RZHEV
[End Page 1818] Pre-1941: Rzhev, town and raion center, Kalinin oblast’; 1941–1943: Rschew, Rear Area, Army Group North (rückwärtiges Heeresgebiet Nord); post-1991: Rzhev, Tver oblast’, Russian Federation
Rzhev is located 120 kilometers (75 miles) southwest of Kalinin on the Volga River. In 1939, the census recorded 457 Jews in the town, a scant 0.85 percent of the total population.
German forces occupied Rzhev on October 14, 1941, more than three and a half months after the German attack on the Soviet Union (June 22, 1941). During that time, a significant number of Jews were able to evacuate to the east, and the Soviets began to draft eligible men for military service. The Jewish population in Rzhev at the start of the German occupation was about one tenth of the pre-war figure.
A German military administration (Ortskommandantur I/532) governed the town during the entire period of occupation (October 1941 to March 1943). The Germans created a town council and an auxiliary police unit (Ordnungsdienst), both staffed by local inhabitants. Among German punitive organs in Rzhev from October to December 1941, and again from the end of April 1942, was a detachment of Sonderkommando 7a, subordinated to Einsatzgruppe B. By the end of October 1941, the German military commandant had ordered the registration of the Jews in Rzhev, and Sonderkommando 7a established a Jewish Council (Judenrat).1 On November 13, 1941, the German military commandant required Jews to wear a distinguishing armband.
In the spring of 1942, the occupiers ordered all the Jews to resettle into a ghetto, which was located in a building that had formerly housed a nursery school. Some Jewish families were moved into the ghetto. In July 1942, the Germans liquidated the ghetto. In a gully near the airfield, they shot all the Jews (38 persons) except a watchmaker, a tailor, and their families. Members of Sonderkommando 7a carried out the shooting, with the participation of the Russian police. The Germans subsequently shot the watchmaker and his wife, in February 1943.2
SOURCES
Information concerning the extermination of the Jews of Rzhev may be found in the book by E.S. Fedorov, Pravda o voennom Rzheve. Dokumenty i fakty (Rzhev, 1995).
Documentation concerning the German occupation of Rzhev and the fate of the Jewish population can be found in the following archives: BA-BL (R 58/219); GATO (R-1925-1-5); and USHMM (RG-06.025*04, 693).
