Tarnopol Ghetto

Background

During the invasion of Poland, Tarnopol was overrun by the Red Army on 000000001939-09-17-0000September 17, 1939. Soon, the region was Sovietized in the atmosphere of terror. Jewish businesses were nationalized; wealthier Jews along with the Zionist leaders, arrested by the troops of the Soviet NKVD secret police. Their families were deported to Siberia in cattle trains, along with families of Christian Poles. Monuments were destroyed, street names changed, bookshops closed, library collections stolen and transported in lorries to the Russian archives. In early 1940 refugees fleeing from the Nazi-occupied Poland raised the Jewish population of Tarnopol to more than 20,000. Some found employment with the Soviet administration, and in the new communist militia.

A year and a half later, during the German attack on the Soviet positions in eastern Poland, Tarnopol was overrun by the Wehrmacht on 000000001941-07-02-0000July 2, 1941. Several hundred Jews followed the Soviets in their hasty retreat to the east. Immediately afterwards, up to 1,000 dead bodies of political prisoners murdered by the NKVD were discovered at the Tarnopol prison, and 1,000 more in nearby towns. Notably, among the NKVD executioners were also local men known by their names, which had terrible consequences for the Polish-Jewish community which – in accordance with the Nazi theory of Judeo-Bolshevism – was made responsible by the Germans for the Soviet atrocities against their own Ukrainian collaborationists. The NKVD killings of Poles were purposely overlooked.

A pogrom broke out two days later and lasted from 000000001941-07-04-0000July 4 until 000000001941-07-11-0000July 11, 1941, with homes destroyed, synagogue burned and Polish Jews killed indiscriminately, estimated between 1,600 (Yad Vashem) and 2,000 (Virtual Shtetl) at various locations including inside prison, at the Gurfein School, and at the synagogue set on fire afterwards. The killing of about 1,000 Jews was done by the SS-Sonderkommando 4b attached to Einsatzgruppe C, under the command of Guenther Hermann, (just returning from the massacre in Łuck) with another 600 Jews murdered by the Ukrainian Militia – formed by the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists – and renamed as the Ukrainian Auxiliary Police the following month. Nearly all of their Jewish victims were men. Some 500 Jews were murdered in the suburbs on the grounds of the Ternopil's Christian cemetery using weapons handed out by the German army. According to interviews conducted in Ukraine by a Roman Catholic priest, Father Patrick Desbois from Yahad-In Unum, some of the victims were decapitated.

Ghetto history

The German authorities ordered the creation of a Judenrat with 60 members. Teacher Marek Gottfried became its president. The Jews were summoned to police headquarters in one group, loaded onto lorries, and taken out of town to a secret execution site at Zagroble nearby. In early August 1941 the Jews of Tarnopol were ordered to wear a Star of David and mark their homes with it. A 'new' Judenrat was formed by the Nazis soon after the wave of massacres, without disclosing the fate of its original members, and ordered to pay a ransom of 1.5 million rubles. Gustaw Fischer was appointed head of the Judenrat.

In September 1941, the German occupation authorities under Gerhard Hager announced the creation of a designated Jewish ghetto in the city around the Old Square and the Market Square Minor, in a derelict district that occupied mere 5 percent of the metropolitan area. Population density in the ghetto was tripled, with 12,000–13,000 Jews put in it. Death penalty was introduced for leaving the ghetto illegally, and all food allowances rationed. Within a year the conditions in the ghetto became so bad that in the winter of 1941–42 the Judenrat began burying the corpses in mass graves for sanitation concerns due to rampant mortality rates. Satellite labour camps for Jewish slave workers were established by the Germans in Kamionka, Podwołoczyska, Hluboczka, and in Zagroble.

Roundups and ghetto liquidation

The first ghetto liquidation action was perpetrated on 000000001942-08-31-0000August 31, 1942, not long after the Final Solution was set in motion. By that time, the Bełżec extermination camp northwest of Tarnopol was already working at full throttle. Some 3,000–4,000 Jews were rounded up and locked in cattle cars, with no water. The transport remained at the station for two days with all victims crying out for help; meanwhile, another cattle train arrived with Polish Jews from the ghettos in Zbaraż and Mikulińce. The two trains were connected at the station as one Holocaust transport to Bełżec with at least 6,700 victims dying inside from suffocation and thirst.

The next Holocaust train was assembled on 000000001942-11-10-0000November 10, 1942. Some 2,500 Jews were rounded up and marched to the station, with a small Ukrainian orchestra playing on their departure to Bełżec. The ghetto area was greatly reduced; a part of it, turned into a labour camp. Between August 1942 and June 1943 there were five "selections" that decimated the Jewish prisoner population of Tarnopol. The camps were liquidated as the last. The victims were sent in Holocaust trains to the extermination camp at Bełżec, but also massacred in shooting actions at Petrykowo, or Petrykow-Wald, with the assistance of Ukrainian policemen. Estimated 2,500 Jews perished there. A few hundred Jews from Tarnopol and its vicinity attempted to survive by hiding within the town limits. Many were denounced by Ukrainian nationalists, including some 200 people shortly before the Soviets took over the area in 1944.

Rescue attempts

A number of Jews survived the Holocaust by hiding with the Poles. Among them was the family of Malwina and Roman Gross. They managed to make contact with the Polish Christian family of Józef Regent, whom they knew from before the invasion. It was a unique double-rescue attempt, because Roman Gross – attorney by profession – already rescued Józef Regent mere two years earlier during the Soviet occupation of Tarnopol. He did so by successfully defending his friend against deportation to Siberia by the NKVD. The Gross family hid with the Regent family-of-four until liberation. They corresponded for years to come after forcible expulsion of ethnic Poles from the new USSR area in 1945. The Regents received medals of Righteous among the Nations in 1995. The Misiewicz family-of-three saved the Bien family-of-four. Adam Misiewicz constructed a dug-out by the house. The youngest Lunia Bien stayed with the rescuers. They had no money. Adam was stealing grain from the mill; Rozalia was selling it for the milk. Both families survived. The retreating Nazis burned the house to the ground after an unsuccessful search. After the war, the Misiewiczs were deported from the USSR to new Poland with nothing; David Ben with his family emigrated to Canada. The dug-outs for the Jews were often used by the Polish farmers themselves, whenever the OUN-UPA killing squads marching from village to village were in the area. At least 1,587 Christian Poles were murdered by OUN-UPA in the Tarnopol county (powiat) in 1944 before the Soviet takeover.

Following World War II, at the insistence of Joseph Stalin during Tehran Conference, Poland's borders were redrawn and Tarnopol (then again, Терно́поль) was incorporated into the Ukrainian SSR of the Soviet Union. Polish population was resettled back to new Poland before the end of 1946. A monument in memory of the Holocaust victims was erected in Ternopil at Petrikovsky Yar in 1996, five years after the collapse of the Soviet empire.