ROGACHOV
Pre-1941: Rogachov, village, Baranovka raion, Zhitomir oblast’, Ukrainian SSR; 1941–1944: Rogatschow, Rayon Baranowka, Gebiet Zwiahel (Nowograd-Wolynskyj), Generalkommissariat Shitomir; post-1991: Rohachiv, Baranivka raion, Zhytomyr oblast’, Ukraine
Rogachov is located 69 kilometers (43 miles) west-northwest of Zhitomir. In June 1941, there were about 300 Jews living in the village.
German forces occupied Rogachov on July 6, 1941, two weeks after the German invasion of the Soviet Union. During those weeks, a number of Jews were able to evacuate to the east. Men of military age were called up to the Red Army or enlisted voluntarily. About 70 percent of the pre-war Jewish population remained in Rogachov at the start of the occupation.
From July to October 1941, a German military commandant’s office (Ortskommandantur) administered the village. The German military administration appointed a village elder (starosta) and recruited an auxiliary Ukrainian police force made up of local residents. The local police played an active role in the anti-Jewish measures.
At the end of October 1941, power was transferred to a German civil administration. Rogachov was incorporated into Gebiet Nowograd-Wolynskyj, where Regierungsassessor Dr. Schmidt became the Gebietskommissar.1
Shortly after the start of the occupation, the Ortskommandantur ordered the village elder and Ukrainian policemen to organize the registration and marking of the Jews. They were forced to wear armbands bearing a six-pointed star and to perform heavy labor solely on account of their race. At the end of July 1941, on the instructions of the German military administration, an open ghetto (Jewish residential district) was formed in the center of the village. The German regulations prohibited Jews from leaving the ghetto without permission or from buying products from the Ukrainians. As a result, food was in very short supply for the ghetto inhabitants. Jews caught violating the rules and going beyond the borders of the ghetto without permission were shot by the Ukrainian police. The German authorities and local police also forced the Jews to hand over all their valuables and good articles of clothing.2
In August 1941, the first Aktion was carried out in the village. A number of Jews were escorted into the forest and shot. On October 1, 1941, the day of Yom Kippur, the ghetto was liquidated. On that day, the German security forces and their collaborators assembled the Jews in the local assembly hall (klub). They separated the families of the craftsmen (reading out 20 or 25 names) from the rest, then placed all those remaining into trucks, drove them into the forest 4 or 5 kilometers (about 2.5 to 3 miles) to the east of the village, and shot them. The small children stayed behind in the assembly hall. Two days later, the Ukrainian policemen also transported the children on carts into the forest and shot them there. In [End Page 1565] November 1941, after having been confined within three houses in the interim period, the craftsmen and their families were relocated to the “ghetto” in Novograd-Volynskii.3
SOURCES
A relevant survivor testimony has been published in Boris Zabarko, ed., Holocaust in the Ukraine (Portland, OR: Vallentine Mitchell, 2005), pp. 41–44.
Documents dealing with the persecution and extermination of the Jews in Rogachov can be found in the following archives: DAZO; and GARF (7021-60-283).
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. Testimony of Grigorii Vainerman, in Boris Zabarko, ed., Zhivymi ostalis’ tol’ko my: Svidetel’stva i dokumenty (Kiev, 1999), p. 79; an English translation is available in Zabarko, Holocaust in the Ukraine, pp. 41–44.
3. Zabarko, Zhivymi ostalis’ tol’ko my, pp. 79–80.
