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

[End Page 1770] Pre-1941: Korop, village and raion center, Chernigov oblast’, Ukrainian SSR; 1941–1943: initially controlled by Rear Area, Army Group South (rückwärtiges Heeresgebiet Süd); post-1991: Chernihiv oblast’, Ukraine

Korop is located 45 kilometers (28 miles) northwest of Konotop. According to the 1926 census, there were 787 Jews living in Korop itself and 826 in the entire Korop raion. In the 1939 census, 350 Jews were recorded as living in Korop (5.66 percent of the total population).¹ The decrease in the Jewish population by more than half during this period can be accounted for by the resettlement of Jews to other districts and also by the effects of the Holodomor famine of 1932–1933.

German forces occupied Korop on August 28, 1941, that is, some two months after the German invasion of the USSR. During this intervening period, about two thirds of the Jews were able to evacuate to the east, and men of military age were conscripted or volunteered for the Red Army. Only about one third of the Jewish population remained behind under German occupation.

During the entire period of the occupation (from August 28, 1941, to September 4, 1943) the village was administered by a German military commandant (Ortskommandantur). The German authorities created a local administration and a Ukrainian auxiliary police force. A man named Shilo was appointed as commander of the Ukrainian police.

Soon after the occupation of the village, the local authorities organized the registration of the Jews in accordance with instructions issued by the German military commandant. The Jews were also marked (compelled to wear a distinguishing armband) and made to perform various kinds of hard labor. Probably in November 1941, all the remaining Jews in the village were resettled into a specially created “Jewish residential district” (open ghetto) consisting of one street. At the beginning of December 1941 the Ukrainian police from Korop under the command of Shilo murdered a number of Jews, probably about 20, in the nearby village of Ponornitsa.² Then on February 9, 1942, the Korop “ghetto” was liquidated when German forces shot the Jews (111 people). The life of 1 Jewish woman (a dentist) was temporarily spared, although she was later shot on November 4, 1942.³

After the shooting of the Jews of Korop in the second week of February 1942, the Ukrainian auxiliary police shot the Jews in the villages of Rayon Korop, especially in the villages of Budenovka, Gorodishche, Obolon’e, and Karylskoe; in these villages 10 Jews were killed.⁴ During the occupation a total of 198 local citizens were killed.⁵ Thus, the Jews represented 56.7 percent of all the victims in Rayon Korop.