BARASHI
Pre-1941: Barashi, village and raion center, Zhitomir oblast’, Ukrainian SSR; 1941–1943: Baraschi, Rayon center, Gebiet Emiltschino, Generalkommissariat Shitomir, Reichskommissariat Ukraine; post-1991: Barashi, Emil’chine raion, Zhytomyr oblast’, Ukraine
Barashi is located 69 kilometers (43 miles) northwest of Zhitomir. According to the 1939 population census, 320 Jews lived in the village (10 percent of the total population). Altogether there were 549 Jews living in the Barashi raion.
After the German invasion of the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941, more than half the Jewish population was able to evacuate [End Page 1516] to the east. At that time eligible men were drafted into the Red Army or volunteered. Around 30 percent of the pre-war Jewish population remained in the village at the start of the occupation.
German armed forces occupied Barashi on July 12, 1941. During July and August, the German military administration created a local authority and an auxiliary Ukrainian police force from among local residents. The Ukrainian police played an active role in all the anti-Jewish measures.
At the end of October 1941, authority was transferred to a German civil administration. Baraschi was a Rayon center in Gebiet Emiltschino, and Kreisobmann Dau was appointed the Gebietskommissar.1
Shortly after the occupation of the village, the German military administration issued orders for the registration and marking of the Jewish population with armbands. Jews were also required to perform heavy labor without pay.
In the summer of 1941, the German military administration ordered the establishment of a small open ghetto, or “Jewish residential quarter,” in the village of Barashi. Jews were prohibited from leaving the limits of the ghetto and from buying products from the local Ukrainians. Some Jews were also brought into the ghetto from surrounding villages. Famine quickly ensued. The ghetto existed until early November 1941.2 At that time, all the Jews living in the ghetto were shot. There were at least 37 victims in total and probably as many as 100. The mass shootings were conducted by three SS officers, with the help of the German Gendarmerie and the Ukrainian police from Barashi and Nepoznanichi. They escorted the Jews to a bushy area 3 kilometers (2 miles) east of Nepoznanichi. The younger Jewish men were forced to dig a grave, and then all the victims had to undress. The three SS men then shot the Jews into the grave in groups of 7 to 10 people.3
In the fall of 1941 and spring of 1942, Jews were murdered in a number of villages within the Baraschi Rayon. There were 2 Jews killed in Simony; 3 Jews killed in Buda-Bobritsa; 10 Jews killed in Kremyanka; 15 Jews killed from Novoaleksandrovka (apparently Jews who were taken to Barashi and murdered there in October 1941); and 23 Jews from Staraia Guta (shot in March 1942). The total number of victims was 53 Jews.4
SOURCES
Documents regarding the murder of the Jews in the Barashi raion can be found in the following archives: BA-L (B 162/204 AR-Z 133/67); DAZO; and GARF (7021-60-284).
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. GARF, 7021-60-284, p. 3.
3. BA-L, B 162/204 AR-Z 133/67, Dok. Bd., pp. 39–45, and vol. 2, pp. 302–324. According to the documents of the ChGK in Barashi, 37 Jews were murdered. It is possible, however, that these victims included only those who had known or identifiable surnames.
4. GARF, 7021-60-284, pp. 45, 82, 128, 132, 155.
