Ghetto Drohobych
The Ghetto Drohobycz or Ghetto Drohobycz was a collection camp for the Jewish inhabitants of the then Polish city of Drohobycz (now Ukraine ) and its surroundings during the Nazi era . It existed from October 1942 to June 1943 and served as one of over 500 so-called ghettos during the National Socialist period to intern around 10,000 Jews. As a result, almost all of them were murdered by the SS , either by deportation to the Belzec extermination camp or on site.
Establishment and "Actions"
Before the Second World War , over forty percent of the city's population were Jews, i.e. around 15,000 residents, although additional Polish-Jewish refugees came to the city after the occupation of Poland . From the occupation of Drohobych by the Wehrmacht on June 30, 1941 as part of the Barbarossa operation , pogroms and various discriminatory measures against the Jews living in the city occurred. Five forced labor camps were set up, for example in the city's oil industry. In March 1942 the SS and their Ukrainian auxiliary police deported at least 2,000 Jews from the city to the Belzec extermination camp as part of the “ Final Solution ”. Another 2,500 people were brought to the Belzec extermination camp by freight trains from August 8 to 17, and a further 600 people were murdered on site while trying to hide or flee.
At the beginning of October 1942 the ghetto was finally established for the approximately 10,000 remaining Jews. In “Actions” in October and November 1942, around 5,800 Jews were transported to the Belzec extermination camp and a further 1,200 were murdered by the SS and the Ukrainian auxiliary police while trying to escape on the street. November 19, 1942 is known as the "Bloody Thursday of Drohobych"; On that day, Germans were allowed to murder Jews on the street, on the grounds that a Jewish inmate had fled the ghetto a few days earlier and shot a German.
SS-Hauptscharführer Felix Landau reported extensively in his diary about his involvement in the murders.
resolution
From May 21, 1943 to June 10, the security police and the SS dissolved the ghetto. The buildings of the ghetto were set on fire, the inmates of three forced labor camps were driven out of the city into the forest of Broniza and murdered. The remaining forced labor camps were the ceramic workshops and the Karpatenerdölaktiengesellschaft, with only the latter being operated in the end. Due to the approach of the Red Army , the remaining slave laborers were evacuated to the Plaszow concentration camp on April 13, 1944 . When the city was liberated by the Red Army, there were only 400 surviving Jews in the city.
Prominent inmates
The writer and painter Bruno Schulz (1892–1942) was probably the most famous inmate of the camp. He was forced to fresco a children's room in the villa of SS-Hauptscharführer Felix Landau and on November 19, 1942 (the "Bloody Thursday of Drohobych"), the day of his planned escape, he was probably out of displeasure with Landau on the open road shot by another SS member.
Alfred Schreyer (1922–2015), singer and violinist, returned to Drohobych after the end of the war, where shortly before his death he was the last Jewish resident to be born before the Second World War. The documentary The Last Jew of Drohobycz (2011) describes, among other things, his experiences in the Drohobytsch ghetto.
Commemoration
A monument was erected on an execution wall in the center of Drohobych. Sculptures in the wall show up stretched hands and different faces, in front of the wall there is a female figure in memory of the victims. Commemorative plaques were also erected in the Bronitza Forest. The former Great Synagogue was restored from 2014 and a Jewish cultural center is to be built on the premises.
literature
- LG Bremen, May 6, 1953 . In: Justice and Nazi crimes . Collection of German criminal judgments for Nazi homicidal crimes 1945–1966, Vol. X, edited by Adelheid L. Rüter-Ehlermann, HH Fuchs, CF Rüter . Amsterdam: University Press, 1973, No. 355, pp. 661–703 Mass and individual shootings of Jews in Eastern Galicia: shooting of around 700 Jews from the remaining ghetto and labor camp in Tarnopol (May 1943); about 170 Jewish women, girls and children of a work detachment of the Drohobycz camp (June 1943); of about 550 Jewish workers from two work details of the Drohobycz camp (August 1943); of about 300 Jews who went into hiding in the Boryslaw camp in order to evade the 'resettlement actions' (February 1943) and of 80 small Jewish children from Boryslaw (spring 1944). Individual shooting of a rabbi, as well as four Jews who were picked up again after trying to escape from KL Boryslaw - some in possession of firearms - and a Jewish couple who accused the defendant of lying about the fate of the Jews.
Web links
- Timeline of events in the Drohobych Ghetto , Drohobycz Administrative District
- Drohobycz , Encyclopedia of Jewish Communities in Poland, Volume II, Yad Vashem (English)
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c d Drohobych monument complex. In: Memorial portal to places of remembrance in Europe. Retrieved May 7, 2016 .
- ↑ a b c The last Jew from Drohobych. A film by Paul Rosdy. Retrieved May 7, 2016 .
- ^ A b Yitzhak Arad: The Holocaust in the Soviet Union . U of Nebraska Press, 2009, ISBN 0-8032-2270-X , pp. 277, 282, 237 .
- ↑ Martin Sander: Between cultures. In: Deutschlandfunk . Retrieved May 7, 2016 .
- ↑ Ernst Klee; Willi Dreßen; Volker Rieß: "Schöne Zeiten": Jewish murder from the point of view of the perpetrators and gawkers Frankfurt am Main 1988, ISBN 3-10-039304-X , pp. 87-104 / partial print as doc. VEJ 7/18 and VEJ 7/21.
- ^ Israel Gutman et al. (Ed.): Encyclopedia of the Holocaust . Munich and Zurich 1995, ISBN 3-492-22700-7 , vol. 1, p. 371.