The Holocaust in Ukraine took place in the ''

Reichskommissariat Ukraine During World War II, (abbreviated as RKU) was the civilian occupation regime () of much of Nazi German-occupied Ukraine (which included adjacent areas of modern-day Belarus and pre-war Second Polish Republic). It was governed by the Reich Min ...

'', the '' General Government'', the ''Crimean General Government'' and some areas which were located to the East of Reichskommissariat Ukraine (all of those areas were under the military control of

Nazi Germany Nazi Germany (lit. "National Socialist State"), ' (lit. "Nazi State") for short; also ' (lit. "National Socialist Germany") (officially known as the German Reich from 1933 until 1943, and the Greater German Reich from 1943 to 1945) was ...

), in the ''

Transnistria Governorate The Transnistria Governorate ( ro, Guvernământul Transnistriei) was a Romanian-administered territory between the Dniester and Southern Bug, conquered by the Axis Powers from the Soviet Union during Operation Barbarossa and occupied from 19 Aug ...

'' and Northern Bukovina (both areas under the control of

Romania Romania ( ; ro, România ) is a country located at the crossroads of Central, Eastern, and Southeastern Europe. It borders Bulgaria to the south, Ukraine to the north, Hungary to the west, Serbia to the southwest, Moldova to the east, and ...

, with the latter being re-annexed) and

Carpathian Ruthenia Carpathian Ruthenia ( rue, Карпатьска Русь, Karpat'ska Rus'; uk, Закарпаття, Zakarpattia; sk, Podkarpatská Rus; hu, Kárpátalja; ro, Transcarpatia; pl, Zakarpacie); cz, Podkarpatská Rus; german: Karpatenukrai ...

(then part of Hungary) during World War II. The listed areas are currently parts of Ukraine. Between 1941 and 1944, more than a million Jews living in the

Soviet Union The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, ...

, almost all from Ukraine and

Belarus Belarus,, , ; alternatively and formerly known as Byelorussia (from Russian ). officially the Republic of Belarus,; rus, Республика Беларусь, Respublika Belarus. is a landlocked country in Eastern Europe. It is bordered by ...

, were murdered by Nazi Germany's "

Final Solution The Final Solution (german: die Endlösung, ) or the Final Solution to the Jewish Question (german: Endlösung der Judenfrage, ) was a Nazi plan for the genocide of individuals they defined as Jews during World War II. The "Final Solution to th ...

" extermination policies and with the help of local Ukrainian collaborators. Slavica Publishers. Most of them were killed in Ukraine because most pre-WWII Soviet Jews lived in the

Pale of Settlement The Pale of Settlement (russian: Черта́ осе́длости, '; yi, דער תּחום-המושבֿ, '; he, תְּחוּם הַמּוֹשָב, ') was a western region of the Russian Empire with varying borders that existed from 1791 to 19 ...

, of which Ukraine was the largest part. The major massacres against Jews mainly occurred during the first phase of the occupation, although they continued until the return of the

Red Army The Workers' and Peasants' Red Army ( Russian: Рабо́че-крестья́нская Кра́сная армия),) often shortened to the Red Army, was the army and air force of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic and, afte ...

of the

. According to Yale historian

Timothy D. Snyder Timothy David Snyder (born August 18, 1969) is an American historian specializing in the modern history of Central and Eastern Europe. He is the Richard C. Levin Professor of History at Yale University and a permanent fellow at the Institute f ...

, "the Holocaust is integrally and organically connected to the ''

Vernichtungskrieg A war of annihilation (german: Vernichtungskrieg) or war of extermination is a type of war in which the goal is the complete annihilation of a state, a people or an ethnic minority through genocide or through the destruction of their livelihood. ...

'', the war in 1941, and it is organically and integrally connected to the attempt to conquer Ukraine." According to

Wendy Lower Wendy Lower (born 1965) is an American historian and a widely published author on the Holocaust and World War II. Since 2012, she holds the John K. Roth Chair at Claremont McKenna College in Claremont, California, and in 2014 was named the dire ...

