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

Pre-1941: Chudnov, town and raion center, Zhitomir oblast’, Ukrainian SSR; 1941–1943: Tschudnow, Rayon and Gebiet center, Generalkommissariat Shitomir; post-1991: Chudniv, raion center, Zhytomyr oblast’, Ukraine

Chudnov is located 45 kilometers (28 miles) southwest of Zhitomir. According to the 1939 population census, 2,506 Jews lived in the town (46.4 percent of the total). Additionally, there were 703 Jews in the villages of the Chudnov raion.

Units of the German 6th Army occupied the settlement on July 7, 1941, less than three weeks after the start of the German invasion. In this period a few hundred Jews were able to evacuate to the east. Men of eligible age were called up to the Red Army or enlisted voluntarily. Approximately 75 percent of the pre-war Jewish population remained at the start of the German occupation.

From July to October 1941, a German military commandant’s office (Ortskommandantur) administered the town. The German military authorities created a local Ukrainian administration and recruited an auxiliary Ukrainian police force from among the local population.

At the end of October 1941, authority passed to the German civil administration. Chudnov became the administrative center of Gebiet Tschudnow, and Hitler Jugend (HJ)-Oberstammführer Dr. Blümel was appointed as Gebietskommissar. The Rayons Ljubar and Dsershinsk were also incorporated into Gebiet Chudnov.¹

On July 15, 1941, a week after the occupation of the town, a “Jewish residential district” (an open ghetto) was established in Chudnov in a part of town that had been severely damaged during the fighting. One main street and a few side streets were reserved only for the Jewish population, but the area was not fenced in. The Jews were prohibited from leaving the area and from buying products from local Ukrainians. They had their own separate shops, and the Ukrainians were forbidden all contact with the Jews. The Jews were ordered to wear armbands on their left arms, bearing a yellow six-pointed Star of David. Jewish men were required to perform heavy labor, were prohibited from leaving the limits of the town, and were subjected to beatings and robbery by the Germans and Ukrainian police.²

One day, probably in August 1941, Jews from Chudnov were taken to dig graves in the local park. At this time the Germans brought a number of Jews from the nearby village of Piatka into Chudnov and shot them in these graves. The grave diggers were also beaten and humiliated before they were released.³

On September 9, 1941, the Germans organized the first Aktion against Chudnov’s Jews. About 800 or 900 people were loaded onto trucks on the pretext of a labor assignment and were taken out of the town to be shot.⁴ Apparently, members of Police Battalion 303, commanded by Major der Polizei Heinrich Hannibal, carried out the shooting. The battalion was stationed in Chudnov from September 5, 1941.⁵

Conditions in the ghetto deteriorated during the fall. People were starving, it became cold, and the Jews had inadequate clothing. There was not even any water in the Jewish quarter. Those who tried to bring in water were either beaten or shot by the guards.⁶

On October 16, 1941, the Germans conducted a second Aktion in Chudnov. In a document for the “Divak settlement,” the head of the OUN (Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists) in Chudnov reported that “on October 16, 1941, all Jews regardless of age were shot by order of the German military commandant in Berdichev.” The Ukrainian police from the town of “Divak” conducted the killings. About 500 Jews were shot altogether.⁷ The German and Ukrainian police drove the Jews out of their houses in the ghetto and gathered them in the local cinema building. From there they were loaded onto trucks and transported to a park on the southern outskirts of Chudnov. In the park, the Germans had placed boards across the pits, and they shot the Jews in groups of 5 to 10 people such that they fell in.⁸ [End Page 1523]

On October 22, 1941, the Ukrainian police carried out a third and final Aktion against the ghetto. They rounded up the few hundred remaining Jews, again gathering them in the local cinema building before taking them away in vehicles to the park and shooting them in the same manner.⁹

After this last Aktion, only a small group of Jewish specialized workers remained in the town. They were held in a barracks area, which was surrounded by barbed wire.¹⁰ In the middle of November 1941, these Jews were also shot and killed.¹¹ The Germans and their collaborators murdered around 2,000 Jews in Chudnov between September and November 1941.

With regard to the Chudnov raion, apart from the Jews of Piatka, between August and September 1941, an additional 111 Jews from the village of Novyi Chudnov were killed.¹²

Among the very few Jewish survivors from Chudnov, both Mariam Sandal and Polina Pekerman benefited from being able to persuade local policemen to let them go, owing to either personal friendships or their non-Jewish appearance. Pekerman also names two Ukrainian policemen who actively participated in the killings: a man named Briukhanov and an officer named Lozovoi.¹³