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

Pre-1941: Tarashcha, town and raion center, Kiev oblast’, Ukrainian SSR; 1941–1944: Taraschtscha, Rayon and Gebiet center, Generalkommissariat Kiew, Reichskommissariat Ukraine; post-1991: Tarashcha, Kiev oblast’, Ukraine

Tarashcha is located 94 kilometers (58 miles) north of Uman. According to the 1939 population census, 1,140 Jews lived in the town (13 percent of the total population). Additionally, 250 Jews lived in the villages of what was then the Tarashcha raion.¹

German armed forces occupied the town on July 23, 1941, just over one month after the German invasion of the Soviet Union on June 22. Part of the Jewish population was able to evacuate eastward during this intervening period. Men of an eligible age were called up to serve in the Red Army. About three quarters of the pre-war Jewish population remained in Tarashcha at the start of the occupation.

In the summer and fall of 1941, a series of German commandant’s offices (Ortskommandanturen) ran Tarashcha and established a local administration and an auxiliary Ukrainian police force recruited from among local residents. In August and September 1941, a detachment of Einsatzkommando 5 (Einsatzgruppe C) was based temporarily in Tarashcha in the school building and took over the responsibilities of the Ortskommandantur from the departing military forces.

In November 1941, authority passed to the German civil administration. Tarashcha became the administrative center of Gebiet Taraschtscha. Kameradschaftsführer Wurach was appointed as Gebietskommissar. Gebiet Taraschtscha included the Rayons of Zhashkov, Tetiev, Buki, and Stavishche and was incorporated into Generalkommissariat Kiew within Reichkommissariat Ukraine.²

Shortly after the occupation of the town, the German military commandant issued an order for the Jews to wear armbands bearing the Star of David. The Jews were also obliged to perform forced labor that included road repair work. The Jews were also forbidden to buy food and other products at the market, and the Ukrainians were not allowed to sell them anything.

About one week after the Germans’ arrival, all the Jews were ordered to resettle from their own residences into a few designated buildings on one street in Tarashcha (Proletarskaia Street) within two days, establishing a ghetto. However, [End Page 1605] some Jews, including the local blacksmith, were initially exempted and only moved into the ghetto about a month later. The Ukrainian police were in charge of the ghetto and robbed the Jews of their belongings. Even children in the ghetto were put to work, sewing Jewish stars; there was no school in the ghetto.³

German security forces started killing the Jews in Tarashcha in a series of sporadic Aktions from the first day they arrived. The precise dates and numbers killed in each Aktion are, however, difficult to reconstruct precisely from the fragmentary and sometimes contradictory recollections of the witnesses. In August 1941, two Aktions directed against the Jewish population were carried out. At the very beginning of the month, the SS military-engineering platoon of the “Wiking Division” shot around 400 Jews.⁴ At the end of August, a detachment of Einsatzgruppe C (either from Einsatzkommando 5 or from Sonderkommando 4a based in Belaia Tserkov’) shot 109 Jews.⁵

The detachment of Einsatzkommando 5, which was commanded by SS-Obersturmführer Jung for at least part of the time it was based in Tarashcha, also conducted a series of Aktions to round up and kill the Jews living in the smaller villages surrounding the town. On each occasion, about 20 or 30 Jews were shot with the assistance of the local village heads (starostas) and the Ukrainian police.⁶ On or around September 10, 1941, Einsatzkommando 5 carried out a third Aktion in Tarashcha and shot a few hundred Jews. Among those shot at this time were Jewish women who had been working as cleaners at the base occupied by the Einsatzkommando.⁷

On November 9, 1941, the “open ghetto” (Jewish residential district) in Tarashcha was more or less liquidated, and most of the remaining Jews were shot.⁸ This mass shooting was again probably carried out by a detachment of Einsatzkommando 5. Altogether up to 1,000 Jews were exterminated in Tarashcha between August and November 1941. On each occasion, the Jews were searched for any valuables before being escorted out of town. The Germans then shot and buried them in a large mass grave dug in a gravel pit located between the Jewish and Orthodox cemeteries, about 2 kilometers (1.2 miles) to the northwest of Tarashcha.⁹

After the last Aktion, a handful of specialist workers and their families remained in a small remnant ghetto or labor camp in Tarashcha for another year or so. Three boys who escaped from the ghetto were captured and then beaten to death. One Jewish child, Miriam Gopman, managed to survive, as she was smuggled out of the ghetto by a Ukrainian policeman who took her to live with his brother, who initially did not know that she was Jewish. When her Jewish identity was discovered, she had to leave; she survived the remainder of the occupation by passing as a Ukrainian. Shortly after her departure from the ghetto, the Germans killed the remaining Jews there, including her mother and father, apparently for refusing to reveal where she had been hidden.¹⁰