GORODISHCHE (IMENI G.I. PETROVSKOGO)
Pre-1941: Imeni G.I. Petrovskogo (former Vorontsovo-Gorodishche), town and raion center, Kiev oblast’, Ukrainian SSR; 1941–1943: Petrowskowo, (later renamed Woronzowo-Gorodischtsche), Rayon center, Gebiet Smela, Generalkommissariat Kiew; post-1991: Gorodishche, Cherkasy oblast’, Ukraine
Gorodishche is located 107 kilometers (67 miles) northeast of Uman’. According to the 1939 census, 570 Jews (4 percent of all residents) were living in the town. At that time, it was a settlement named after G.I. Petrovskii.
At the start of August 1941, six weeks after the German invasion of the USSR on June 22, German armed forces occupied the town. Part of the Jewish population was able to evacuate to the east. Approximately 60 percent of the pre-war Jewish population remained in Gorodishche at the start of the occupation.
In the summer and fall of 1941, a German military administration (Ortskommandantur) was in charge of the town. The Ortskommandantur established a local administration and an auxiliary Ukrainian police force. The head of the Ukrainian police was a man named Nosar’, and a certain Zhuk served as his deputy.
In December 1941, authority was transferred to the German civilian administration. Gorodishche was incorporated into Gebiet Smela, which in turn became part of Generalkommissariat Kiew in Reichskommissariat Ukraine.1
Shortly after the occupation of the town, the German military ordered the registration and marking of all Jews. The Jews had to wear distinguishing armbands, and they were forced into various kinds of heavy physical labor, such as road construction and repair.
In the fall of 1941, by order of the German military administration, a ghetto was created in Gorodishche. Jews were prohibited from leaving the ghetto and were not allowed to buy goods from Ukrainians. As a result, the inmates of the ghetto suffered from hunger and disease.
The Germans liquidated the ghetto on March 29, 1942. All the remaining Jews in Gorodishche, around 300 Jews altogether, including some from nearby villages, were driven into a courtyard by the Gorodishche police. At dawn the next morning they were taken out and shot by the Ukrainian police and the German Gendarmerie in a ditch near “Sadstantsiia.”2
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. Act of the Gorodishche Town Commission dated March 7, 1944, published in Karatel’ zhivet v Kliftone: O fashistskikh prispeshnikakh, ukryvaiushchikhsia v SSha (Moscow: Iuridicheskaia literatura, 1985), p. 40. According to another source (Karatel’ zhivet v Kliftone, p. 22), the ghetto was liquidated on April 4, 1942.
