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

Pre-1941: Andrushevka, town and raion center, Zhitomir oblast’, Ukrainian SSR; 1941–1943: Andruschewka, Rayon center, Gebiet Berditschew, Generalkommissariat Shitomir; post-1991: Andrushivka, raion center, Zhytomyr oblast’, Ukraine

Andrushevka is located 35 kilometers (22 miles) southeast of Zhitomir. According to the 1939 census, there were 658 Jews living in Andrushevka (10.3 percent of its total population).

German armed forces occupied the town on July 16, 1941, almost three weeks after their invasion of the USSR on June 22. During that time, some Jewish men were drafted or volunteered for military service in the Red Army, and a small number of Jews managed to evacuate to the eastern regions of the country.

In the period from July to October 1941, a military commandant’s office (Ortskommandantur) was in charge of the town, and it set up a Rayon authority and an auxiliary police force, made up of local residents. In late October 1941, the military administration was replaced by a German civil administration. Until liberation on December 26, 1943, Andrushevka was part of Gebiet Berditschew in Generalkommissariat Shitomir. In the summer of 1942, the Ukrainian police (Schutzmannschaft) in Andrushevka consisted of about 30 men, which was by then subordinated to a small squad of German Gendarmerie based in the town. One of the leaders of the Ukrainian police in Andrushevka was a man named Ivan Meisko.¹

In the summer and fall of 1941, the Germans introduced a series of anti-Jewish measures in Andrushevka. The Jews were required to wear armbands with a Star of David, perform various types of forced labor, remain within the confines of the town, and hand over all their valuables. Jews were forbidden to sell products in the market, while the local Ukrainian inhabitants were forbidden to associate in any way with Jews, and those who violated this order were subjected to flogging.

On August 19, 1941, the first Aktion took place in Andrushevka when 252 Jews were rounded up and shot in a forest 300 meters (0.2 mile) southeast of town. At this time the Ukrainians started to rob the Jews’ houses, and a ghetto was established. Local Ukrainians assisted the Germans in identifying the Jews. Other Jews who were caught in the surrounding area were brought to the Andrushevka ghetto.²

In the ghetto, the Jews were always obliged to inform the police exactly where they were going, and all the Jews had to wear the Star of David on their chest and their back to show that they were Jewish. The Ukrainian policemen beat Jews on the street, even those they had known since before the war, simply because they were Jewish. Some local Ukrainians, however, did help out, by bringing potatoes and bread to the Jews in the ghetto, as they had nothing else to eat.³

The ghetto was always surrounded by both Ukrainian police and Germans. The Jews did not live in apartments but in a stable normally used for horses. Everyone slept on the floor. Several families lived together under very cramped conditions. The young people in the ghetto were forced to work every day from dawn to dusk. There was no doctor in the ghetto. If someone got sick, they were more or less left to die. The ghetto remained in existence for about nine months.⁴

The Germans liquidated the ghetto in May 1942 when 223 people were shot in a forest 500 meters (0.3 mile) from the town hospital.⁵ A small group of Jewish craftsmen was sent to a labor camp in Berdichev, all of whom were shot in July 1942, along with other Jews, when that camp was liquidated.

A Jewish girl from Andrushevka managed to survive, as she was outside the ghetto fetching milk at the time of the roundup. She was spotted by a German patrol but succeeded in convincing them that she was not Jewish with the help of a Ukrainian woman, who claimed she was her daughter. She survived in hiding with a Ukrainian family until the end of the occupation.⁶