BERDICHEV
Pre-1941: Berdichev, city and raion center, Zhitomir oblast’, Ukrainian SSR; 1941–1944: Berditschew, Rayon and Gebiet center, Generalkommissariat Shitomir; post-1991: Berdychiv raion center, Zhytomyr oblast’, Ukraine
Berdichev is located 44 kilometers (27 miles) south of Zhitomir. In 1939, the Jewish population stood at 23,266 (37.5 percent of the total population).
On the evening of July 7, 1941, about two weeks after the German invasion of the Soviet Union, the city was occupied by the 11th Panzer Division of the XLVIII Motorized Corps of the 6th Army. Around 10,000 people, the majority of whom were Jews, were evacuated or managed to escape from the city. An undeterminable number of Jews also relocated to the outskirts of the city, settling in nearby small towns and villages.
From July to October 1941, a German military commandant’s office ran the affairs of the city. The German commandant established a local administration in Berdichev, headed by the ethnic German mayor Reder, who was assisted by his deputy Slipchenko and the secretary Schmidt. The Germans also established a Ukrainian auxiliary police force, recruited from among the local residents. Koroliuk was appointed as its chief. The Ukrainian police played an active role in the anti-Jewish Aktions.
At the end of October 1941, authority was transferred to a German civil administration. Berdichev became the administrative center of Gebiet Berditschew. Regierungsrat Erwin Göllner became the Gebietskommissar. In November 1941, three additional appointments were made. Unterleutnant der Polizei Kölle from the police administration in Breslau became the SS- und Polizeistandortführer. Oberleutnant der Polizei [End Page 1517] Becker from the police administration in Bochum became the head of the Schutzpolizei. Finally, Leutnant der Gendarmerie Karl Kurzhals became the Gendarmerie-Gebietsführer in Berdichev. Gebiet Berditschew encompassed the Rayons of Ianushpol’ and Andrushevka, in addition to the city and Rayon of Berdichev. The new Gebiet Berditschew was incorporated into Generalkommissariat Shitomir.1
In early to mid-July 1941, Sonderkommando 4a was the first of a series of German punitive units to be active in the city of Berdichev. From the end of July to the end of August 1941, Einsatzkommando 5, commanded by SS-Standartenführer Schulz, was deployed in the city.
From August 26 to September 20, 1941, the military staff of the Höherer SS- und Polizeiführer (HSSPF) Russland-Süd, headed by SS-Obergruppenführer Friedrich Jeckeln, was present in Berdichev. Also present from September 5 to 21, 1941, was the 45th Police Reserve Battalion, commanded by SS-Sturmbannführer Martin Besser. Jeckeln was in charge of all large-scale coordinated police operations. His staff and the members of the 45th Battalion carried out mass killings of the Jewish population in the city in September 1941.2
At the beginning of 1942, a local office of the Security Police (Sipo-Aussendienststelle) was established in Berdichev. From February to June 1942, SS-Sturmbannführer Fritz Sievert was in charge of the post. He was succeeded from June to August 1942 by SS-Hauptsturmführer Alois Hülsdünker, and from the middle of August 1942 until the end of the occupation on January 5, 1944, by SS-Hauptscharführer Fritz Knop.3
The first murders of Jews in the city of Berdichev were carried out by detachments of the German armed forces in the form of the Waffen-SS. In the course of two days, the engineers’ battalion of the SS-Division “Wiking” carried out four roundup operations against the Jews. Altogether around 850 persons were arrested and shot at a site a few kilometers outside the city.4 Other shootings by Sonderkommando 4a, Einsatzkommando 5, and the command staff of the HSSPF Russland-Süd followed in July and August. In addition, in the summer and fall of 1941, German forces implemented a series of anti-Jewish measures in Berdichev.
