SLAVUTA
Pre-1941: Slavuta, town and raion center, Kamenets-Podolskii oblast’, Ukrainian SSR; 1941–1944: Slawuta, Rayon center, Gebiet Schepetowka, Generalkommissariat Wolhynien und Podolien; post-1991: Slavuta, raion center, Khmel’nyts’kyi oblast’, Ukraine
Slavuta is located 18 kilometers (11 miles) northwest of Shepetovka. According to the census, 5,102 Jews lived in Slavuta in January 1939, and 1,410 additional Jews resided in the Slavuta raion (primarily in the village of Annopol’). Thus, there was a total of 6,512 Jews in the raion. Additionally, in 1939, 2,106 other Jews resided in the Berezdov raion (primarily in the villages of Berezdov, Krasnostav, and Kilikiev), which currently belongs to the Slavuta raion. Many of the Jews of this raion were massacred together with the Jews of Slavuta.
In 1939, then, more than 8,600 Jews lived in Slavuta and the surrounding area. After Nazi Germany attacked the USSR on June 22, 1941, several hundred Jewish men were drafted into or volunteered for the Red Army, and several hundred more Jews were able to evacuate to the eastern regions of the Soviet Union. As German forces occupied the Slavuta area only two weeks after the start of the war, the majority of Jews were unable to escape. Approximately 8,000 Jews remained in Slavuta at the start of the occupation.
Units of the German army occupied Slavuta in early July 1941. In July and August 1941, the town was governed by a series of German military commandant’s offices (Ortskommandanturen), which formed a local administration and an auxiliary police force recruited from local citizens. In September 1941, power was transferred to a German civil administration. Slavuta became a Rayon center in Gebiet Schepetowka. The Gebietskommissar was Regierungsassessor Worbs, and the Gendarmerie-Gebietsführer was Leutnant der Schutzpolizei Richard Höse.1 The Ukrainian police and Gendarmerie posts were under his command, including the Gendarmerie posts in Slavuta and Berezdov. In the summer of 1942, Leutnant der Schutzpolizei Mohngach replaced Höse.
Gebiet Schepetowka was part of Generalkommissariat Wolhynien und Podolien. SA-Obergruppenführer Heinrich Schöne served as the Generalkommissar and the immediate superior of Worbs. Höse was subordinated to the Kommandeur der Gendarmerie (KdG) in the region, Major der Gendarmerie Rohse.
On July 28–30, 1941, the 1st SS-Motorized Infantry Brigade swept through Rayon Slawuta. This unit shot several dozen Jews altogether in various villages of the Rayon, ostensibly for supporting the Bolshevik system.
From August 15 until September 3, 1941, the 2nd Company of the 45th Reserve Police Battalion was located in Slavuta; the company commander was Oberleutnant der Polizei and SS-Obersturmführer Engelbert Kreuzer.2 This company conducted several Aktions in Slavuta: on August 18, they shot 322 Jews; on August 29, they shot 65 Jews; and on August 30, they shot 911 Jews—making a total of 1,298 Jewish victims.3
In August 1941, shootings of Jews, conducted primarily by the 45th Reserve Police Battalion (commanded by Major der Polizei and SS-Sturmbannführer Martin Besser), also took place in Berezdov (152 people),4 in Annopol’ (over 100 people),5 and in Kilikiev (several dozen people).6 In Krasnostav (Rayon Beresdow), almost all of the Jews were murdered (approximately 800 people).7 Altogether, about 2,500 Jews were killed in Slavuta and the surrounding area in the summer of 1941.
On March 1, 1942, a ghetto was established in Slavuta; it was surrounded with barbed wire and guarded by Ukrainian policemen. Besides Jews resident in the town, Jews from the Slawuta and Beresdow Rayons were also brought into the ghetto. For example, on March 2, 1942, Jews from Annopol’ (Rayon Slawuta) were driven into the ghetto, while the elderly and handicapped were selected out and shot immediately.8 On March 4, 1942, the remaining 175 Jews of Krasnostav were brought to the Slavuta ghetto via Berezdov.9 Jews from [End Page 1469] Kilikiev were not transferred to Slavuta, and approximately 150 of them were shot near the village in early 1942.10
Some 500 Jews from the Slavuta ghetto were sent to work in Berezdov and Pechivody in March 1942. Of this number, several dozen people died of hunger and illness or were shot for being unable to work. The remaining Jews were returned to the Slavuta ghetto in late June 1942, and those who were too emaciated to walk back were shot on the way. For example, 7 Jews were killed near the village of Zhukov.11
The Slavuta ghetto was liquidated on June 25, 1942. On this day, a squad of Security Police and SD men, assisted by the German Gendarmerie and the Ukrainian police, shot the majority of the Jews in a deep hollow near the water tower on the edge of town; approximately 300 children were drowned in a well in the ghetto.12 On June 25, 1942, a total of about 5,000 Jews were killed. Only Jewish craftsmen and their families (several hundred people) were temporarily spared; they were shot in September 1942.
On August 5, 1971, the regional court in Regensburg (Germany) sentenced the former commander of the 2nd Company of the 45th Reserve Police Battalion, Kreuzer, to seven years’ imprisonment. The court refrained from punishing the former commander of the 45th Police Battalion, Besser, taking into consideration his advanced age (in 1971, Besser was 79 years old) and poor health.
SOURCES
The author published several documents regarding the annihilation of Slavuta Jews in August of 1941; see A. Kruglov, Sbornik dokumentov i materialov ob unichtozhenii natsistami evreev Ukrainy v 1941–1944 godakh (Kiev: Institut iudaiki, 2002), pp. 239, 246, 247, 291.
Documents and the testimonies regarding the persecution and murder of the Jews of Slavuta can be found in the following archives: BA-L; GARF (7021-64-794 and 814); and YVA.
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. For extracts of the indictment issued on February 2, 1970, by the Sta. Regensburg against the defendants Rosenbauer, Besser, and Kreuzer, see Kruglov, Sbornik dokumentov, p. 290.
3. Telegrams nos. 113 and 208 sent by HSSPF Russland Süd on August 19, 1941, and August 30, 1941, and radiogram no. 56 of August 31, 1941, published in Kruglov, Sbornik dokumentov, pp. 239, 246–247.
4. GARF, 7021-64-794, p. 84. The shooting took place on August 10, 1941.
5. See the testimony of Sofia Iosifovna Malinskaia (September 1994), published in D. Hoshkis, ed., Nezahoena rana (Slavuta, Netyshin, and Iziaslav, 1996), pp. 48–50.
6. Ibid., p. 81.
7. Zverstva nemetsko-fashistskikh zakhvatchikov: Dokumenty. Vypusk 13. (Moscow, 1945), p. 35. At this place, 47 Jewish men were shot on August 7 and about 700 Jews on August 28–29, 1941.
8. See the testimony of Malinskaia (September 1994). In Annopol’, by November 1941, the Jews from the surrounding villages (Dolzhki, Klepachi, Velikii Sknit, Golovli) had been concentrated and resettled on one street there together with the local Jews.
9. Zverstva nemetsko-fashistskikh zakhvatchikov, p. 35.
10. Hoshkis, Nezahoena rana, pp. 81–82.
11. See the testimony of Malinskaia (September 1994).
12. Hoshkis, Nezahoena rana, pp. 6, 50.
