SOKOLOVKA
Pre-1941: Sokolovka (Yiddish: Justingrad/Sokolievka), village, Kiev oblast’, Ukrainian SSR; 1941–1943: Sokolowka, Rayon center, Gebiet Taraschtscha, Generalkommissariat Kiew; post-1991: Sokolievka, Zhashkiv raion, Cherkasy oblast’, Ukraine
Sokolovka is located 192 kilometers (119 miles) south of Kiev and 32 kilometers (20 miles) north of Uman. Available documentation indicates that on the eve of the German occupation there were more than 150 Jews residing in the village of Sokolovka.1
The village of Sokolovka was occupied by the units of the German armed forces on July 24, 1941, about one month after the German attack on the Soviet Union. By late July, when the German forces entered the village, an unknown number of Jews had fled eastward. The young Jewish males who left the village either volunteered for the Soviet army or were drafted into its units.
Between July and October 1941 the village was under the command of a German military administration, which recruited some local residents to serve on a newly established village council, with a mayor, or in an auxiliary police force. In November 1941, local administrative authority was taken over by a German civil government. Sokolovka became part of Gebiet Taraschtscha in Generalkommissariat Kiew, Reichskommissariat Ukraine.
Shortly after the occupation of the village, the Jews were registered and obligated to wear armbands bearing the Star of David on the sleeves of their outer clothing. Furthermore, Jews were now organized into labor details and forced to carry out the most physically demanding work, often without payment. On September 19, 1941, a detachment of Einsatzkommando 5 carried out the first Aktion against the Jews of Sokolovka, in which they shot 35 Jews.2 The remaining Jews of Sokolovka were then forced to resettle into a ghetto. The Jews were confined to the ghetto until the Germans conducted a further Aktion in May 1942. According to local residents, the Germans escorted the Jews into the forest and forced them to dig their own graves. The Germans shot the adult Jews and buried the children alive.3
This Aktion did not, however, affect skilled laborers, who were allowed to stay in the ghetto and continue their work. In September 1942, another smaller shooting Aktion was carried out, and in the summer of 1943 all the remaining skilled workers were shot. In the period from 1941 to 1943, a total of 146 Jews were killed in Sokolovka.4
A female doctor of the family of Yehoshua Abramov traveled to Sokolovka soon after the Germans were driven out by the Red Army. She did not find any Jews living there. The Jewish houses were empty and in ruins.5
SOURCES
On the history of the Jewish community of Sokolovka before the Holocaust, there is a yizkor book edited by Leo Miller and Diana F. Miller, Sokolievka/Justingrad: A Century of Struggle and Suffering in a Ukrainian Shtetl (New York: Loewenthal Press, 1983).
NOTES
1. Association of the Jewish Organizations and Communities in Ukraine (Vaad Ukrainy), program “Pamiat’ Holokosta,” Cherkassy oblast’, village of Sokolovka.
2. BA-BL, R 58/218, Ereignismeldungen UdSSR no. 119, October 20, 1941.
3. Miller and Miller, Sokolievka/Justingrad, p. 57.
4. Association of the Jewish Organizations and Communities in Ukraine (Vaad Ukrainy), program “Pamiat’” Holokosta,” Cherkassy oblast’, village of Sokolovka.
5. Miller and Miller, Sokolievka/Justingrad, p. 57.
