NOVOGRAD-VOLYNSKII (aka ZVIAGEL’)
Pre-1941: Novograd-V olynskii, city and raion center, Zhitomir oblast’, Ukrainian SSR; 1941-1944: Nowograd-Wolynskyj (renamed Zwiahel), Rayon and Gebiet center, Generalkommissariat Shitomir; post-1991: Novohrad-Volyns’kyi, raion center, Zhytomyr oblast’, Ukraine
Novograd-Volynskii is located 84 kilometers (52 miles) northwest of Zhitomir. According to the 1939 census, there were 6,839 Jews living in the city (28.8 percent of the total population).
German armed forces occupied the city on July 6, 1941, two weeks after the initial German invasion of the Soviet Union on June 22. During those weeks, part of the Jewish community was able to evacuate to the east. Men of an eligible age were conscripted into the Red Army or enlisted voluntarily. Around two thirds of the pre-war Jewish population remained at the start of the occupation.
From July to October 1941, a German military commandant’s office (Ortskommandantur) ran the city. The military authorities established a local administration and set up an auxiliary Ukrainian police force from among local residents. The Ukrainian police played an active part in the measures taken against the Jewish population.
At the end of October 1941, authority was transferred to a German civil administration. The city of Novograd-Volynskii became the administrative center of Gebiet Nowograd-Wolynskyj. Regierungsassessor Dr. Schmidt became the Gebietskommissar. Gebiet Nowograd-Wolynskyj in turn was incorporated into Generalkommissariat Shitomir, within Reichskommissariat Ukraine.1
Shortly after the occupation of the city, the Ortskommandantur ordered the registration and marking of the Jews. They were required to wear armbands with a six-pointed star. Jews were also required to perform various kinds of heavy [End Page 1552] labor. According to the The Encyclopedia of Jewish Life, the Jews were moved to an “open ghetto” in the city in August 1941 by order of the military administration. The Jews were not permitted to leave its borders or to buy products from the local Ukrainians. As a result, hunger and famine quickly ensued.
At the end of July 1941, the first mass murders of the Jewish population were carried out. The first victims were those accused of acts of sabotage. At that time, 800 Jews were shot in a bomb crater, in the area of the Machine-Tractor Station (MTS). In the backyard of a house for invalids, where another bomb crater was located, 200 more Jews were shot. In the area of the MTS, the victims were led out in groups of 100 to 200, and in the backyard of the house for invalids, there were four groups of 40 to 50. In addition, more than 100 were shot in the yard of a bakery, in a former ditch for grain.2 It is likely that at least some of these murders were carried out by the 8th SS-Motorized Brigade, which was commanded by SS-Standartenführer Sacks. The military staff and a detachment of this unit were stationed in the city on July 27–28, 1941.3 Also present in the city at that time was a detachment of Sonderkommando 4a, which “in cooperation with the Wehrmacht and Ukrainians” arrested and shot “34 political commissars, agents, and others” in a prisoner-of-war (POW) camp.4
Around the middle of August 1941, Sonderkommando 4a carried out another cleansing Aktion. The Wehrmacht “handed over [to Sonderkommando 4a] 230 civilian prisoners who had been captured. Of these, 161 persons were executed. They were accused of being Jews, Communists, looters, and saboteurs.”5
At the end of August 1941, another mass execution was carried out in a grove near the former Red Army Building (Dom Krasnoi Armii). Altogether there were more than 700 victims, including women and children.6 It is possible that this shooting was carried out by the Police Brigade “South,” which at the time was active in the region.
In September 1941, the open ghetto in Novograd-Volynskii was finally liquidated. At an old military firing range, around 3,200 Jews were shot, including those from outlying villages.7 It is likely that the executions were carried out by the staff company of the Höherer SS- und Polizeiführer Russland-Süd, commanded by SS-Obergruppenführer Friedrich Jeckeln.
The last mass execution of the Jews was carried out by the 1st SS-Motorized Brigade, which received orders on September 8, 1941, from the Kommandostab Reichsführer-SS. On September 12, 1941, the brigade arrived in the city. SS-Untersturmführer Max Täubner, the commander, found out from the city’s mayor that there were still 319 Jews in prison, whom the Wehrmacht had confined there for labor purposes. Täubner ordered these Jews to be shot in a ditch outside the city that had been dug in advance by the Ukrainian police.8
From November 1941 to November 1942, a labor camp existed in the city. Able-bodied Jewish men were resettled to work there from Baranovka, Rogachov, Iarunia, and other towns and villages. The prisoners of the camp were used to build railway lines. In November 1942, with the help of the partisan movement, some of the prisoners attempted a mass escape but were arrested and shot.9
SOURCES
The ghetto in Novograd-Volynskii is mentioned 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. 905. The Handbuch der Lager, Gefängnisse und Ghettos auf dem besetzten Territorium der Ukraine (1941–1944) (Kiev: Staatskomitee der Archiven der Ukraine, 2000), p. 77, only registers a camp for civilians and a prison in the city. Other relevant publications include: E. Klee, W. Dressen, and V. Riess, eds., “Schöne Zeiten”: Judenmord aus der Sicht der Täter und Gaffer (Frankfurt am Main, 1988); Y. Büchler, “ ‘Unworthy Behavior’: The Case of SS Officer Max Täubner,” Holocaust and Genocide Studies 17:3 (Winter 2003): 409–429; and Boris Zabarko, ed., Zhivymi ostalis’ tol’ko my: Svidetel’stva i dokumenty (Kiev: Biblioteka Institut iudaiki, 1999), pp. 98–101.
Documents pertaining to the persecution and elimination of the Jews in Novograd-Volynskii can be found in the following archives: BA-L (e.g., B 162/5575); DAZO; GARF (7021-60-300 and 305); and YVA.
NOTES
1. 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.
2. GARF, 7021-60-305, pp. 3 and reverse side.
3. BA-L, B 162/5575 (202 AR-Z 1212/60, Bd. XXX), p. 7090, as cited in Martin Cüppers, Wegbereiter der Shoah: Die Waffen-SS, der Kommandostab Reichsführer-SS und die Judenvernichtung 1939–1945 (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 2005), pp. 166–167.
4. BA-BL, R 58/214, Ereignismeldung UdSSR no. 38, July 30, 1941.
5. Ibid., R 58/216, Ereignismeldung UdSSR no. 60, August 22, 1941. The documents refer to a detachment of Einsatzkommando 5; however, it is more likely that this was a detachment of Sonderkommando 4a, as Einsatzkommando 5 was operating further south.
6. GARF, 7021-60-305, p. 5.
7. Ibid., pp. 9, 67, 163, 182–183. Among those murdered were Jews from the outlying villages of Tesnovka (17 people), Barvinovka (13 people), Staraia Romanovka (10 people), and Sloboda Chernetskaia (14 people).
8. See Klee, Dressen, and Riess, “Schöne Zeiten,” pp. 184 ff.
9. Witness testimony of Eva Gladkaia, in Zabarko, Zhivymi ostalis’ tol’ko my, pp. 98, 101.