, the

genocide Genocide is the intentional destruction of a people—usually defined as an ethnic, national, racial, or religious group—in whole or in part. Raphael Lemkin coined the term in 1944, combining the Greek word (, "race, people") with the Lat ...

of the

Ukrainian Jews The history of the Jews in Ukraine dates back over a thousand years; Jewish communities have existed in the territory of Ukraine from the time of the Kievan Rus' (late 9th to mid-13th century). Some of the most important Jewish religious and ...

was closely linked to German plans to exploit and colonize Ukraine.

Death squads (1941–1943)

Total civilian losses during the war and German occupation in Ukraine are estimated at four million, including up to a million Jews who were murdered by '' Einsatzgruppen'' units,

Order Police battalions The Order Police battalions were militarised formations of the German Order Police (uniformed police) during the Nazi era. During World War II, they were subordinated to the SS and deployed in German-occupied areas, specifically the Army Grou ...

Wehrmacht The ''Wehrmacht'' (, ) were the unified armed forces of Nazi Germany from 1935 to 1945. It consisted of the ''Heer'' (army), the '' Kriegsmarine'' (navy) and the ''Luftwaffe'' (air force). The designation "''Wehrmacht''" replaced the previo ...

troops and local Nazi collaborators.

Einsatzgruppe C (, ; also ' task forces') were (SS) paramilitary death squads of Nazi Germany that were responsible for mass murder, primarily by shooting, during World War II (1939–1945) in German-occupied Europe. The had an integral role in the im ...

( Otto Rasch) was assigned to north and central Ukraine, and Einsatzgruppe D (

Otto Ohlendorf Otto Ohlendorf (; 4 February 1907 – 7 June 1951) was a German SS functionary and Holocaust perpetrator during the Nazi era. An economist by education, he was head of the (SD) Inland, responsible for intelligence and security within Germ ...

) to Moldavia, south Ukraine, the

Crimea Crimea, crh, Къырым, Qırım, grc, Κιμμερία / Ταυρική, translit=Kimmería / Taurikḗ ( ) is a peninsula in Ukraine, on the northern coast of the Black Sea, that has been occupied by Russia since 2014. It has a pop ...

, and, during 1942, the north

Caucasus The Caucasus () or Caucasia (), is a region between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea, mainly comprising Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia (country), Georgia, and parts of Southern Russia. The Caucasus Mountains, including the Greater Caucasus range ...

. According to Ohlendorf's testimony at the Einsatzgruppen Trial, "the ''Einsatzgruppen'' had the mission to protect the rear of the troops by killing the Jews, Romani, Communist functionaries, active Communists, uncooperative slavs, and all persons who would endanger the security." In practice, their victims were nearly all Jewish civilians (not a single ''Einsatzgruppe'' member was killed in action during these operations). The

United States Holocaust Memorial Museum The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM) is the United States' official memorial to the Holocaust. Adjacent to the National Mall in Washington, D.C., the USHMM provides for the documentation, study, and interpretation of Holocaust hi ...

tells the story of one survivor of the Einsatzgruppen in Piryatin,

Ukraine Ukraine ( uk, Україна, Ukraïna, ) is a country in Eastern Europe. It is the second-largest European country after Russia, which it borders to the east and northeast. Ukraine covers approximately . Prior to the ongoing Russian inv ...

, when they killed 1,600 Jews on 6 April 1942, the second day of

Passover Passover, also called Pesach (; ), is a major Jewish holiday that celebrates the Biblical story of the Israelites escape from slavery in Egypt, which occurs on the 15th day of the Hebrew month of Nisan, the first month of Aviv, or spring. ...

: From 16–30 September 1941 the Nikolaev massacre in and around the city of

Mykolaiv Mykolaiv ( uk, Миколаїв, ) is a city and municipality in Southern Ukraine, the administrative center of the Mykolaiv Oblast. Mykolaiv city, which provides Ukraine with access to the Black Sea, is the location of the most downriver brid ...

resulted in the deaths of 35,782 Soviet citizens, most of whom were Jews, as was reported to

Hitler Adolf Hitler (; 20 April 188930 April 1945) was an Austrian-born German politician who was dictator of Nazi Germany, Germany from 1933 until Death of Adolf Hitler, his death in 1945. Adolf Hitler's rise to power, He rose to power as the le ...

