasiok, the brothers Georgi and Ivan Palamarchok, and Aleksei Skivchok.¹

In the summer and fall of 1941, the German occupation forces imposed a series of anti-Jewish measures in Rafałówka. Jews were forced to wear distinctive markings; they had to perform forced labor; and they were forbidden to leave the town without special permission.

Soon after the start of the occupation the Germans ordered the establishment of a Jewish Council (Judenrat) to serve as an intermediary authority, which also included representatives from the neighboring small Jewish communities in Olizarka and Zoludsk. The members included Her- [End Page 1454] shel Brezniak (chairman), Zelig Lesnik, Yosef Morik, David Tanenbaum, and Gershon Gruber. The Judenrat sought to ameliorate the suffering resulting from increasingly draconian German decrees.² On the orders of the local German authorities, the Jews had to collect a poll tax (Kontribution) of 5 gold rubles (1.5 grams [.05 ounces]), or 5,000 rubles per person. Some gave more than requested, while others had to be coerced into giving. An unending stream of German demands followed: the confiscation of silver items, furs, coffee, pepper (a scarce commodity) and an order to knit socks, gloves, and sweaters for German soldiers. For almost a year the Jews stayed in their own homes, obeyed the curfew, and submitted to the German demands, including monthly roll calls.³

On May 1, 1942, the Germans established a ghetto in Rafałówka around the area of the community synagogue and school building, which was surrounded by barbed wire. This area contained not only the local Jews of the town but also Jews from the neighboring villages, including Nowa Rafałówka, Olizarka, Wielkie Zoludsk, and Bielska Wola.⁴ Altogether about 2,500 Jews were confined within the Rafałówka ghetto. People who lived within the ghetto confines remained in their own houses but had to take in those who were displaced from other neighborhoods and villages. Each family, regardless of size, was given one room. With each passing day, life grew harsher and increasingly bitter. Those who arrived without extra food were afflicted by hunger; those who had no goods to barter for food from the non-Jewish local inhabitants faced starvation. A few Jews planted vegetables in their yards. Gangs of forced laborers were sent out to work from the ghetto, cutting lumber in the forests, loading trains, and repairing roads and bridges.⁵

A Ukrainian guard overseeing one group of Jewish workers told a female acquaintance that the Germans were preparing pits where the Jews would be murdered and buried. When she reported this in the ghetto, her story was met with denial and disbelief. On Monday, August 24, 1942, the ghetto was closed off and surrounded by Ukrainian police, and no one was allowed in or out. Most people chose to remain with their families; only a few hundred Jews tried to hide or escape, as they suspected their impending fate. Zelig Lisak, who headed the Judenrat in the last days, took poison to end his life at home. On Saturday, August 29, the day set for the liquidation of the ghetto by the Gebietskommissar, the Jews were ordered into the central square for a roll call. Panic seized them when they saw military vehicles with German and Ukrainian police that had just come from the massacre of Jews in Sarny. The remaining inmates of the Rafałówka ghetto were held in the blazing sun as they waited for their deaths. Then in groups of 100 people they were escorted to a forest some 3 kilometers (1.9 miles) north of the ghetto towards Nowa Rafałówka. There they were forced to undress, and each was shot in the back of the head into two large pits. Farmers brought in from the surrounding area covered the bodies, whether dead or alive, with a layer of sand. Police deputy Aleksei Shivchok was assigned to collect the victims’ clothing and other belongings and bring them to a German warehouse.⁶

During the days after the liquidation, Ukrainian police tracked down Jews still in hiding and delivered them to the Germans. They were rewarded well for their efforts with large quantities of salt for each captive. Most of the escapees were captured and killed. The area was liberated by the Red Army on February 5, 1944. Those who survived the remainder of the German occupation hid in dugouts in the forests, found shelter with Ukrainian Baptists (“Shtundists”) or local farmers, or connected up with small partisan bands. Among the Jewish partisan leaders remembered were “Yudl” (from the village of Sopaczew) and Pesach Bindes. Only some 30 Jews from the Rafałówka ghetto survived the war.⁷

At a war crimes trial conducted in June 1972 in the nearby town of Włodzimierzec, several of the Ukrainian perpetrators were convicted and punished for their murderous acts.⁸