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

Pre-1941: Ruzhin, town and raion center, Zhitomir oblast’, Ukrainian SSR; 1941–1944: Rushin, Rayon and Gebiet center, Generalkommissariat Shitomir; post-1991: Ruzhyn, raion center, Zhytomyr oblast’, Ukraine

Ruzhin is located 72 kilometers (45 miles) southeast of Zhitomir. According to the 1939 census, 1,108 Jews lived in Ruzhin, about one quarter of the total population. There were also 633 Jews residing in the nearby village of Belilovka and 2,056 Jews in all living in the Ruzhin raion (4.22 percent of the total). Only a small number of Jews were able to evacuate from the area with the retreating Red Army.

German forces occupied Ruzhin on July 17, 1941, and almost immediately began robbing and humiliating the town’s Jews; they even captured one incident on film.¹ Shootings began as early as September 10, when 750 Jews in Ruzhin were shot.

The official transition from a military to a civil administration in the Shitomir region occurred on October 20, 1941. Ruzhin, as a Gebiet center in Generalkommissariat Shitomir, was responsible also for the Rayons of Popilnia and Wtscherajsche. The German Gebietskommissar in Ruzhin was Regierungsassesor Ganglhoff. The commander of the Gendarmerie post in Ruzhin and also SS- und Polizei-Gebietsführer there was Leutnant der Gendarmerie Gustav Dutkowski.² Among the senior local policemen in Ruzhin were Josef Rudenko, Artur Reglin, and Dmitri Wosnjak, who were responsible for a squad of about 40 Ukrainian policemen in the Ruzhin Rayon and about 100 in the entire Gebiet.³

After the September Aktion, the remaining Jews were placed on one bank of the river in a ghetto consisting of a dozen houses enclosed by a wire fence. The Germans also brought into the ghetto Jews found in the surrounding villages, including from Veselovka and Belilovka, where similar Aktions had been conducted. In forming the ghetto, the local Ukrainian elder in Ruzhin, Kachanovski, ordered the Jews to vacate some 200 homes and rebuild them for the use of the Germans and the local Ukrainian police, who guarded the ghetto. The Germans appointed a Jewish elder by the name of Yankel. He organized several craft guilds, including guilds for cobblers and tailors.⁴

The craftsmen worked mainly to fulfill the orders of the police. In exchange for food, they also performed work for members of the local population who came to the ghetto fence with their requests. The craftsmen shared their food with the other Jews in the ghetto, as the captives received no rations. Young Jews were sent to work on construction sites and perform other forced labor tasks, and the local police sometimes gave them the leftovers from their own meals. Once a week Jews were brought before the local German commandant for a roll call. In December 1941 and January 1942, onerous financial “contributions” were levied on the Jews.

On April 30, 1942, the local police rounded up 90 Jewish men from the ghetto, saying that they would be escorting horses to the front lines. One managed to run away, but the rest were never heard from again. At the same time, local policemen entered the ghetto and took away everything that had been produced by the craftsmen, including their unfinished products. This caused great anxiety among the ghetto inhabitants, and some of them started to prepare hiding places. However, very few could finish these bunkers, as on the next day, May 1, 1942, the Germans, together with local Ukrainian police under the command of police chief Josepf Rudenko, entered the ghetto and selected 250 to 300 people. This group of Jews was escorted in a single column (the children were put onto several horse-drawn carts) to the grain storage facility and locked inside. Afterwards, in groups of 25 or 30, they were taken to a specially prepared ditch at the site of the Novyi Mir kolkhoz, made to lie on the ground or on top of the corpses of previous victims, and shot in the back of the head by the German Security Police, assisted by the Gendarmerie and local police.⁵ Several Germans photographed the mass shooting. In his report dated June 3, 1942, the Generalkommissar, Kurt Klemm, reported that for the most part the “Jewish question” had been settled in Generalkommissariat Shitomir, as 606 Jews had been “resettled” in Ruzhin.⁶ On June 14, 1942, in accordance with orders from the captain of the Gendarmerie in Vinnitsa, the Gendarmerie-Gebietsführer in Ruzhin reported that no more Jews were being employed at the Gendarmerie posts in his district.⁷

On the orders of the Germans, a number of Jewish workers and their families had been excluded from the Aktion. Some of these people were transferred to other forced labor camps in the region, such as to the camp at Nadonesi.⁸ About 200 Jews were retained to work in and around Ruzhin, sorting the possessions of those who had been shot and also as specialist craftsmen.⁹ On the orders of the Germans, the Jewish [End Page 1566] craftsmen taught the basics of their craft to a group of local Ukrainians. According to the postwar evidence of police chief Rudenko, in the summer of 1942 the police conducted another raid on the interned Jews and set aside about 100 specialist workers. The local police then escorted the other approximately 100 Jews to a killing site, where German police forces shot them. The remaining specialists were interned within a separate residential area (probably in the nearby village of Balamutovka) and had to report daily to the Gendarmerie.¹⁰

A number of Jews had successfully managed to hide at the time of the roundups and had escaped into the surrounding countryside. Some of them subsequently returned to the camp in Balamutovka. In September and October 1942, the local police in Ruzhin were ordered to capture and kill all the Jews remaining in the area and reported that they had shot several.¹¹ At the end of September, more than 60 Jews were collected at the office of the Gendarmerie in Balamutovka, later to be shot at the grave site in Ruzhin. Realizing that they were about to be killed, the Jews started to flee across the orchards towards the forest in the direction of Ruzhin. A number of these prisoners were shot while fleeing, and 20 more were recaptured and shot subsequently. The SS- und Polizei-Gebietsführer in Ruzhin reported that the SD from Berdichev shot 44 Jews in Ruzhin on October 1, 1942.¹² Around 10 Jews managed to escape and hide in the woods.

The last Jews in Ruzhin were probably shot in 1943. On March 1, 1943, the SS- und Polizei-Gebietsführer in Ruzhin wrote to the Gendarmerie post in Ruzhin, requesting that the remaining Jews be registered by name, together with their occupations, and asking at the same time whether the “ditch” was ready.¹³

The Red Army liberated Ruzhin on December 28, 1943.