ZEN’KOV
Pre-1941: Zen’kov, town and raion center, Poltava oblast’, Ukrainian SSR; 1941–1943: Senkow, Rear Area Army Group South (rückwärtiges Heeresgebiet Süd); after September 1, 1942, Rayon center, Gebiet Gadjatsch, Generalkommissariat Kiew; post-1991: Zin’kiv, Poltava oblast’, Ukraine
Zen’kov is located 133 kilometers (83 miles) west of Khar’kov. According to the 1926 census, there were 608 Jews living in Zen’kov. The 1939 census, however, recorded only 142 Jews [End Page 1608] residing in the town.1 This sharp decline in the Jewish population between 1926 and 1939 was due to the Holodomor famine of 1932–1933 and to the resettlement of Jews to other areas.
Units of the German 6th Army occupied the town on October 9, 1941. In the more than three months since the start of the German invasion, a large part of the Jewish population managed to evacuate to the eastern USSR, and men liable for military service entered the Red Army as conscripts or volunteers. About 15 percent of the pre-war Jewish population remained in Zen’kov at the start of the occupation.
From October 1941 to September 1942, a German military commandant’s office (Ortskommandantur 258 in Gadiach) was in charge of the town. The German military administration established a town council and a Ukrainian auxiliary police force (Hilfspolizei) composed of local residents. Authority was transferred to the German civil administration in September 1942. Zen’kov (renamed Senkow) became a Rayon center in Gebiet Gadjatsch in Generalkommissariat Kiew, Reichskommissariat Ukraine.
In late 1941, all the remaining Jews of the town were herded into a single house, which served as a temporary ghetto. In late January 1942, the Germans shot all the Jews, 19 in total, in the quarry of a brickyard on the southeastern edge of town.2 In addition to the local Jews, four Jewish families from the village of Grun’ (in Sumy oblast’) were also shot; the German police had brought them to Zen’kov on January 18, 1942.3 It is possible that the 7 Jews who were recorded as having been shot in the town cemetery in January 1942 were these same Jews.4 The shootings of the Jews were apparently the work of the 303rd Police Battalion (commanded by Police Major Robert Franz), part of which was based in Zen’kov from December 25, 1941.5 On February 1, 1942, in the course of a “cleansing Aktion” (Säuberungsaktion) in Zen’kov, this battalion was engaged in “executions by shooting in accordance with the laws of war.”6 This is possibly a reference to the shooting of Jews in Zen’kov.
SOURCES
Relevant documentation can be found in the following archives: BA-MA (RH 22/22); GARF (7021-70-950); NA (HW 16/54); NARA (RG-242, T-501, reels 6 and 33); USHMM (RG-22.002M, reel 4); and VHAP (Kdo.-Stab RFSS, 6/12).
NOTES
1. “Zen’kov,” in Rossiiskaia Evreiskaia Entsiklopediia (Moscow: Russian Academy of Natural Sciences, Jewish Encyclopedia Research Center, “Epos,” 2000), 4:483.
2. Poltava Oblast’ Organization of the Ukrainian Society for the Protection of Historical and Cultural Monuments: List of burial sites of victims of shootings of Soviet citizens of Jewish nationality during the occupation of the Ukraine in 1941–1944, Poltava oblast’ (archive of the author); GARF, 7021-70-950, p. 1, reports only that all remaining Jews were killed.
3. NARA, RG-242, T-501, reel 33, fr. 1284 and 1293.
4. Poltava Oblast’ Organization of the Ukrainian Society for the Protection of Historical and Cultural Monuments, PAAKru.
5. See Fernschreiben no. 2083, December 25, 1941, 14.30, from HSSPF Russland Süd to RFSS, Kdo.-Stab RFSS, Chef Orpo (VHAP, Kdo.-Stab RFSS, 6/12; and NARA, RG-242, T-501, reel 6).
6. See Fernschreiben, February 2, 1942, from Einsatzstab HSSPF Russland Süd to RFSS, Kdo.-Stab RFSS, Chef Orpo, Chef Sipo (NA, HW 16/54, GPD 605; NARA, RG-242, T-501, reel 10; and BA-MA, RH 22/22).
