Obj. ID: 11539
Jewish Funerary Art Holocaust Monument in Horodenka, Ukraine, 1960s(?), 1990s
Memorial Name
No official name
Who is Commemorated?
Jewish Holocaust Victims from Horodenka, who were murdered and buried here on December 4, 1941
Description
The monument is located on the mass grave in the forest between the Mykhalche and Semakivtsi villages. It is a rectangular upright stele with a cut upper-right corner. A short Ukrainian inscription without any details about the events or victims is carved into the stone. Hebrew, Ukrainian, English, and Yiddish inscriptions are written with white letters on a separate black plaque, which seems to have been bolted to the bottom of the headstone under the original Ukrainian inscription sometime after the monument was erected. At the top of the plaque, there are two blue Magen Davids, which highlight the Hebrew words "Mass grave." The Ukrainian inscription has several mistakes.
Inscriptions
On the stone (Ukrainian):
Жертвам
фашизму
1941 - 1942
Translation: To the victims of fascism 1941-1942
Inscriptions on the plaque:
Hebrew:
קבר אחים
בי"ד בכסלו תש"ב רצחו הנאצים במקום זה
2,500 יהודים-גברים נשים וטף מהורודנקה והסביבה.
יהי זכרם ברוך לעולמי עד.
ת.נ.צ.ב.ה.
Translation: Mass grave / On Kislev 14, 5702 [=December 4, 1941] nazis murdered at this place 2,500 Jews - men, women and children from Horodenka and the vicinity. May their memory be blessed forever. May their souls be bound in the bundle of life.
Ukrainian:
Братська могила 2500 евреів з Городенки
і округи, ще були звірськи убиті
в цему місці 4 грудня 1941 року.
Вічна памʼять ім і всім евреям,
що загинули від рук націстів в 1941-1945.
Translation: Mass grave of 2,500 Jews from Horodenka and vicinity, who were brutally killed at this place on December 4, 1941. Eternal memory to them and all the Jews, who perished from the hands of nazis in 1941-1945.
English:
Mass grave of 2,500 Jews - adults and
children - from Horodenka and the vicinity
who were murdered here by nazis in dec. 4, 1941.
May the memory of the Holocaust martyrs
be blessed forever.
Yiddish:
אויף דעם אורט זענען געהארגעט
געוארען פון נאצי מערדערס 2,500 יידען
פון הורוגנקה און די סביבה.
Translation: At this place, 2,500 Jews from Horodenka and the vicinity were killed by nazi murderers.
Commissioned by
The Soviet Authority
7 image(s)
sub-set tree:
In 1939, there were 3,750 Jews in Horodenka. Hungarian troops entered Horodenka in July of 1941, and German troops came in August of that year. Along with the local Jewish community, about 1,000 Hungarian Jews were also held in Horodenka [Solovka, p. 181].
On December 4, 1941, the Gestapo of Kolomea gathered about 2,600 Jews in the synagogue, brought them the next day to the forest near Siemakowce, and shot them there. On April 13, 1942, about 60 or 75 Jews were shot in Horodenka, and were buried in the cemetery. In 1942, the Jews from surrounding villages and Obertyn were brought to the Horodenka ghetto. Most of them were deported to Kolomea and the Bełżec killing center. About 80 Jews were sent to the Janowska Street labor camp in Lwów. Very few Jews from Horodenka survived the Holocaust [Solovka, p. 181, Encyclopedia, p. 780].
The first monument in Horodenka was erected by the Soviet Authority on the mass grave near the Semakivtsi Village [Solovka, p. 462]. The monument had a short inscription in Ukrainian, which did not specify information about the events that took place there or the ethnicity of the victims. In the 1990s, a plaque with information in four languages was bolted to the monument.
A Holocaust memorial plaque was also installed on the Great Synagogue in Horodenka in 1993 [Solovka, p. 462]. The memorial plaque is included in The List of Monuments of History and Monumental Art of Local Significance in the Ivano-Frankivsk Region.
Jewish Survivors from Israel erected a second monument in the late 1990s at the mass grave in the New Jewish cemetery in Horodenka, where the victims of the Action on April 13, 1942, were buried ["Horodenka...", Solovka, p. 462]. The monument has a Magen David and bolted plaques with information in Hebrew and Ukrainian.
Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos 1933-1945, ed. Martin Dean, vol. 2 (Bloomington: The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, 2012), pp. 780–781.
"HORODENKA: Ivano-Frankivska oblast [Gorodënka ]," International Jewish Cemetery Project, International Association of Jewish Genealogical Societies, http://iajgscemetery.org/eastern-europe/ukraine/horodenka-ivano-frankivska-oblast (accessed April 27, 2023)
Jewish Cemeteries, Synagogues, and Mass Grave Sites in Ukraine (Washington, DC: U.S. Commission for the Preservation of America’s Heritage Abroad, 2005), p. 59.
Solovka, Liubov and Svitlana Oryshko, 150 iz 150 tysiach... Holokost yevreiv Prykarpattia yak skladova etnodemohrafichnoi Katastrofy Skhidnoi Halychyny, (Ivano-Frankivsk: Foliant, 2019), pp. 181, 462–463.