KORSUN’ SHEVCHENKOVSKII
Pre-1941: Korsun’ Shevchenkovskii, town and raion center, Kiev oblast’, Ukrainian SSR; 1941–1943: Korsun, Rayon and Gebiet center, Generalkommissariat Kiew, Reichskommissariat Ukraine; post-1991: Korsun’ Shevchenkovskyi, Cherkasy oblast’, Ukraine
Korsun’ Shevchenkovskii is located 122 kilometers (76 miles) south-southeast of Kiev. According to the 1926 census, 2,486 Jews were living in the Korsun’ raion, most of them (2,449) in the town. In 1939, a census recorded 1,329 Jews in the town itself (14.2 percent of the total population) and another 570 Jews in villages (Shenderovka and Steblev) in the Korsun’ raion, as it was then constituted, for a total Jewish population of 1,899.1 The decrease in the Jewish population from 1926 to 1939 was mainly the result of the migration of Jews to other regions during that period.
German forces occupied Korsun’ on July 30, 1941, five and a half weeks after Germany attacked the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941. In the interval, a significant number of Jews were able to evacuate to the east. Eligible men were called up or volunteered for military service. Roughly one third of the pre-war Jewish population remained in the town following the occupation.
A German military commandant’s office (Ortskommandantur) administered Korsun’ during the summer and fall of 1941. The German military administration established a municipal authority and a Ukrainian auxiliary police force, both staffed by local inhabitants. The Ukrainian police took an active role in the implementation of anti-Jewish measures during the occupation.
In November 1941, governing authority shifted to a German civil administration. Korsun’ became the administrative center of Gebiet Korsun. The Gebietskommissar was Gemeinschaftsführer Lohmann. Gebiet Korsun was part of Generalkommissariat Kiew in Reichskomissariat Ukraine.2
By order of the German military commandant’s office soon after the occupation, the municipal authority organized the registration of all Jews, required them to wear armbands identifying them as Jews, and subjected them to various kinds of manual forced labor. Among the labor tasks performed by [End Page 1595] the Jews of Korsun’ were trash collection and cleaning the streets.
In October 1941, the German military administration in Korsun’ ordered the creation of an “open ghetto” in the town, for which purpose several houses were commandeered. The Germans forbade the Jews from leaving the limits of the ghetto to buy produce from the Ukrainians.
The Germans and their collaborators liquidated the ghetto in November 1941 when they shot the Jews of Korsun’3 as well as Jews brought from the town of Kanev4—altogether 543 people.5 The shooting took place in a ravine known as “Rezanii Iar.”
SOURCES
Documentation on the persecution and murder of the Jews of Korsun’ Shevchenkovskii can be found in the following archival files: DAKiO (4758-2-24 and 26).
NOTES
1. Mordechai Altshuler, ed., Distribution of the Jewish Population of the USSR 1939 (Jerusalem: Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 1993), pp. 20, 55.
2. BA-BL, BDC, SSHO 2432, Organisationsplan der besetzen Ostgebiete nach dem Stand vom 10 März 1942, hg. vom Chef der Ordnungspolizei, Berlin, March 13, 1942.
3. Information from the Cherkassy oblast’ branch of the Ukrainian Society for the Preservation of Historical and Cultural Remembrance, no. 72, October 15, 1990, PAAKru.
4. DAKiO, 4758-2-24, pp. 11 and reverse side.
5. Information from the Cherkassy oblast’ branch of the Ukrainian Society for the Preservation of Historical and Cultural Remembrance, no. 72, October 15, 1990, PAAKru. DAKiO, 4758-2-26, pp. 5–6, contains a list of 74 of the Jews from Korsun’ who were shot when the ghetto was liquidated.
