KOROSTEN’
Pre-1941: Korosten’, city and raion center, Zhitomir oblast’, Ukrainian SSR; 1941–1943: Korosten, Rayon and Gebiet center, Generalkommissariat Shitomir; post-1991: Korosten’, raion center, Zhytomyr oblast’, Ukraine
Korosten’ is located 77 kilometers (48 miles) north of Zhitomir, on the Uzh River. According to the 1939 census, there were 10,991 Jews living in Korosten’ (35.7 percent of the total population).
German armed forces occupied the city on August 6, 1941. Between the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941, and the seizure of Korosten’, the majority 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. Jews from places south of Korosten’, including Volodarsk-Volynskii (aka Goroshki), were also evacuated from Korosten’ by rail before the arrival of the Germans.1 Approximately 12 to 13 percent of the pre-war Jewish population remained in Korosten’ at the start of the occupation.
From July to August 1941, a German military commandant’s office (Ortskommandantur) ran the city. The German military administration created a city administration and an auxiliary Ukrainian police force from local residents. The Ukrainian policemen played an active part in the anti-Jewish measures.
At the end of October 1941, authority was passed to a German civil administration. Korosten’ became the administrative center of Gebiet Korosten, and Regierungsassessor Helsig was appointed Gebietskommissar. In turn, the Gebiet was incorporated into Generalkommissariat Shitomir, within Reichskommissariat Ukraine.2
Immediately after the occupation of Korosten’, the Ortskommandantur introduced a series of anti-Jewish measures in the town. The Jews were forbidden to engage in any relations with the Ukrainians, including any commercial transactions. The Jews were also ordered to wear armbands with a yellow Star of David on their left arms. Jewish men were forced into heavy physical labor and were subjected to harassment and beatings by the Ukrainian police. It is possible also that a form of “open ghetto” was established. According to one testimony, all the Jews were brought to Petrovs’ka Street; however, this report remains uncorroborated.3
During the first three weeks after the occupation began, a detachment of Sonderkommando 4a arrived in Korosten’ and [End Page 1537] carried out three mass cleansing Aktions. In the first one, 53 Jews were murdered; in the second, 238 Jews; and in the third, 160 Jews—bringing the total to 451 persons.4 In preparation for the last Aktion, the Jews were imprisoned in School No. 5, which may have served briefly as a form of “destruction ghetto.” The Ukrainian police set fire to it, and the Jews were taken out to be shot at a site located 2 kilometers (1.2 miles) from the city.5
In the first half of September 1941, Sonderkommando 4a liquidated the remaining Jews in the town, around 1,000 people. The shootings were directed by SS-Standartenführer Paul Blobel, who commanded the unit. Also taking part in the executions was the head of Einsatzgruppe C, SS-Brigadeführer Dr. Otto Rasch.6 According to a report by Feldkommandantur 197, dated September 20, 1941, by this date there were scarcely any Jews remaining in the area under its control. Apart from 5,000 Jews assembled in a ghetto in Zhitomir, the setting up of other ghettos in the region was no longer considered necessary since most of the Jews in Korosten’ had recently been shot by the SD.7
In the Korosten’ area in 1943, a number of Hungarian Jews were also murdered in the vicinity. In 1942, forces of the 2nd Hungarian Army, which used them for labor purposes, had moved the Jews into Ukrainian territory. The Hungarian Jews probably had been in the Zhitomir oblast’ since early 1943, when the rear services of the Hungarian army were deployed here, as well as subunits tasked with fighting against the partisans. Many workers who had already been subjected to horrible working conditions, sparse rations, and other cruel treatment died of exhaustion, starvation, and disease.
A hospital for Jews who had fallen ill was established in the village of Kupishche, 9 kilometers (5.6 miles) from Korosten’. It occupied a few rooms in a brick building. The majority of the sick, however, lay in open barns. The grounds were surrounded by a fence and barbed wire. On a daily basis, many died of typhus. The corpses were stacked like firewood by the wall of a nearby horse stable. On April 29, 1943, the occupying forces decided to take drastic measures to deal with this source of infection. One of the barns, which held 600 persons, was burned to the ground. Those who tried to escape were shot with submachine guns. A small group of Jews did manage to escape and would later recount what happened. When this became known to the minister of defense in Hungary, V. Nagy, he ordered a special commission to investigate the matter and find the perpetrators. But the commission came to the conclusion that “the fire was started accidentally by Jews who were smoking.”8
SOURCES
The existence of a ghetto in Korosten’ is mentioned in these publications: Handbuch der Lager, Gefängnisse und Ghettos auf dem besetzten Territorium der Ukraine (1941–1944) (Kiev: Staatskomitee der Archiven der Ukraine, 2000), p. 77; and Jacob G. Frumkin et al., Russian Jewry, 1917–67 (T. Yoseloff, 1966), 2:115. Information on the destruction of the Jewish population in Korosten’ can be found also in Rossiiskaia Evreiskaia Entsiklopediia (Moscow: Russian Academy of Natural Sciences, Jewish Encyclopedia Research Center, “Epos,” 2004), 5:160–161; and 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), pp. 659–660.
Documents about the persecution and elimination of the Jews of Korosten’ can be found in the following archives: DAZO; GARF (7021-60-297); and TsDAVO (8-2-156, p. 28).
NOTES
1. Boris Zabarko, ed., “Nur wir haben überlebt”: Holocaust in Ukraine—Zeugnisse und Dokumente (Wittenberg: Dittrich, 2004), p. 159.
2. 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.
3. GARF, 7021-60-297, pp. 6, 10, testimony of S.I. Gnedov’skyi on May 26, 1945.
4. BA-BL, R 58/216-17, Ereignismeldung UdSSR (EM) no. 59, August 21, 1941; EM no. 80, September 11, 1941; EM no. 86, September 17, 1941.
5. GARF, 7021-60-297, p. 297.
6. Paul Blobel, affidavit, June 6, 1947 (N-Doc. NO 3842).
7. TsDAVO, 8-2-156, p. 28, report of FK 197, September 20, 1941, as cited in V.M. Nemiatyi, ed., History Teaches a Lesson: Captured War Documents Expose the Atrocities of the German-Fascist Invaders and Their Henchmen in Ukraine’s Temporarily-Occupied Territory during the Great Patriotic War (1941–1945) (Kiev: Politvidav Ukraini, 1986), p. 38.
8. Randolph L. Braham, The Hungarian Labor Service System 1939–1945 (Boulder, CO: East European Quarterly, 1977), p. 39. See also P. Iskorostenskii, “Tragediia sela Kupishche,” Evreiskie vesti (September 1993), in which he writes that 800 Jews perished in the fire. According to a tele gram from the Reichskommissar of Ukraine on April 29, 1943, “a barn burned down on a kolkhoz farm in Kubischche, within Gebiet Korosten, and 300 Hungarian Jews were burned to death.” See NARA, RG-242, microcopy T-454, reel 23, fr. 402.
