SHCHORS
Pre-1941: Shchors (Snovsk prior to 1935), town and raion center, Chernigov oblast’, Ukrainian SSR; 1941–1943: Schtschors, initially controlled by Rear Area, Army Group South (rückwärtiges Heeresgebiet Süd), then from summer 1942 center of Gebiet Schtschors, Generalkommissariat Tschernigow, Reichskommissariat Ukraine; post-1991: Shchors, Chernihiv oblast’, Ukraine
Shchors is located 107 kilometers (66 miles) west-northwest of Konotop. According to the census conducted on December 16, 1926, 2,416 Jews lived in Shchors. Altogether 2,447 Jews resided in the former raion surrounding the town.1 However, at the time of the 1939 census, only 1,402 Jews still lived in Shchors, comprising 16.3 percent of the town’s total population.2 The decrease in the number of Jews by more than 1,000 people between 1926 and 1939 occurred for several reasons: part of the Jewish population moved away to settle in other areas, and others were hit by the Holodomor famine that affected the country in the years 1932–1933.
German troops had occupied the town of Shchors by September 3, 1941, about two and a half months after their surprise attack on the Soviet Union. By the time the German army reached the town, more than half of the local Jewish population had managed to escape to the east. All the available men suitable for military service were drafted into the Red Army or joined it voluntarily. When German occupation forces entered Shchors, only about 40–45 percent of the prewar Jewish population still resided there.
From the start of the German occupation in early September 1941, a German military commandant was in charge of the town. The military commandant established a local administration and a Ukrainian auxiliary police unit, which was recruited from the local inhabitants. From the summer of 1942, Shchors became part of the German civil administration for the Generalkommissariat Tschernigow as the center of its own district (Gebiet). Referent Buchmeier was nominated as the Gebietskommissar in Shchors.3 Before the German retreat in September 1943, authority was transferred back to the military authorities as the front line approached.
A short time after the arrival of German troops, the military commandant instructed the local administration to register the Jewish population. The military administration also ordered the Jews to wear a visible patch on their clothes. In addition, the Jews were compelled to perform hard physical labor. All the Jews still residing in the town were settled into a special “Jewish residential district,” or open ghetto. Proreznaia Street was one of the main streets of the ghetto area.4
On November 9, 1941, German security forces conducted an Aktion against the Jews in Shchors. On the pretext of transporting the victims to another place of work, about 50 Jewish men were gathered, escorted into the forest close to town, and shot there.5 In January 1942, a second, larger Aktion was carried out in Shchors. This was the final liquidation of the ghetto. At the beginning of this Aktion, the victims were transferred to a large building that was the former dormitory of the technical school. After three days, the German forces shot approximately 80 elderly and young people in the forest just outside Shchors. Then, at night, the remaining women and children from the ghetto (probably 500 people altogether) were escorted in carts to Chernigov, where they were shot immediately upon arrival.6 On September 20, 1942, a few dozen Jews from the surrounding villages were brought to Shchors and shot there.7
SOURCES
The documents of the Soviet Extraordinary State Commission (ChGK) for the Shchors raion can be found in the following archives: DACgO and GARF (7021-78-32 and 39).
NOTES
1. 1926 Soviet Population Census, vol. 11 (Moscow, 1929).
2. Mordechai Altshuler, ed., Distribution of the Jewish Population of the USSR 1939 (Jerusalem: Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 1993), p. 26.
3. USHMM, RG-31.002M, reel 3, 3206-1-19, p. 35.
4. Evidence from witness P.V. Kondratenko, October 14, 1943, GARF, 7021-78-39, p. 36.
5. GARF, 7021-78-32, pp. 3, 14; Shmuel Spector and Geoffrey Wigoder, eds., The Encyclopedia of Jewish Life before and during the Holocaust (Jerusalem: Yad Vashem; New York: New York University Press, 2001), p. 1169, date this Aktion on November 20, 1941.
6. Evidence from witness P.V. Kondratenko, October 14, 1943, GARF, 7021-78-39, p. 36; according to Spector and Wigoder, The Encyclopedia of Jewish Life, p. 1169, “[I]n January 1942, a few dozen children were shot and a few days later about 80 more men were executed. The women and remaining children were murdered at a later date.”
7. Spector and Wigoder, The Encyclopedia of Jewish Life, p. 1169.