. The most notorious massacre of Jews in Ukraine was at the

Babi Yar Babi Yar (russian: Ба́бий Яр) or Babyn Yar ( uk, Бабин Яр) is a ravine in the Ukrainian capital Kyiv and a site of massacres carried out by Nazi Germany's forces during its campaign against the Soviet Union in World War II. T ...

ravine outside

Kyiv Kyiv, also spelled Kiev, is the capital and most populous city of Ukraine. It is in north-central Ukraine along the Dnieper River. As of 1 January 2021, its population was 2,962,180, making Kyiv the seventh-most populous city in Europe. Kyi ...

, where 33,771 Jews were killed in a single operation on 29–30 September 1941. (Some 100,000 to 150,000 Ukrainian and other Soviet citizens were also killed in the following weeks). The mass killing of Jews in Kiev was approved by the military governor Major-General

Kurt Eberhard Kurt Eberhard (12 September 1874 – 8 September 1947) was a German Nazi officer. He rose to the rank of ''Brigadeführer'' of the SS and in the German army. During World War II, Eberhard was given the command over the occupied city of Kyiv i ...

, the Police Commander for Army Group South (SS-''Obergruppenführer''

Friedrich Jeckeln Friedrich Jeckeln (2 February 1895 – 3 February 1946) was a German SS commander during the Nazi era. He served as a Higher SS and Police Leader in the occupied Soviet Union during World War II. Jeckeln was the commander of one of the largest ...

) and the ''Einsatzgruppe'' C Commander Otto Rasch. It was carried out by a mixture of SS, SD and Security Police. On the Monday, the Jews of Kiev gathered by the cemetery, expecting to be loaded onto trains. The crowd was large enough that most of the men, women, and children could not have known what was happening until it was too late: by the time they heard the machine-gun fire, there was no chance to escape. All were driven down a corridor of soldiers, in groups of ten, and then shot. A truck driver described the scene:

Collaboration in Ukraine

Ukrainians who collaborated with the Nazi Germany did so in various ways including participating in the local administration, in German-supervised auxiliary police,

Schutzmannschaft The ''Schutzmannschaft'' or Auxiliary Police ( "protective, or guard units"; plural: ''Schutzmannschaften'', abbreviated as ''Schuma'') was the collaborationist auxiliary police of native policemen serving in those areas of the Soviet Union and ...

, in the German military, and serving as

concentration camp Internment is the imprisonment of people, commonly in large groups, without charges or intent to file charges. The term is especially used for the confinement "of enemy citizens in wartime or of terrorism suspects". Thus, while it can simpl ...

guards. The '' National Geographic'' reported:

A number of Ukrainians had collaborated: According to German historian
Dieter Pohl Dieter Pohl (born 1964) is a German historian and author who specialises in the Eastern European history and the history of mass violence in the 20th century. Education and career Dieter Pohl studied history and political science at the Ludwi ...
, around 100,000 joined police units that provided key assistance to the Nazis. Many others staffed the local bureaucracies or lent a helping hand mass shootings of Jews. Ukrainians, such as the infamous Ivan the Terrible of
Treblinka Treblinka () was an extermination camp, built and operated by Nazi Germany in occupied Poland during World War II. It was in a forest north-east of Warsaw, south of the village of Treblinka in what is now the Masovian Voivodeship. The cam ...
, were also among the guards who manned the German Nazi death camps.