On August 26, 1941, the German occupying authorities declared that a ghetto was to be established in the city and that all Jews must relocate into it over the following three days. The ghetto was located in the poorest part of the city, consisting of ancient shacks, tiny single-storied houses, and crumbling buildings in the area of the Iatki marketplace. Jews were allowed to bring in only clothes and bedding. German soldiers and local residents confiscated all their remaining property. People were forced to live five or six families to a room. Leaving the limits of the ghetto was strictly forbidden. Jews could buy goods at the marketplace only after 6:00 p.m., that is, when no goods were left. Jews inside the ghetto were frequently beaten and robbed by members of the local police.5
On September 4, 1941, the first “cleansing” Aktion was carried out against the Jews in the ghetto. Jeckeln ordered the arrest and shooting of 1,303 Jews, including 876 girls over the age of 12. The victims had been told that they were being sent to do agricultural work, but they ended up digging their own graves. Men subordinated to the HSSPF Russland-Süd carried out the shooting close to the village of Khazhin.6
On September 15, 1941, a second large-scale Aktion was carried out in the ghetto. The ghetto was surrounded by SS troops and local police during the night, and starting at 4:00 a.m. they brutally drove some 12,000 persons out of their [End Page 1518] houses and gathered them in the market square. Many of those who could not walk were killed on the spot. On the square, Reder and Koroliuk carried out a selection of skilled workers. The bulk of the Jews were then formed into columns and escorted under close guard to the airfield, where the German forces shot them in five ditches. About 400 specialist workers and artisans were spared and allowed to return to the ghetto with their families.7 Members of the 45th Police Reserve Battalion were among the forces that carried out the mass killing.8 The staff company of the HSSPF ( Jeckeln), including its guards, bodyguards, and chauffeurs, also took part in the Aktion, assisted by the local Ukrainian police. Local policemen and others immediately looted the empty houses in the ghetto.
On October 30, 1941, the third Aktion was carried out in the ghetto, completing its liquidation. From October 30 to November 1, 1941, Ukrainian policemen rounded up all the remaining Jews who lived in the ghetto and took them to the nearby Carmelite monastery, which served as a prison. On November 3, 1941, around 800 men were the first to be shot, followed by the women and children. About 150 specialist workers and artisans were released and forcibly resettled into the labor camp prison.9 The shootings were carried out in the village of Sokulino. The perpetrators in all likelihood were members of the Security Police and SD detachment from Zhitomir, together with the Ukrainian police.
On February 25, 1942, the Jews who remained in the city of Berdichev were resettled into the barracks in Lysaia Gora (“Bald Mountain”). The resettlement of the roughly 350 Jews was completed on March 1, 1942. From May to June 1942, an additional 700 Jews were relocated there from the liquidated ghettos in surrounding places such as Ianushpol’, Andrushevka, Kazatin, and Ruzhin. On July 16, 1942, the labor prison camp was liquidated. On the grounds of a former shooting range of the 14th Cavalry Division, around 700 captured Jews and 230 local Jews were shot.10 The shootings were carried out by the Berdichev Sipo-Aussendienststelle on orders from Dr. Franz Razesberger, the commander of the Security Police and SD in Zhitomir.11 Prior to the shooting, 60 artisans and specialist workers were selected out and resettled into a Security Police prison.12 The majority of these artisans were shot on November 13, 1943, and January 3, 1944.13
On April 27, 1942, around 70 Jewish women and children of mixed marriages were shot. They had been registered as living in Berdichev.14 The murders were apparently carried out by members of the Security Police outpost.
The total number of Jewish victims from 1941 to 1944 can be estimated at around 17,000 persons. According to the first postwar population census in 1959, around 6,300 Jews lived in Berdichev (11.8 percent of the total population).
