BELAIA TSERKOV’
Pre-1941: Belaia Tserkov’, town and raion center, Kiev oblast’, Ukrainian SSR; 1941–1944: Belaja Zerkow, Gebiet and Rayon center, Generalkommissariat Kiew; post-1991: Bila Tserkva, Kiev oblast’, Ukraine
Belaia Tserkov’ is located 75 kilometers (47 miles) south-southwest of Kiev. On the eve of the German invasion, there were 9,284 Jews in Belaia Tserkov’.
After the beginning of the Soviet-German war, approximately half of the Jews of the city managed to evacuate. On July 16, 1941, the Germans captured Belaia Tserkov’, and in August the military administration ordered Jews from the town and the surrounding area to move into a ghetto located in the former Red Army military barracks and in a brick factory with no light or water. Between 2,000 and 4,000 ghetto residents were registered and made to wear identifying insignia. A council of elders was established to assign Jews to various work tasks, especially collecting the harvest, street cleaning, and tree felling.1 On August 19–20, 1941, a detachment of Sonderkommando 4a shot adult Jews near POW Camp (Stalag) 334; about 500 people were murdered. On August 22, under the supervision of a detachment of Sonderkommando 4a, led by SS-Obersturmführer August Häfner, the Ukrainian police shot 90 Jewish children. The murder of the children marked the beginning of the attempt to exterminate the Jews in the USSR.2 According to some sources, there was another mass shooting of about 3,000 Jews in the city at the beginning of September 1941.3
In October 1941, the military administration was replaced by a German civil administration. Belaia Tserkov’ was integrated into Generalkommissariat Kiew in Reichskommissariat Ukraine. The district commissar (Gebietskommissar) in Belaia Tserkov’ was Regierungsrat Dr. Stelzer. Among the leaders of the Ukrainian police in Belaia Tserkov’, notorious for his brutality, was Anton Spak.4
Several hundred Jews remained in the ghetto and were deployed to clean the streets. The Ukrainian police closely supervised the Jews and guarded the ghetto. In January 1942, the Gendarmes and Ukrainian police carried out a further Aktion, capturing about 30 old and sick Jews, who were taken to the site near the POW camp and shot. In February, in a large sweep through the district, the Gendarmerie and the Ukrainian police escorted several hundred Jews to the town where they were placed in two prisons. Then 100 Jews incapable of work were shot. On March 15, 1942, the Gendarmerie and the Ukrainian police murdered about 500 Jewish men, women, and children at Stalag 334. The last large killing Aktion took place in early May, when the Security Police from Belaia Tserkov’, the Gendarmerie, and the Ukrainian police murdered all the remaining Jews in the ghetto. As late as September 1943, the Germans were bringing Jews from the surrounding countryside to Belaia Tserkov’, where they were murdered.5
SOURCES
Background information on the Jewish community of Belaia Tserkov’ can be found in Shmuel Spector and Geoffrey Wigoder, eds., The Encyclopedia of Jewish Life before and during the Holocaust (New York: New York University Press, 2001), p. 99. On the murder of the Jewish children, see Ernst Klee, Willi Dressen, and Volker Riess, eds., “The Good Old Days”: The Holocaust as Seen by Its Perpetrators and Bystanders (New York: Free Press, 1988), pp. 138–151; and Hamburger Institut für Sozialforschung, ed., Verbrechen der Wehrmacht: Dimensionen des Vernichtungskrieges 1941–1944 (Hamburg: Hamburger Edition, 2002), pp. 598–605.
References to the murder of the Jews of Belaia Tserkov’ can be found in documents from the following archives: BA-L (B 162, AR-Z 269/60, AR-Z 11/61, AR 1.477/62, AR-Z 1.163/62, and AR-Z 21/58); NARA (RG-242, T-175 and T-501); USHMM (RG-06.025*02 and RG-31.018M); and YVA.
NOTES
1. USHMM, RG-06.025*02, “War Crimes Investigation and Prosecution,” microfiche 19, file 312; NARA, RG-242, T-501, reel 7, fr. 000886, reel 33, fr. 000886; F.D. Sverdlov, ed., Dokumenty obviniaiut. Kholokost: Svidetel’stva Krasnoi Armii. (Moscow: Nauchno-prosvetitel’nyi tsentr “Kholokost,” 1996), pp. 51–52.
2. NARA, RG-242, T-175 (Ereignismeldung UdSSR no. 86, September 17, 1941), reel 233, fr. 27222379; T-501, reel 7, fr. 000886; USHMM, RG-06.025*02, “War Crimes Investigation and Prosecution,” microfiche 19, file 312; BA-L, AR-Z 269/60, Ermittlungsverfahren gegen die Angehörigen der Sk 4a, Bd. 34, pp. 374–375.
3. Alexander Kruglov, The Losses Suffered by Ukrainian Jews in 1941–1944 (Kharkov: Tarbut Laam, 2005), pp. 108–111.
4. 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. On the activities of Anton Spak, see Their True Face (Kiev: Ukraina Society, 1978), pp. 50–57. Spak retreated with the Germans and later migrated to Canada.
5. USHMM, RG-06.025*02, “War Crimes Investigation and Prosecution,” microfiche 2, file 133; microfiche 19, file 311, 312; USHMM, RG-31.018M, Acc.2002.97, “Postwar war crimes trials related to the Holocaust,” reel 3, spr. 56527, ark. 14, 24, 62rev-63, 106rev-107; BA-L, B 162/3785, p. 174 (AR-Z 11/61, Ermittlungsverfahren gegen die Angehörigen der Sk 4b); BA-L, B 162/2643, pp. 1849–1857, 2645, p. 3175 (AR-Z 21/58, Ermittlungsverfahren gegen Erich Ehrlinger u.a.); BA-L, B 162/5999 (AR-Z 1.163/62, Ermittlungsverfahren gegen die Angehörigen der Dienstelle des KdS Kiew), p. 4.