Timothy Snyder notes that "the majority, probably the vast majority of people who collaborated with the German occupation were not politically motivated. They were collaborating with an occupation that was there, and which is a German historical responsibility." Widespread coordination between the Third Reich and Ukrainian nationalists, Ukrainian militia and rank-and-file pogromists occurred. Prior to the German invasion of Ukraine, the two active OUN factions coordinated directly from their headquarters in Berlin and Krakow. The headquarters decided to create marching companies ("pohidni groopi") to accompany the German invasion of Ukraine, recruiting new members into their ranks. The OUN supported Nazi antisemitic policies. In 1941, when German official

Reinhard Heydrich Reinhard Tristan Eugen Heydrich ( ; ; 7 March 1904 – 4 June 1942) was a high-ranking German SS and police official during the Nazi era and a principal architect of the Holocaust. He was chief of the Reich Security Main Office (inclu ...

requested "self-cleansing actions" in June of that year the OUN organized militias who killed several thousand Jews in western Ukraine soon afterward that year. The

Ukrainian People's Militia Ukrainian People's Militsiya or the Ukrainian National Militsiya ( uk, Українська Народна Міліція), was a paramilitary formation created by the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) in the General Government territor ...

under the OUN's command led pogroms that resulted in the massacre of 6,000 Jews in Lviv soon after that city's fall to German forces. OUN members spread propaganda urging people to engage in pogroms. A slogan put forth by the Bandera group and recorded in the 16 July 1941 Einsatzgruppen report stated: "Long live Ukraine without Jews, Poles and Germans; Poles behind the river San, Germans to Berlin, and Jews to the gallows". In instructions to its members concerning how the OUN should behave during the war, it declared that "in times of chaos ... one can allow oneself to liquidate Polish, Russian and Jewish figures, particularly the servants of Bolshevik-Muscovite imperialism" and further, when speaking of Russians, Poles, and Jews, to "destroy in struggle, particularly those opposing the regime, by means of: deporting them to their own lands, eradicating their intelligentsia, which is not to be admitted to any governmental positions, and overall preventing any creation of this intelligentsia (e.g. access to education etc)... Jews are to be isolated, removed from governmental positions in order to prevent sabotage... Those who are deemed necessary may only work under strict supervision and removed from their positions for slightest misconduct... Jewish assimilation is not possible."Institute of Ukrainian History, Academy of Sciences of Ukraine
''Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists and the Ukrainian Insurgent Army'', Chapter 2
, pp. 62–63 According to political scientist

Ivan Katchanovski Ivan Katchanovski, ua, Іван Гнатович Качановський (born 1967) is a Ukrainian and Canadian political scientist based in Ottawa, teaches at the School of Political Studies at the University of Ottawa. He specializes in re ...

, the agreement between Ukrainian nationalists and the occupying authorities in the region was not limited to ideology, as 63% of UPA commanders by early 1944 were represented by former commanders of police formations created by Nazi Germany during the initial stage of the occupation of Ukraine. Police units and civil militia established by the Nazi authorities played the role of collaborators of the Nazis, participating not only in the genocide of the Jewish population but also in the killing of Soviet prisoners, as well as in the murder of Ukrainian civilians, such as the killing of 3,000 people in the village of Kortelitsa in September 1942. Ukrainian police auxiliaries "had been involved at least in preparations for the

Babi Yar massacre Babi Yar (russian: Ба́бий Яр) or Babyn Yar ( uk, Бабин Яр) is a ravine in the Ukrainian capital Kyiv and a site of massacres carried out by Nazi Germany's forces during its campaign against the Soviet Union in World War II. The fi ...

". According to the Israeli Holocaust historian

Yitzhak Arad Yitzhak Arad ( he, יצחק ארד; né Icchak Rudnicki; November 11, 1926 – May 6, 2021) was an Israeli historian, author, IDF brigadier general and Soviet partisan. He also served as Yad Vashem's director from 1972 to 1993, and specialised ...

