Trochenbrod or Trohinbrod, also in Polish: ''Zofiówka'', or in , in , , was an exclusively Jewish

shtetl or ( ; , ; Grammatical number#Overview, pl. ''shtetelekh'') is a Yiddish term for small towns with predominantly Ashkenazi Jews, Ashkenazi Jewish populations which Eastern European Jewry, existed in Eastern Europe before the Holocaust. The t ...

– a small town, with an area of – located in the

gmina The gmina (Polish: , plural ''gminy'' ) is the basic unit of the administrative division of Poland, similar to a municipality. , there were 2,479 gminy throughout the country, encompassing over 43,000 villages. 940 gminy include cities and tow ...

Silno,

powiat A ''powiat'' (; ) is the second-level unit of local government and administration in Poland, equivalent to a county, district or prefecture (Local administrative unit, LAU-1 ormerly Nomenclature of Territorial Units for Statistics, NUTS-4 ...

Łuck Lutsk (, ; see below for other names) is a city on the Styr River in northwestern Ukraine. It is the administrative center of Volyn Oblast and the administrative center of Lutsk Raion within the oblast. Lutsk has a population of A city wit ...

of the Wołyń Voivodeship, in the

Second Polish Republic The Second Polish Republic, at the time officially known as the Republic of Poland, was a country in Central and Eastern Europe that existed between 7 October 1918 and 6 October 1939. The state was established in the final stage of World War I ...

and would now be located in (the abolished as an official administrative unit) Kivertsi Raion of

Volyn Oblast Volyn Oblast () or simply Volyn (), is an administrative divisions of Ukraine, oblast (province) in northwestern Ukraine. It borders Rivne Oblast to the east, Lviv Oblast to the south, Poland to the west and Belarus to the north. Its Capital city ...

Ukraine Ukraine is a country in Eastern Europe. It is the List of European countries by area, second-largest country in Europe after Russia, which Russia–Ukraine border, borders it to the east and northeast. Ukraine also borders Belarus to the nor ...

. See also: Following the

invasion of Poland The invasion of Poland, also known as the September Campaign, Polish Campaign, and Polish Defensive War of 1939 (1 September – 6 October 1939), was a joint attack on the Second Polish Republic, Republic of Poland by Nazi Germany, the Slovak R ...

by Nazi Germany and the

Soviet invasion of Poland The Soviet invasion of Poland was a military conflict by the Soviet Union without a formal declaration of war. On 17 September 1939, the Soviet Union invaded Second Polish Republic, Poland from the east, 16 days after Nazi Germany invaded Polan ...

in September 1939, Zofiówka (official Polish name) was renamed in Russian and incorporated into the new

of the UkSSR. Two years later, at the start of

Operation Barbarossa Operation Barbarossa was the invasion of the Soviet Union by Nazi Germany and several of its European Axis allies starting on Sunday, 22 June 1941, during World War II. More than 3.8 million Axis troops invaded the western Soviet Union along ...

in 1941, it was annexed by Nazi Germany into the ''

Reichskommissariat Ukraine The ''Reichskommissariat Ukraine'' (RKU; ) was an administrative entity of the Reich Ministry for the Occupied Eastern Territories of Nazi Germany from 1941 to 1944. It served as the German civilian occupation regime in the Ukrainian SSR, and ...

'' under a new Germanized name. Trochenbrod (Zofiówka) was completely eradicated in the course of German occupation and the ensuing

Holocaust The Holocaust (), known in Hebrew language, Hebrew as the (), was the genocide of History of the Jews in Europe, European Jews during World War II. From 1941 to 1945, Nazi Germany and Collaboration with Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy ...

. The town used to be situated about northeast of

Lutsk Lutsk (, ; see #Names and etymology, below for other names) is a city on the Styr River in northwestern Ukraine. It is the administrative center of Volyn Oblast and the administrative center of Lutsk Raion within the oblast. Lutsk has a populati ...

. The nearest villages of today are Yaromel (Яромель) and Klubochyn (Клубочин). The original settlement, inhabited entirely by Jews, was named after

Sophie Sophie is a feminine given name, another version of Sophia, from the Greek word for "wisdom". People with the name Born in the Middle Ages * Sophie, Countess of Bar (c. 1004 or 1018–1093), sovereign Countess of Bar and lady of Mousson * Soph ...

