CHERNIAKHOV
Pre-1941: Cherniakhov, town and raion center, Zhitomir oblast’, Ukrainian SSR; 1941–1944: Tschernjachow, Rayon center, Gebiet Shitomir, Generalkommissariat Shitomir; post-1991: Cherniakhiv, raion center, Zhytomyr oblast’, Ukraine
Cherniakhov is located 22 kilometers (14 miles) north of Zhitomir. In 1939, 1,482 Jews (20.7 percent of the total population) lived there. Within the villages of the Cherniakhov raion, there were an additional 228 Jews.
After the German invasion of the USSR on June 22, 1941, a substantial part of the Jewish population was able to evacuate to the east. Men of an eligible age were called up to the Red Army or enlisted voluntarily. Less than half of the prewar Jewish population remained in Cherniakhov at the start of the occupation.
German armed forces occupied the town on July 13, 1941. From July through October 1941, a German military command post (Ortskommandantur) ran the town. The German military set up a local administration and an auxiliary Ukrainian police force consisting of local residents. The Ukrainian police played an active role in the anti-Jewish measures.
In November 1941, authority passed to a German civil administration. Cherniakhov was incorporated into Gebiet Shitomir, within Generalkommissariat Shitomir.1
After the occupation of the town, the German administration ordered all Jews to be registered and marked with armbands. The Jews were then exploited for various forms of heavy labor.
In the first 10 days of August 1941, several cleansing Aktions were carried out. Sonderkommando 4a shot an estimated 112 Jews and “Bolsheviks” in the first Aktion.2 The second claimed 33 Jews,3 and the third claimed 13 Jews.4 Details of the first Aktion are found in Einsatzgruppen report no. 58 of August 20, 1941:
After the arrival of German forces in Cherniakhov, initially it was calm, such that the remaining Jews were compelled to restrain themselves. On the following day, after the combat forces had moved on, Sonderkommando 4a discovered that in the meantime the Jews (as everywhere) were in contact with the scattered Russian partisan units that were terrorizing the entire area. A detachment sent there in response to this observation arrested all the Jewish [End Page 1521] men they could find, and at the same time searched for terrorists still in hiding. Fifteen members of the (GPU) [State Po liti cal Directorate] and another 11 informants were exposed, along with the main criminal, a national judge named Kieper.5
On August 7–8, 1941, the 2nd Battalion of the 10th Motorized Unit of the 1st SS-Motorized Brigade carried out another Aktion. They arrested and shot 232 Jews.6
After the shooting of the Jewish men, the Ortskommandantur apparently resettled the remaining Jewish women and children into a freight car at some date in the fall of 1941, where they were held for a short time before they were shot. This brief incarceration could be viewed as a form of destruction ghetto.7
During the occupation of Cherniakhov from July 1941 to November 1943, according to the list of names, 571 persons were shot in Cherniakhov, including 568 Jews.8
SOURCES
Documents dealing with the persecution and murder of the Jews in Cherniakhov can be found in the following archives: BA-BL (R 58/215, 216); BA-L (B 162/19220); DAZO; GARF (7021-60-314); and USHMM (RG-22.002M, reel 3).
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. Ibid., R 58/215, Ereignismeldung UdSSR (EM) no. 47, August 9, 1941.
3. Ibid., R 58/216, EM no. 58, August 20, 1941.
4. Ibid., EM no. 60, August 22, 1941.
5. Ibid., EM no. 58, August 20, 1941.
6. See the Report of the 1st SS-Motorized Infantry Brigade from August 10, 1941, in Fritz Baade, ed., Unsere Ehre heisst Treue: Kriegstagebuch des Kommandostabes Reichsführer SS (Vienna: Europa, 1984), pp. 103–105.
7. Wendy Lower, Nazi Empire-Building and the Holocaust in Ukraine (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press in association with the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, 2005), p. 88. Lower, however, contrasts this treatment starkly with the formal ghettoization process known from the larger cities in the Generalgouvernement.
8. GARF, 7021-60-314, pp. 100–102 and reverse side. See also BA-L, B 162/19220, pp. 60–61, which also gives the figure of 571 people shot in Cherniakhov.
