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

Pre-1939: Szumsk, town, województwo wołyńskie, Poland; 1939–1941: Shumsk, raion center, Tarnopol’ oblast’, Ukrainian SSR; 1941–1944: Schumsk, Rayon center, Gebiet Kremenez, Generalkommissariat Wolhynien und Podolien; post-1991: Shums’k, Ternopil’ oblast’, Ukraine

Szumsk is located 56 kilometers (35 miles) south of Równe. According to the 1921 census, there were 1,717 Jews in Szumsk. In the fall of 1939, several hundred Jewish refugees from Poland settled in Szumsk (in 1940 many of them were deported to the eastern part of the USSR). After Germany attacked the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941, several Jewish families evacuated to the east; however, most Jews did not want to or were unable to evacuate (owing to the rapid advance of the German forces). At the start of the German occupation, there were probably more than 2,000 Jews still present in the town.

Units of the Wehrmacht occupied Szumsk on July 2, 1941. In July and August, a German military administration governed the town; as of September 1941, power was transferred to a German civil administration. Szumsk became a Rayon center in Gebiet Kremenez. The Gebietskommissar in Krzemieniec was Regierungsrat Müller.¹ The Germans established a Ukrainian local council and local police force in Szumsk, which was subordinated to the German Gendarmerie post (created in September 1941), consisting of several German Gendarmes.

Immediately after the occupation of the town by German forces, local Ukrainians looted Jewish houses despite German public announcements forbidding this. A few days later, antisemitic Ukrainians organized a pogrom during which several Jews were killed as they attempted to defend their property.²

In the summer and fall of 1941, the German authorities implemented a series of anti-Jewish measures in Szumsk. They established a Judenrat, whose chairman, Weissler, was a refugee from the Polish town of Katowice. The German authorities used the Judenrat to convey their orders and demands to the Jewish population. Jews were required to wear distinctive symbols (initially an armband, then from September 1941, yellow patches). Jews were prohibited from trading or otherwise communicating with non-Jews. They were forbidden to use the sidewalks and were required to bow before passing Germans. All Jewish women were forced to cut their hair.

The Jewish Council (Judenrat) formed a Labor Office (Arbeitsamt) headed by Szuldrein, a refugee from Łódź. This office assigned Jews to forced labor tasks, for example, in the sawmill, on farms, or clearing snow in the winter. Ukrainians were able to request Jews from the Arbeitsamt to do any kind of work for them. After about three months, a Jewish police force of 15 to 20 people was established, commanded by a man named Horowitz.³ One of the tasks of the Jewish Police was to collect the “contributions” of items, such as gold, silver, and furs, demanded by the civil administration and also by Gestapo officials on regular visits.

In early March 1942 (at the time of the Purim holiday), the German administration issued orders for all the Jews from Szumsk and the surrounding villages (approximately 2,000 people) to be enclosed within a ghetto by March 12.⁴ The ghetto was located in the poorest section of the town, near the synagogue and the baths. Living conditions were terrible. Jews had to live 10 or 12 people to a room, with many dying of hunger and widespread disease, especially typhus.⁵ There was no hospital, but the Judenrat organized soup kitchens for the poor, which many people attended. To survive, Jews had to smuggle into the ghetto food that was bartered for their last possessions from local peasants. The smugglers were often children who escaped the ghetto through tunnels dug under the fence. When caught by the Ukrainian police, the Judenrat had to pay a “ransom” for their release.

On German instructions, several workshops for Jewish craftsmen were established for tailoring and the repair of shoes and watches. Most of the production from these workshops became gifts for the Ukrainian and German police.⁶

After five months the ghetto was liquidated. On the night of Saturday, August 8, 1942, Ukrainian police surrounded the ghetto, shooting 11 Jews who tried to escape; they were buried in a grave within the ghetto. The Jews were forbidden to bury them in the Jewish cemetery (outside the ghetto borders) to prevent the Jews from seeing the mass grave that had been [End Page 1480] prepared for them there. However, several Jews saw peasants returning with shovels and guessed what was happening. After the mass grave was dug, on August 13, 1942, a team of Security Police and SD from Równe, with the assistance of the German Gendarmerie and Ukrainian police, gathered the Jews near the large synagogue under the pretext of transferring them to another location; from there, they were taken in columns to the grave behind the Christian cemetery, where they were shot. Altogether, 1,792 Jews were shot on that day (496 men, 724 women, and 572 children).⁷ Some of the Jews were able to hide in previously prepared bunkers. Without food or water, those in hiding had to drink their own urine to quench their thirst. To catch the hidden Jews, the German Gendarmerie and Ukrainian police regularly combed the territory of the former ghetto over the ensuing few weeks. Some Jews were betrayed by the cries of their own children. The Gendarmerie and local police successively shot all the Jews who they found and captured. The last Jews, including about 100 who had been temporarily spared to help clear up the ghetto and sort the remaining possessions, had all been shot by October 1, 1942.⁸ Only a couple of dozen Jews from Szumsk managed to escape from their places of concealment and survive the ensuing dangers either in hiding or with the partisans, to be liberated by the Red Army in 1944.