, a Württemberg princess (1759–1828) married to the Tsar of Russia Paul I (hence ''Sofievka'' or ''Zofiówka''). She donated a parcel of land for the Jewish settlement in the

Russian Partition The Russian Partition (), sometimes called Russian Poland, constituted the former territories of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth that were annexed by the Russian Empire in the course of late-18th-century Partitions of Poland. The Russian ac ...

after the conquest of the

Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth The Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, also referred to as Poland–Lithuania or the First Polish Republic (), was a federation, federative real union between the Crown of the Kingdom of Poland, Kingdom of Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania ...

(''see'' new

Pale of Settlement The Pale of Settlement was a western region of the Russian Empire with varying borders that existed from 1791 to 1917 (''de facto'' until 1915) in which permanent settlement by Jews was allowed and beyond which the creation of new Jewish settlem ...

district).

History

Sofievka (Trochenbrod) was founded in 1835, after the

November Uprising The November Uprising (1830–31) (), also known as the Polish–Russian War 1830–31 or the Cadet Revolution, was an armed rebellion in Russian Partition, the heartland of Partitions of Poland, partitioned Poland against the Russian Empire. ...

, initially as a farming colony for the dispossessed Jews, and with time developed into a small town. The population grew from around 1,200 inhabitants (235 families) in 1889, to 1,580 in 1897 according to Jewish archives. In the

, the number of inhabitants reached 4,000. The name Trochenbrod in

Yiddish Yiddish, historically Judeo-German, is a West Germanic language historically spoken by Ashkenazi Jews. It originated in 9th-century Central Europe, and provided the nascent Ashkenazi community with a vernacular based on High German fused with ...

stands for "Dry Bread" or "Bread without Butter" (). Towards the end of World War I, Trochymbrid briefly became a part of the

West Ukrainian People's Republic The West Ukrainian People's Republic (; West Ukrainian People's Republic#Name, see other names) was a short-lived state that controlled most of Eastern Galicia from November 1918 to July 1919. It included major cities of Lviv, Ternopil, Kolom ...

and subsequently the

Ukrainian People's Republic The Ukrainian People's Republic (UPR) was a short-lived state in Eastern Europe. Prior to its proclamation, the Central Council of Ukraine was elected in March 1917 Ukraine after the Russian Revolution, as a result of the February Revolution, ...

after unification on January 22, 1919. However, during the

Polish–Soviet War The Polish–Soviet War (14 February 1919 – 18 March 1921) was fought primarily between the Second Polish Republic and the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, following World War I and the Russian Revolution. After the collapse ...

, the forces of the re-emerging sovereign Poland and the

Red Army The Workers' and Peasants' Red Army, often shortened to the Red Army, was the army and air force of the Russian Soviet Republic and, from 1922, the Soviet Union. The army was established in January 1918 by a decree of the Council of People ...

fought over the town. It was ceded to Poland in the

Peace of Riga The Treaty of Riga was signed in Riga, Latvia, on between Poland on one side and Soviet Russia (acting also on behalf of Soviet Belarus) and Soviet Ukraine on the other, ending the Polish–Soviet War (1919–1921). The chief negotiators o ...

signed with Vladimir Lenin, and it became part of the Wołyń Voivodeship in the

Kresy Eastern Borderlands (), often simply Borderlands (, ) was a historical region of the eastern part of the Second Polish Republic. The term was coined during the interwar period (1918–1939). Largely agricultural and extensively multi-ethnic with ...

Borderlands. Most of the population were engaged in agriculture, dairy farming and tanning. There were seven

synagogue A synagogue, also called a shul or a temple, is a place of worship for Jews and Samaritans. It is a place for prayer (the main sanctuary and sometimes smaller chapels) where Jews attend religious services or special ceremonies such as wed ...

s in Trochenbrod, including three big ones. In 1939, the town, along with the rest of Kresy, was invaded by the Soviet Union (see

Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact The Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, officially the Treaty of Non-Aggression between Germany and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, and also known as the Hitler–Stalin Pact and the Nazi–Soviet Pact, was a non-aggression pact between Nazi Ge ...

