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

Pre-1941: Narodichi, town and raion center, Zhitomir oblast’, Ukrainian SSR; 1941–1944: Naroditschi, Rayon center, Gebiet Korosten, Generalkommissariat Shitomir; post-1991: Narodychy, raion center, Zhytomyr oblast’, Ukraine

Narodichi is located about 110 kilometers (69 miles) north-northeast of Zhitomir. In 1939, the Jewish population of Narodichi was 1,233, comprising less than half of the total population.

German forces occupied Narodichi on August 22, 1941. In the two months from the start of the German invasion, the Jewish population in town changed dramatically. Many Jews from Narodichi managed to evacuate to the eastern regions of the Soviet Union, while Jewish refugees from the cities arrived in this remote town seeking shelter. In 1941 the Jewish population in Narodichi was wiped out rather quickly in two (or possibly three) massacres. One occurred on September 9, 1941, and another “on a cold rainy day” in mid-November. Einsatzgruppe C reported on September 11, 1941, that “in Narodichi, 208 terrorists, and, in a nearby barn, 60 terrorists were arrested and shot in the course of a large-scale Aktion.”¹

A Ukrainian peasant, Mykola Stepanchik, recalled what he had witnessed in 1941 when he was 11 years old. His home was located on the road leading to the mass shooting site. On the morning of the killing Aktion, a member of Sonderkommando 4a had shooed him away, threatening him if he did not leave the field near his house, where pits were being prepared and guards were cordoning off the area. A German Gestapo man told him in Ukrainian: leave now or you will be killed. He was tending his cow in that field. He was curious and hid in the crops where he could still see what was happening. First a truck appeared with the Germans and a group of Soviet prisoners of war (POWs). The POWs dug a large pit. The Germans took a lunch break and then returned at about 3:00 p.m. The truck arrived several times, carrying groups of about 40 or 50 Jews on each occasion. The adult Jews, including mothers with infants, were separated from the children. The Jews had to crouch down in rows of 10 near the swamp. They were on their knees next to the pit. The Germans had rifles and automatic weapons and stood only about 5 meters (16 feet) from the Jews. There were six Ukrainian policemen, but they did not shoot. One Ukrainian policeman placed straw on top of the bodies in the pit. Then the rain came. There were no passersby during the Aktion. Everyone in town heard the gunfire.²

The Sonderkommando unit, however, soon moved on and left behind the now mostly orphaned Jewish children, who had been brought by the local Ukrainian police to the local cinema/club building, the former synagogue, as an unusual form of open remnant ghetto. The local militia was led by a Ukrainian chief named Khrenovsky (a photographer) and his deputy Artem Orel. It appears that the children were left there, more or less abandoned for about two months, with only two elderly women, who were supposed to care for them. They were given no food rations or water and had to depend on the local inhabitants to survive. Stepanchik recalls that some of the children wandered the streets, looking for food. According to evidence collected by Symon Gorevsky (and deposited at Yad Vashem, file # 9314) and Arkady Fedorovsky (who had joined the Red Army in 1941, lost 24 of his family members in the massacres, and returned to Narodichi in 1944), the former orthodox priest in the town went door to door, confronting locals, demanding that they donate food, and proclaiming that if they did not help these poor children, they would be punished by God. Some shared their food, but most avoided the club/cinema and spread rumors that the priest had gone mad.

In November 1941, the 72 children were shot by three German Gendarmes, assisted by local Ukrainian policemen, including Khrenovsky and Orel. They were forced to run naked in the Jewish cemetery, while being shot by one Gendarme who had mounted a machine gun on a tripod and two others who held semiautomatic pistols. The children’s bodies were hastily buried in the cemetery; the ground was hard.

According to the Soviet Extraordinary State Commission (ChGK) report, 370 Jews were shot in Narodichi in November 1941.³ It is not clear if this figure also includes the Jews [End Page 1549] who were shot in September or not, but it appears to conflict with the smaller number of child victims cited by witnesses. Given that Narodichi was also a Rayon center, where German and Ukrainian police were stationed, additional Jews may have been brought there from surrounding villages. It is possible that there was a third Aktion in November, at which time Jewish inhabitants from the villages were shot. In 1944, Fedorovsky and other local inhabitants erected a monument to the “823 Soviet Jews Shot in Narodichi.” The local Ukrainian police chief Khrenovsky was judged by a Soviet military tribunal and shot. The names and fates of the German perpetrators remain unknown.