Obj. ID: 10415
Jewish Funerary Art Old Holocaust Memorial at the Killing Site in Soshne Forest in Iziaslav, Ukraine, 1950?
Memorial Name
No given name
Who is Commemorated?
The roughly two-thousand Jews from Iziaslav and nearby villages who were murdered at this site during the Holocaust.
Description
This monument, located on the border of the Soshne Forest, was placed on a concrete base with two circular holes in it for planted trees flanking the main element.
The memorial itself was an obelisk made of four rectangular stones, of different cuts or materials. The top two had plaques affixed to them, and the bottom stone had a smaller, rectangular stone attached to the front, to serve as a step to the lower plaque.
Atop the top stone of the obelisk was a metal conical spire, topped with a five-pointed star.
Inscriptions
Upper Plaque:
Жертвам
фашизма
1942 - 1943
Translation: To the Victims of Fascism 1942 - 1943.]
Lower Plaque:
[Undiscipherable from images]
Commissioned By
Unknown
sub-set tree:
Stone
In 1939, the Jewish population of Izyaslav numbered 3,208 individuals, roughly 28% of the population. Few local Jews managed to flee when the war began, and when the Germans occupied the town city on July 5th, 1941, they were made to wear yellow badges on their chests and backs. In August 1941, members of the local police and Germans killed over 1,000 Jews, and the rest were herded into a ghetto.
The Ghetto was destroyed in June 1942, when the rest of the Jewish victims were murdered, except for a small group of skilled workers who were murdered in January 1943. Iziaslav was liberated by the Red Army on February 28th, 1944.
According to records at the Yad Vashem Holocaust Center, this memorial was placed at the site of the second and third "killing actions" at Iziaslav during the Holocaust, in June 1942, and either on January 1st or 2nd, 1943, respectively, marking the location where the majority of the Jews from Iziaslav and the surrounding area were murdered ("Destruction of Jewish Community of Izyaslav," Tsal Kaplun Foundation).
This monument was erected at this site after the war by the local Jews. It was vandalized several times with antisemitic graffiti. ("Izyaslav," Yad Vashem), and at a point before 2015, (assumedly in the 1990s with the fall of the USSR) the Soviet star at the monument's top was removed.
An new, additional monument, was erected nearby by the Tsal Kaplun Foundation in 2018 (see ID 48449).
"Destruction of Jewish Community of Izyaslav"
Shoah Atrocities Map - Ukraine (Tsal Kaplun Foundation), https://shoahatlas.org/u0049.html.
"Izyaslav,"
Untold Stories - Murder Sites of Jews in Occupied Territories of the USSR (Yad Vashem project), https://collections.yadvashem.org/en/untold-stories/community/14621971.