). The

rabbi A rabbi (; ) is a spiritual leader or religious teacher in Judaism. One becomes a rabbi by being ordained by another rabbi—known as ''semikha''—following a course of study of Jewish history and texts such as the Talmud. The basic form of t ...

at that time was Rabbi Gershon Weissmann. The Communists exiled him to

Siberia Siberia ( ; , ) is an extensive geographical region comprising all of North Asia, from the Ural Mountains in the west to the Pacific Ocean in the east. It has formed a part of the sovereign territory of Russia and its predecessor states ...

after accusing him of being involved in underground salt trading.

The Holocaust

Trochenbrod and Lozisht holocaust memorial

After

Nazi Germany Nazi Germany, officially known as the German Reich and later the Greater German Reich, was the German Reich, German state between 1933 and 1945, when Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party controlled the country, transforming it into a Totalit ...

invaded the

Soviet Union The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR), commonly known as the Soviet Union, was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until Dissolution of the Soviet ...

in June 1941, the new German administration established a

Nazi ghetto Beginning with the invasion of Poland during World War II, the Nazi regime set up ghettos across German-occupied Eastern Europe in order to segregate and confine Jews, and sometimes Romani people, into small sections of towns and cities furtheri ...

at Trochenbrod, confining there also Jews from nearby villages and towns. The ghetto was liquidated in August and September 1942 in a series of massacres by Order Police battalions with involvement of the auxiliary police. Most of the Jews of Trochenbrod as well as of the neighboring village

Lozisht Ignatówka, also Lozisht, was a Jewish shtetl (village) located in what is now western Ukraine but which used to be part of the Second Polish Republic before the Nazi-Soviet invasion of Poland in 1939. Ignatówka was bordering a Jewish shtetl in Z ...

(Ignatówka in Polish) were murdered by the Nazis. According to '' Virtual Shtetl'', over 5,000 Jews were massacred, including 3,500 from Trochenbrod and 1,200 from Lozisht among other nearby settlements. Fewer than 200 Jews managed to escape death by fleeing into the forest. Some hid in caves nearby the village. The Ukrainian

Soviet partisans Soviet partisans were members of Resistance during World War II, resistance movements that fought a Guerrilla warfare, guerrilla war against Axis powers, Axis forces during World War II in the Soviet Union, the previously Territories of Poland an ...

from the nearby village of Klubochyn assisted some 150 survivors. Some Jews joined the resistance in the region and took up partisan actions against the Nazis. The village was totally destroyed and burnt down in 1942, and subsequently leveled out after

World War II World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...

Soviet Ukraine The Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, abbreviated as the Ukrainian SSR, UkrSSR, and also known as Soviet Ukraine or just Ukraine, was one of the constituent republics of the Soviet Union from 1922 until 1991. Under the Soviet one-party m ...

. Now only fields and a forest can be found there, and an ominous flatland with an aimless country road running through it.''The Heavens Are Empty: Discovering the Lost Town of Trochenbrod''
by Avrom Bendavid-Val. ''A Lost History'', official website. Internet Archive. On November 4, 1942, the Nazis executed 137 inhabitants of the nearby Ukrainian settlement of Klubochyn and burnt it as a reprisal for the actions of local Soviet Ukrainian partisans fighting against the Nazis. The partisans from Klubochyn and the surrounding vicinity took up arms against the Nazis and supplied weapons to a local Jewish resistance group. Ukrainian Soviet partisans also accepted Jewish partisans into their own units and provided protection to more than 150 Jewish families that survived the ghetto at Trochenbrod and nearby Jewish settlements that were hiding in the forest. Vasily Matsuyk, an elderly survivor of a Nazi massacre and director of Klubochyn District Museum recalled the story of one Ukrainian family in Klubochyn executed for assisting Jews. Upon the invasion of the

Ukrainian SSR The Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, abbreviated as the Ukrainian SSR, UkrSSR, and also known as Soviet Ukraine or just Ukraine, was one of the Republics of the Soviet Union, constituent republics of the Soviet Union from 1922 until 1991. ...

and the establishment of

, Erich Koch inspected the old Radziwill holdings that the

Bolsheviks The Bolsheviks, led by Vladimir Lenin, were a radical Faction (political), faction of the Marxist Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP) which split with the Mensheviks at the 2nd Congress of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party, ...

had not managed to destroy and with

Hitler Adolf Hitler (20 April 1889 – 30 April 1945) was an Austrian-born German politician who was the dictator of Nazi Germany from 1933 until Death of Adolf Hitler, his suicide in 1945. Adolf Hitler's rise to power, He rose to power as the lea ...