, "In January 1942 a company of Tatar volunteers was established in Simferopol under the command of '' Einsatzgruppe 11''. This company participated in anti-Jewish manhunts and murder actions in the rural regions." According to The Simon Wiesenthal Center (in January 2011) "Ukraine has, to the best of our knowledge, never conducted a single investigation of a local Nazi war criminal, let alone prosecuted a Holocaust perpetrator." There had been many prosecutions in the past, but all of these trials were conducted by Soviet military and

Ukrainian SSR The Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic ( uk, Украї́нська Радя́нська Соціалісти́чна Респу́бліка, ; russian: Украи́нская Сове́тская Социалисти́ческая Респ ...

courts, and never by Ukraine after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Victims

Until the

fall of the Soviet Union The dissolution of the Soviet Union, also negatively connoted as rus, Разва́л Сове́тского Сою́за, r=Razvál Sovétskogo Soyúza, ''Ruining of the Soviet Union''. was the process of internal disintegration within the Sov ...

, it was believed that about 900,000 Jews were murdered as part of the Holocaust in Ukraine. This estimate is found in renowned and respected works as ''

The Destruction of the European Jews ''The Destruction of the European Jews'' is a 1961 book by historian Raul Hilberg. Hilberg revised his work in 1985, and it appeared in a new three-volume edition. It is largely held to be the first comprehensive historical study of the Holocau ...

'' by

Raul Hilberg Raul Hilberg (June 2, 1926 – August 4, 2007) was a Jewish Austrian-born American political scientist and historian. He was widely considered to be the preeminent scholar on the Holocaust. Christopher R. Browning has called him the founding fath ...

. In the late 1990s, access to Soviet archives increased the estimates of the prewar population of Jews and as a result, the estimates of the death toll have been increasing. In the 1990s, Dieter Pohl estimated that 1.2 million Jews were murdered, and more recent estimates of the death toll have been as high as 1.6 million. Some of those Jews whose names have been added to the death toll attempted to find refuge in the forest, but later on, during the German retreat, they were killed by members of the

Ukrainian Insurgent Army The Ukrainian Insurgent Army ( uk, Українська повстанська армія, УПА, translit=Ukrayins'ka povstans'ka armiia, abbreviated UPA) was a Ukrainian nationalist paramilitary and later partisan formation. During World ...

, members of some nationalist units of the Home Army or members of other partisan groups. According to American historian

, "there were many perpetrators, albeit with different political agendas, who killed Jews and suppressed this history". However,

Yad Vashem Yad Vashem ( he, יָד וַשֵׁם; literally, "a memorial and a name") is Israel's official memorial to the victims of the Holocaust. It is dedicated to preserving the memory of the Jews who were murdered; honoring Jews who fought against th ...

research maintains that between 1 to 1.1 million Soviet Jews were murdered during the Holocaust, of them around 225,000 were from

Execution units

* Einsatzgruppen C & D ( Einsatzkommando) *

* Abwehr/Brandemburg special saboteur unit Nachtigall Battalion * Freiwilligen-Stamm-Regiment 3 & 4 (Russians & Ukrainians) * Ukrainian auxiliary units ''

'' as well as

Ukrainische Hilfspolizei The ''Ukrainische Hilfspolizei'' or the Ukrainian Auxiliary Police ( ua, Українська допоміжна поліція, Ukrains'ka dopomizhna politsiia) was the official title of the local police formation (a type of hilfspolizei) set up ...

Notable survivors

Roald Hoffmann Roald Hoffmann (born Roald Safran; July 18, 1937) is a Polish-American theoretical chemist who won the 1981 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. He has also published plays and poetry. He is the Frank H. T. Rhodes Professor of Humane Letters, Emeritus, at ...

* Mordechai Rokeach *

Mina Rosner Mina Rosner (1913–1997) was a native of Buczacz, Galicia, Austria-Hungary (now Buchach, Ukraine), who survived The Holocaust by hiding with a Polish family. After the war, she moved to Winnipeg, Manitoba Winnipeg () is the capital and ...

Adam Daniel Rotfeld Adam Daniel Rotfeld (Polish pronunciation: ; born 4 March 1938) is a Polish researcher, diplomat, and former Minister of Foreign Affairs of Poland from 5 January 2005 until 31 October 2005 when a change of government took place. He served ear ...

