Obj. ID: 14925
Jewish Funerary Art Second Holocaust Memorial on the North mass grave in Rohatyn, Ukraine
Memorial Name
No official name
Who is Commemorated?
Jewish victims of the Holocaust from the Rohatyn and surroundings, who were murdered and buried here
Description:
The Monument is located at the mass grave in the North of Rohatyn. It is a concrete block-form composition monument. There are two black plaques with inscriptions in Ukrainian and English at the top of the Monument. The third plaque with inscription in Hebrew and a Magen David is attached to the front side of the block. The monument is surrounded with a metal fence, a part of its front section has a form of Menorah.
Inscriptions
In Ukrainian:
Тут поховані тисячі
євреїв жителів міста
Рогатина та його
околиць по-звірячому
вбитих німецькими
нацистами в 1943 році.
Вічна память
Translation: Here are buried thousands of Jews, residents of the city of Rohatyn and its surroundings, brutally killed by nazis in 1943. Eternal memory
In English:
Here lie thousands
of Jews citizens
of Rohatyn and its
surrounding areas
who were brutally
killed by the
German Nazis
during the years of
1942 – 1944
God rest their souls
In Hebrew
פנ [פה נטמן]
אלפי קורבנות של יהודים תושבי רוהאטין
והסביבה שנרצחו ע"י [=על ידי] הנאצים בשנות 1942-4
הי"ד [=השם יקום דמם]
Translation: Here rest thousands of victims of Jewish residents of Rohatyn and surroundings who were killed by the hands of nazis in the years 1942-4 / May God avenge their blood
Commissioned by
Rohatyn Jewish survivors and descendants
6 image(s)
sub-set tree:
In 1939, there were 3,250 Jews in Rohatyn and 9,685 Jews in Rohatyn district [Solovka, p. 550].
The German Army occupied Rohatyn on July 5, 1941 [Tsal Kaplun Foundation]. The first large Action in the city took place on March 20, 1942, when 1,820 Jews were shot. During the second mass murder on September 21-22, 1942, about 300 Jews were killed in the city and 700 more people were deported to the Bełżec killing center. In October 1942, Jews from Bursztyn, Bolszowce, and Bukaczowce were deported to Rohatyn. On December 8, 1942, nazis deported from Rohatyn about 1,400 Jews and killed about 500 Jews in Rohatyn. From February to April 1943, several Actions took place in Rohatyn [Encyclopedia]. In total, from 5,000 to 9,800 Jews perished in Rohatyn [Solovka, p. 550].
The Holocaust memorialization process in Rohatyn began in the 1980s, when the Soviet authority installed two square slabs near the South and the North mass graves. These monuments only marked killing sites and approximate places of mass graves, their short inscriptions did not give any information about the events and the victims.
In 1998, Rohatyn Jewish survivors erected two new monuments near the North (this memorial) and the South mass graves. A memorial plaque on the Great synagogue building was also installed about that time. All three monuments bear inscriptions in Ukrainian, English and Hebrew. In the 1990s, Jewish survivors and their descendants also installed the Holocaust monuments in the New Jewish Cemetery and the Old Jewish Cemetery in Rohatyn.
The "Rohatyn Jewish Heritage" NGO organizes annual commemoration of the days of mass murders on March 20 near the Second Monument on the South Mass Grave and in June near the Second Monument on the North Mass Grave. During these events, the activists read the prayer El Malei Rachamim (“God full of mercy”). The activists of the "Rohatyn Jewish Heritage" NGO also maintain the Second Holocaust Memorial on the North Mass Grave and the Second Holocaust Memorial on the South Mass Grave and plant flowers around them. The Soviet monuments on the North and the South mass graves are not involved in commemoration activities.
Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos 1933-1945, ed. Martin Dean, vol. 2 (Bloomington: The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, 2012), pp. 821-822.
"Rohatyn: Brick Factory," Shoah Atrocities Map - Ukraine (Tsal Kaplun Foundation), https://shoahatlas.org/u1103.html (accessed June 6, 2023)
"Rohatyn’s Shoah Killing Sites and Mass Graves," Rohatyn Jewish Heritage, https://rohatynjewishheritage.org/en/heritage/mass-graves/ (accessed June 6, 2023)
Solovka, Liubov and Svitlana Oryshko, 150 iz 150 tysiach... Holokost yevreiv Prykarpattia yak skladova etnodemohrafichnoi Katastrofy Skhidnoi Halychyny (Ivano-Frankivsk: Foliant, 2019), p. 550.