LIUBAR
Pre-1941: Liubar, town and raion center, Zhitomir oblast’, Ukrainian SSR; 1941–1944: Ljubar, Rayon center, Gebiet Tschudnow, Generalkommissariat Shitomir; post-1991: Liubar, raion center, Zhytomyr oblast’, Ukraine
Liubar is located about 80 kilometers (50 miles) southwest of Zhitomir. According to the 1939 population census, there were 1,857 Jews residing in the town of Liubar (70.26 percent of the population) and 542 additional Jews living in the outlying settlements of the Liubar raion.
On July 7, 1941, German parachute brigades landed in Liubar, where they faced Soviet infantrymen, but with the aid of supporting land forces of the German XLVIII Corps they soon secured the town.1 In the two weeks prior to the occupation, a few hundred Jews were able to evacuate to the east, but most were unable to get access to the transportation, money, and official permission from their place of work that were necessary. Approximately 75 percent of the pre-war Jewish population remained in the town at the start of the occupation.
From July to October 1941, a German military commandant’s office (Ortskommandantur) governed Liubar. The temporary German military authorities established a local administration and an auxiliary Ukrainian police force recruited from local residents. The local mayor was the former teacher Kudimov, and the police was headed by F.U. Kiian.2
At the end of October 1941, power was transferred to a German civil administration. The occupying forces incorporated Liubar into Gebiet Tschudnow, within Generalkommissariat Shitomir. Dr. Blümel was appointed as the Gebietskommissar.3
Just after the occupation of the town, the Jewish family of Hirsh Halperine, consisting of four individuals, was accused of sabotage and shot. Shortly afterwards, the Germans shot four more Jews, whom they accused of being Soviet activists.4
On the orders of the Ortskommandantur, the Rayon authority organized the registration of the Jews. Jews were also required to wear a distinguishing armband on their sleeves and were forced to perform heavy labor, in groups divided according to sex.
In July 1941, the German military commandant established an open ghetto (Jewish residential district) in Liubar, designating several streets in the center of the town where the Jews had to live. Jews were prohibited from going outside the borders of the ghetto to buy products from Ukrainians. As a result, famine developed inside the ghetto.5
On August 9, 1941, German security forces conducted the first Aktion in the town. They arrested 300 Jewish men on the pretext of forced labor and then shot them to the northeast of Liubar, near the village of Iurovka.6 In all likelihood, the shooting was carried out by members of Police Regiment “South,” part of which was stationed in Liubar at that time. This Aktion was accompanied by looting and beatings carried out by the Ukrainian police, which lasted for several days.7
On September 13, 1941, men of the 45th Reserve Police Battalion conducted a second Aktion in Liubar.8 The aim of this Aktion was to liquidate the ghetto and annihilate the entire Jewish population of the town. More than 1,000 Jews were shot in a sand quarry, about 3 kilometers (1.9 miles) northwest of Liubar.9
Ukrainian policemen subsequently hunted down inside the ghetto those Jews who had managed to hide during these Aktions. The remaining Jewish craftsmen (including tailors, shoemakers, and cap makers) were at first moved into the school building, then relocated into the building of the former children’s home, which was guarded by members of the Ukrainian police. They went to work in the building of the former military commissariat, where they made clothing and boots for the police. At the end of October 1941, all of these Jews (about 250) were also shot in the sand quarry.10
In the fall of 1941, a total of 1,536 people were murdered in the sand quarry near the town: 1,199 Jewish residents of Liubar, 190 Jewish refugees (60 from Polonnoe, 30 from Gritsev, 27 from Slavuta, and 73 from Ostropol’), and 147 Soviet prisoners of war (POWs).11
In the fall of 1941, the Ukrainian police also killed the Jews who were living in the villages of the Liubar raion. In the village of Malenkaia Derevichka, 4 Jews were killed; in Novyi Liubar, 46 Jews (including 34 in September 1941); in Staryi Liubar, 19 Jews; from Velikaia Volitsa, 12 Jews (killed in Liubar); from Strizhevka, 24 Jews (killed in Liubar); in Staraia Chertoriia, 12 Jews; in Novaia Chertoriia, 207 Jews (on November 27, 1941); and in Pedynka, 4 Jews.12
SOURCES
There is a survivor account in the volume of survivor testimonies edited by Boris Zabarko, Zhivymi ostalis’ tol’ko my: Svidetel’stva i dokumenty (Kiev: Zadruga, 1999), pp. 160–164.
Documentation concerning the persecution and extermination of the Jews in the town of Liubar and the surrounding raion can be found in the following archives: BA-BL; BA-L (ZStL, II 204a AR-Z 131/67); DAZO (1151-1-703); GARF (7021-60-302); NARA; USHMM; and YVA.
NOTES
1. See intelligence report of the 60th Inf. Div. (Mot.) to the headquarters of XLVIIIth A.K., July 13, 1941; NARA, RG-242, T-314, reel 1146, fr. 425.
2. E. Zakharov-Zaidenberg, “Tak bylo unichtozheno vse evreiskoe naselenie Liubara,” in Zabarko, Zhivymi ostalis’ tol’ko my, p. 160. Among the Ukrainian police serving in Liubar in 1942 was Stanislaus Kulschitzki; see DAZO, 1151-1-703, pp. 13–14.
3. 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.
4. Zabarko, Zhivymi ostalis’ tol’ko my, p. 160.
5. Ibid., pp. 160–61. On the ghetto, Perl Kantor commented: “There was no real ghetto in Liubar. So why was one created in a matter of days? And who gave the order to shut in the Jews if even the Russians in Liubar had forgotten they were Russians?” See Perl Kantor, “After All,” published in the newspaper Vesty, April 27, 1995.
6. Zabarko, Zhivymi ostalis’ tol’ko my, p. 161. In the documents of the Soviet Extraordinary State Commission (ChGK), this Aktion is not mentioned; see GARF, 7021-60-302.
7. Summary of German Police Decodes 275–323, August 21, 1941, p. 5, in NA, HW 16/6, pt. 1.
8. Telegram no. 444, from HSSPF Russland-Süd, September 15 and 17, 1941, VHAP, KdO Stab RFSS. The telegram states that “the 45th Reserve Police Battalion completed the ‘cleansing Aktion’ in Liubar.”
9. GARF, 7021-60-302, pp. 4, 7.
10. Zabarko, Zhivymi ostalis’ tol’ko my, pp. 162–164. In the documents of the ChGK, this Aktion is not mentioned; see GARF, 7021-60-302.
11. GARF, 7021-60-302, pp. 4, 7.
12. Ibid., 7021-60-302, pp. 27, 62, 140–141, 171, 199, 201, 268, 391, 363, 405.