SOURCES
Information on the Jewish community of Berdichev and its destruction can be found in the following publications: “Berdichev,” in Rossiiskaia Evreiskaia Entsiklopediia (Mos-cow: Rossiiskaia Akademiia Estestvennykh Nauk, Nauchnyi fond “Evreiskaia Entsiklopediia,” “Epos,” 2000), 4:114–115; S. Elisavetskii, Berdichevskaia tragediia: Dokumental’noe povestvovanie (Kiev, 1991); Vasilii Grossman and Il’ia Ehrenburg, eds., “Ubiistvo evreev v Berdicheve,” in Chernaia kniga o zlodeiskom povsemestnom ubiistve evreev nemetsko-fashistskimi zakhvatchikami vo vremenno okkupirovannykh raionakh Sovietskogo Soiuza i v lagerakh Pol’shi vo vremia voiny 1941–1945 gg. (Kiev, 1991), pp. 32–43; John Garrard and Carol Garrard, The Bones of Berdichev: The Life and Fate of Vasily Grossman (New York: Free Press, 1996); and Boris Zabarko, ed., Zhivymi ostalis’ tol’ko my: Svidetel’stva i dokumenty (Kiev: Zadruga, 1999).
Documents and witness testimonies regarding the annihilation of the Jews of Berdichev can be found in the following archives: BA-BL; BA-L; DAZO; GARF (7021-560-285); RGVA; USHMM; VHAP; VHF; 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. See also the memorandum (Schnellbrief) of the chief of the Security Police from October 25, 1941, in RGVA, 1323-2-121, pp. 33–34.
2. Jeckeln was sentenced by the Soviet military tribunal and hanged in Riga on February 3, 1946. After the war, Besser was under investigation but was unable to appear before the court for reasons of health. On August 5, 1971, Engelbert Kreuzer, the former commander of the 2nd Company of the 45th Battalion, was sentenced to seven years in prison. He pleaded guilty to murdering Jews in a number of cities in Ukraine, including Berdichev; see LG-Reg, Ks 6/70.
3. On August 5, 1966, Sievert was acquitted by a court in Düsseldorf; see LG-Düss, 8I Ks 1/66. On March 9, 1960, Hülsdünker and Knop were sentenced by a court in Berlin to 3 years and 6 months in prison and 7 years in prison, respectively; see LG-Be, 3 PKs 1/57.
4. See the testimony of the former SS-Rottenführer Hans Isenmann at the court proceedings in Kiev in January 1946, in Kyivs’kyi protses: Dokumenty ta materialy (Kiev, 1995), p. 51.
5. Grossman and Ehrenburg, “Ubiistvo evreev v Berdicheve,” p. 35; see also Elisavetskii, Berdichevskaia tragediia, pp. 81–110.
6. BA-BL, R 58/217, pp. 157–186, Ereignismeldung UdSSR, no. 88, September 19, 1941; VHAP, KdO Stab RFSS, Telegram no. 289 of the HSSPF Russland-Süd, September 5, 1941; see also BA-L, B 162, 204 AR-Z 129/67, p. 998.
7. Grossman and Ehrenburg, “Ubiistvo evreev v Berdicheve,” pp. 37–39.
8. See the indictment against Rosenbauer, Besser, and Kreuzer dated February 2, 1970, LG-Reg, Ks 6/70.
9. Grossman and Ehrenburg, “Ubiistvo evreev v Berdicheve,” pp. 41–42.
10. GARF, 7021-60-285, p. 17 (and reverse side), testimony of the witness Mikhail Pekelis. According to another source, Gross-man and Ehrenburg, “Ubiistvo evreev v Berdicheve,” p. 42, there were around 500 persons altogether in the labor prison camp.
11. On July 26, 1961, Dr. Franz Razesberger was acquitted by a court in Vienna.
12. Grossman and Ehrenburg, “Ubiistvo evreev v Berdicheve,” p. 42.
13. Report of the city’s administrative commission from May 13, 1944, GARF, 7021-60-285, p. 8. See also the testimony of the witness Chaim Satanovskii, April 20, 1944, to be found in the same file (GARF, 7021-60-285, pp. 48–49).
14. Grossman and Ehrenburg, “Ubiistvo evreev v Berdicheve,” p. 42.