Shevah Weiss Shevah Weiss ( he, שבח וייס; born 5 July 1935), is an Israeli political scientist and former politician. Biography Weiss was born in Borysław, Poland (since 1945 Boryslav, Ukraine) into a Polish Jewish family to Gienia and Meir Wolf Wei ...

Simon Wiesenthal Simon Wiesenthal (31 December 190820 September 2005) was a Jewish Austrian Holocaust survivor, Nazi hunter, and writer. He studied architecture and was living in Lwów at the outbreak of World War II. He survived the Janowska concentration ...

Rescuers

Ukraine rates the 4th in the number of people recognized as "

Righteous Among the Nations Righteous Among the Nations ( he, חֲסִידֵי אֻמּוֹת הָעוֹלָם, ; "righteous (plural) of the world's nations") is an honorific used by the State of Israel to describe non-Jews who risked their lives during the Holocaust to sa ...

" for saving Jews during the Holocaust, with the total of 2,515 individuals recognized as of 1 January 2015. The Shtundists, an

evangelical Evangelicalism (), also called evangelical Christianity or evangelical Protestantism, is a worldwide interdenominational movement within Protestant Christianity that affirms the centrality of being " born again", in which an individual expe ...

Protestant denomination which emerged in late 19th century Ukraine, helped hide Jews.

Massacres

* 1941 Bila Tserkva massacre *

1941 Odessa massacre The Odessa massacre was the mass murder of the Jewish population of Odessa and surrounding towns in the Transnistria Governorate during the autumn of 1941 and the winter of 1942 while it was under Romanian control. It was one of the worst mass ...

* Dniepropetrovsk *

Drobytsky Yar Drobytsky Yar is a ravine in Kharkiv, Ukraine. In December 1941, Nazi troops invading the Soviet Union began killing local residents over the following year. At the end of this period, some 16,000 people, mainly Jews, were killed. Notably on 15 ...

Feodosiya uk, Феодосія, Теодосія crh, Kefe , official_name = () , settlement_type= , image_skyline = THEODOSIA 01.jpg , imagesize = 250px , image_caption = Genoese fortress of Caffa , image_shield = Fe ...

* Ivano-Frankovsk * Kamenets-Podolskiy massacre *

Klevan Klevan ( uk, Клевань; is an urban-type settlement in Rivne Raion (district) of Rivne Oblast (province) in western Ukraine. Its population was 7,470 at the 2001 Ukrainian census. Current population: History A settlement on the current ...

* Lviv pogroms (1941) *

Massacre of Lwów professors In July 1941, 25 Polish academics from the city of Lwów (now Lviv, Ukraine) along with the 25 of their family members were killed by Nazi German occupation forces. By targeting prominent citizens and intellectuals for elimination, the Nazis hop ...

* Mezhirichi * Mizoch * Nikolaev massacre * Olyka * Pliskov *

Terebovl Terebovlia ( uk, Теребовля, pl, Trembowla, yi, טרעבעוולע, Trembovla) is a small city in Ternopil Raion, Ternopil Oblast (province) of western Ukraine. It is an ancient settlement that traces its roots to the settlement of Tere ...

Zhytomyr Zhytomyr ( uk, Жито́мир, translit=Zhytomyr ; russian: Жито́мир, Zhitomir ; pl, Żytomierz ; yi, זשיטאָמיר, Zhitomir; german: Schytomyr ) is a city in the north of the western half of Ukraine. It is the administrative ...

Notes

References

External links

The Holocaust in Ukraine: New Sources and Perspectives
Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies of the

, Conference Papers, 2013
Holocaust, Fascism, and Ukrainian History: Does It Make Sense to Rethink the History of Ukrainian Perpetrators in the European Context, published by the American Association for Polish-Jewish Studies, April 2016.
{{DEFAULTSORT:Holocaust In Ukraine

Jewish Ukrainian history Military history of Ukraine during World War II Reichskommissariat Ukraine World War II prisoner of war massacres Eastern Front (World War II) Ukraine in World War II 1940s in Ukraine