's permission claimed it for himself. He instructed the ''Kreislandwirt'', the official in charge of Tsuman district, to liquidate all Ukrainian villages on the former Radziwill territory. These included but were not limited to Klubochyn, Sylne and Horodyshche. Koch dispatched the ''

Sicherheitsdienst ' (, "Security Service"), full title ' ("Security Service of the ''Reichsführer-SS''"), or SD, was the intelligence agency of the Schutzstaffel, SS and the Nazi Party in Nazi Germany. Established in 1931, the SD was the first Nazi intelligence ...

'' Dto facilitate the clearing of his new residence, one of few Polish residents in Klubochyn, a man named Galicki prepared the list handed to the Secret Police, almost all residents of Klubochyn were on the list. In mid 1942 an SD unit arrived in Klubochyn in the night and locked the Ukrainian inhabitants in a barn at dusk. Those in the barn were executed by machine gun fire and the barn was then set on fire. According to eye-witness Stepan Radion, after the destruction of Klubochyn and its residents, the Kreislandwirt seized the remaining property left in the village and brought them to Tsuman, where Poles were heard rejoicing-"Now you have your Ukraine. We will finish all of you off now". The Germans then returned to Tsuman, where 150 Ukrainians included from the neighbouring village of Bashlyky were ordered to dig pits into which they fell after being machine-gunned. Also after Klubochyn the residents of Malyntsi were burned alive in the village church whilst "similar pogroms of Ukrainians took place in Mylovtsi and other villages'. The Polish individual responsible for preparing the list for the Sicherheitsdienst was executed by the Ukrainian nationalist underground. It is alleged that the Ukrainian Insurgents also killed a number of Germans in the surrounding area. After the end of World War II, the Jewish survivors from Trochenbrod, numbering between 33 and 40, lived in the area of nearby

. The last living Holocaust survivor from Trochenbrod was Baisa-Ruchel Potash (Betty Potash Gold), who passed away in 2014.

Trochenbrod in literature

A fictionalized historical portrayal of the

life at ''Trachimbrod'' was featured in the 2002

non-fiction novel The non-fiction novel is a literary genre that, broadly speaking, depicts non-fictional elements, such as real historical figures and actual events, woven together with fictitious conversations and uses the storytelling techniques of fiction. The ...

'' Everything Is Illuminated'' by

Jonathan Safran Foer Jonathan Safran Foer (; born February 21, 1977) is an American novelist. He is known for his novels '' Everything Is Illuminated'' (2002), '' Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close'' (2005), '' Here I Am'' (2016), and for his non-fiction works '' Eat ...

as well as in the 2005 film based on the novel. Safran Foer, whose grandfather came from Trochenbrod, depicts fictionalized events in the village beginning in 1791 – the year in which the shtetl was first named – until 1942, when it was destroyed in the war. Safran Foer's modern-day protagonist (who goes by the author's name and also by the name "Hero", or "the Collector" in the film version) comes to contemporary Ukraine to look for a woman named Augustine, who saved his grandfather in the war. The novel was criticized for omitting numerous historical details and distorting history by a reviewer from Ukraine published by '' The Prague Post'' online. ''Beyond Trochenbrod'', a memoir of a childhood in Trochenbrod disrupted by the Holocaust, was published in 2014. The author, Betty Potash Gold, also gave oral testimonies on the events.

Notes

References

* A book about the combined towns of Trochenbrod and Lozisht. * Everything is illuminated (2005) - a film about a young Jewish American man endeavors to find the woman who saved his grandfather's life during World War 2 in a Ukrainian village Trochenbrod, that was ultimately razed by the Nazis, with the help of an eccentric local.
Trochenbrod & Lozisht community website

Zofiówka
(8.) in the

Geographical Dictionary of the Kingdom of Poland The Geographical Dictionary of the Kingdom of Poland and other Slavic Countries () is a monumental Polish gazetteer, published 1880–1902 in Warsaw Warsaw, officially the Capital City of Warsaw, is the capital and List of cities and towns ...

(1895)