ZHASHKOV
Pre-1941: Zhashkov, village and raion center, Kiev oblast’, Ukrainian SSR; 1941–1943: Shaschkow, Rayon center, Gebiet Taraschtscha, Generalkommissariat Kiew; post-1991: Zhashkiv, Cherkasy oblast’, Ukraine
Zhashkov is located about 56 kilometers (35 miles) north of Uman’. The 1939 population census counted 877 Jews in Zhashkov (14.58 percent of the population) and 299 Jews in the villages of the Zhashkov raion, bringing the total number to 1,176 Jews.
German forces occupied Zhashkov on July 19, 1941, nearly one month after the German invasion of the USSR on June 22. During this month, part of the Jewish population was able to evacuate to the east, and men of eligible age were conscripted into or enlisted voluntarily for the Red Army. Around 60 percent of the pre-war Jewish population remained in Zhashkov at the start of the occupation.
From July to October 1941, a German military commandant’s office (Ortskommandantur) administered Zhashkov. The German military administration created a local council and a Ukrainian auxiliary police force recruited from among the local residents.
At the end of October 1941, power was transferred to the German civilian administration. Zhashkov became a Rayon center in Gebiet Taraschtscha, where Kameradschaftsführer Wurach was named as Gebietskommissar.1
Shortly after the occupation of the settlement in July, the German military commandant ordered the registration and marking of the Jews with yellow stars. At the end of July or beginning of August 1941, the German military administration ordered the formation of a ghetto (“Jewish residential district”) in the center of the settlement. One street was cordoned off. Jews were prohibited from leaving the ghetto to buy products from the Ukrainian locals; as a result, famine quickly ensued. The Jews in the ghetto were required to perform forced labor every day. Among the tasks performed was the cleaning of toilets.2
In 1941, a number of Jews were murdered in the settlement and in the villages of the Zhashkov Rayon.3 On March 15, 1942, able-bodied Jews were selected and sent to various forced [End Page 1609] labor camps, including those in the villages of Buki and Antonovka.4 The remaining Jews in the Zhashkov ghetto—more than 100—were shot in September 1942 (exact date unknown) in a quarry located 1 kilometer (0.6 mile) to the east of the settlement.5 In Zhashkov during 1941 and 1942, the Germans and their collaborators murdered around 500 Jews in total.6
SOURCES
Documents regarding the persecution and destruction of the Jews in Zhashkov can be found in the following archives: DAChO; and DAKiO.
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. Association of Jewish Organizations and Communes in Ukraine (Vaad Ukrainy), program “The Memory of the Holocaust” (Pamiat’ Kholokosta), Cherkassy Province, Town of Zhashkov; and Leonid Koval, ed., Kniga spaseniia (Urmala: Golfstrim, 1993), 2:107, testimony of Ol’ga Zuslina.
3. In the summer of 1941, German soldiers and policemen murdered around 300 Jews in the Zhashkov raion. See F.D. Sverdlov, Dokumenty obviniaiut. Kholokost: Svidetel’stva Krasnoi Armii (Moscow: Nauchno-prosvetitel’ skii tsentr “Kholokost,” 1996), p. 39.
4. Koval, Kniga spaseniia, 2:107, testimony of Ol’ga Zuslina.
5. Sverdlov, Dokumenty obviniaiut, p. 39. Another account indicates that 150 Jews were shot in 1942 at the boundary of Berestova, between the villages of Petrovka and Okhmatov. Administrative report by the administration of the Cherkassy Provincial Organization of the Ukrainian Society for the Protection of Historical and Cultural Monuments, no. 72, October 15, 1990, addressed to the Council Head of the Ukrainian Society for the Protection of Historical and Cultural Monuments in Kiev.
6. Association of Jewish Organizations and Communes in Ukraine (Vaad Ukrainy), program “The Memory of the Holocaust” (Pamiat’ Kholokosta), Cherkassy Province, Town of Zhashkov.
