KHODORKOV
[End Page 1536] Pre-1941: Khodorkov, village, Kornin raion, Zhitomir oblast’, Ukrainian SSR; 1941–1944: Chodorkow, Rayon Kornin, Gebiet Korostyschew, Generalkommissariat Shitomir; post-1991: Khodorkiv, Popil’nia raion, Zhytomyr oblast’, Ukraine
Khodorkov is located 48 kilometers (30 miles) east-southeast of Zhitomir. The population census of 1926 indicated that Khodorkov had a Jewish community of 453. In the 1930s, the size of the village’s Jewish population declined by more than half.
German armed forces occupied the town on July 12, three weeks after their invasion of the USSR on June 22, 1941. During that period, some of the 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.
During the months of July through October 1941, a German military commandant’s office (Ortskommandantur) was in charge of the village. In late October 1941, a civil administration replaced the German military administration. Until liberation in November 1943, Khodorkov was part of Gebiet Korostyschew in Generalkommissariat Shitomir.
In the summer and fall of 1941, the same anti-Jewish measures implemented in other German-occupied towns and villages of the Ukraine were introduced in Khodorkov. The Jews were required to wear distinguishing marks in the form of an armband with a Star of David; they were used for various kinds of forced labor; they were forbidden to leave the village; and they were instructed to hand over all their valuables. Jews were forbidden to buy food in the market, and the local residents were forbidden to associate with Jews in any way; those who violated this order were flogged.
The first Aktion in Khodorkov took place on August 10, 1941, when 19 Jewish males were arrested and shot. On September 10, 1941, the women, children, and old people were herded into a ghetto, which was established at the nearby Vozrozhdenie (“Rebirth”) kolkhoz. They remained in the ghetto until October 15, 1941, when the ghetto was liquidated, and all 149 Jews were shot.1
SOURCES
Information on the Jewish community of Khodorkov can be found in “Khodorkov,” in Shmuel Spector and Geoffrey Wigoder, eds., The Encyclopedia of Jewish Life before and during the Holocaust ( Jerusalem: Yad Vashem; New York: New York University Press, 2001), p. 619.
Documentation regarding the extermination of the Jews of Khodorkov can be found in the following archives: DAZO; and GARF (7021-60-296).
NOTES
1. GARF, 7021-60-296, pp. 116–120.
