RADOMYSHL’
Pre-1941: Radomyshl’, town and raion center, Zhitomir oblast’, Ukrainian SSR; 1941–1944: Radomyschl, Rayon and Gebiet center, Generalkommissariat Shitomir; post-1991: Radomyshl’, raion center, Zhytomyr oblast’, Ukraine
Radomyshl’ is located 48 kilometers (30 miles) northeast of Zhitomir. According to the 1939 census, there were 2,348 Jews living in the town (20.1 percent of the total population). Additionally, 129 Jews resided in the villages of the raion.
German armed forces occupied the town in mid-July 1941, approximately three weeks after the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union on June 22. During this period, a few hundred Jews were able to evacuate to the east, and eligible men were drafted into or enrolled voluntarily for the Red Army. Slightly less than 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 administration ran the town, appointing a mayor to administer its affairs. The Germans also created a Rayon administration and recruited a Ukrainian police force from among the local residents. The Ukrainian police played an active part in the anti-Jewish Aktions in Radomyshl’.
At the end of October 1941, authority was transferred to a German civil administration. Radomyshl’ became the administrative center of Gebiet Radomyschl, and Gauhauptstellenleiter Drechsler was named as Gebietskommissar. The Gebiet also encompassed the Rayons of Potievka and Malin.1
[End Page 1562] A few weeks after the occupation of the town, in August 1941, the German military administration in Radomyshl’ established an open ghetto for the Jews. All the Jews were moved onto Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht Streets (as they were known under the Soviet regime).2 Jews were prohibited from going beyond the ghetto’s borders. They were not allowed to buy products from the Ukrainians, and the Ukrainians in turn could not have any relations with the Jews. The Jews were ordered to wear armbands on their left arms, marked by yellow six-pointed stars. Jewish men were called on to perform heavy labor and were subjected to systematic robberies and assaults by the Ukrainian police.
In the first half of August 1941, two Aktions were carried out in the town. On August 5, 1941, a request was issued for Sonderkommando 4a (Sk 4a) to come to Radomyshl’ and enforce security there. Sk 4a, which was a mobile squad of the Security Police subordinated to Einsatzgruppe C, arrived in the town shortly thereafter, and its members then arrested and shot the local mayor and his deputies as “Bolsheviks.” They also shot one resident who had participated in the Soviet expulsion of Ukrainians and ethnic Germans (Volksdeutsche). A number of Jews were also arrested and shot, apparently for violating the regulations issued by the occupying authorities. In total, Sk 4a murdered 113 persons during this Aktion.3 One day later the same detachment carried out a second Aktion. In total during the two operations, Sk 4a shot “276 Jewish communist functionaries, saboteurs, Komsomol members, and communist agitators.”4
At the end of August 1941, a part of Sk 4a was based temporarily in Radomyshl’. Among the reasons for choosing Radomyshl’ as a base were the available food supplies and functioning infrastructure in the town, including a large dairy, a slaughterhouse, and a brewery.5 Conditions significantly worsened in the ghetto at the end of August 1941. Jews were resettled into the ghetto from the surrounding villages, and the Jewish houses became terribly overcrowded. On average, 15 people had to live in a single room. Sanitary conditions therefore became extremely poor. Jewish corpses were carried out of the houses on a daily basis. It became impossible to provide sufficient rations for the Jews, especially for the Jewish children. The danger of an epidemic was constantly present.6
On September 6, 1941, Sk 4a, under the command of SS-Standartenführer Paul Blobel, liquidated the ghetto in Radomyshl’. The Security Police forces gathered the Jews together and loaded them onto trucks with the assistance of the Ukrainian police. The Jews were then driven to a clearing in the forest several kilometers outside the town. The staff of Sk 4a shot the 1,107 adult Jews, and the Ukrainian police shot the 561 children, bringing the total number of those murdered during this Aktion to 1,668.7
SOURCES
Relevant publications include the following: Justiz und NS-Verbrechen, vol. 31 (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 1979), Lfd. Nr. 694a; 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. 1048; and Wendy Lower, Nazi Empire-Building and the Holocaust in Ukraine (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press in association with the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, 2005).
Documents and witness testimonies regarding the persecution and extermination of the Jews of Radomyshl’ can be found in the following archives: BA-BL (R 58/216 to 217); BA-L (e.g., ZStL, AR-Z 269/60, investigation of Kuno Callsen); DAZO; and GARF (7021-60-309).
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, 7021-60-309, p. 21 (testimony of S.K. Boguslavs’kii, May 26, 1945).
3. BA-BL, R 58/216, Ereignismeldung UdSSR (EM) no. 58, August 20, 1941.
4. Ibid., EM no. 59, August 21, 1941.
5. JuNS-V, vol. 31, p. 143; see also Lower, Nazi Empire-Building, p. 45.
6. BA-BL, R 58/217, EM no. 88, September 19, 1941; according to Lower, Nazi Empire-Building, p. 87, the Jews brought in from the surrounding areas by the SD were crammed into an old school, where they began to die of hunger and disease.
7. BA-BL, R 58/217, EM no. 88, September 19, 1941. For further details on the circumstances of the mass shooting, see LG-Darm, Ks 1/67 (Gsta), verdict against Kuno Callsen and others, November 29, 1968, in JuNS-V, vol. 31, Lfd. Nr. 694a.
