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Obj. ID: 49866
Jewish Funerary Art
  First Holocaust Memorial on the North mass grave in Rohatyn, Ukraine, c. 1985

© Jewish Galicia and Bukovina N.P.O., http://jgaliciabukovina.net, Photographer: Levin, Vladimir, 2010

Monument Name

No official name

Who is Commemorated?

Jewish Holocaust Victims from the Rohatyn district and the surrounding areas, who were murdered and buried here

Description:

The Monument is located on the mass grave in the North of Rohatyn. It is a square mound covered with grass and surrounded by a concrete frame. At the center of the mound, there is a concrete horizontal square slab, which has a black granite plaque atop it. The plaque bears a short inscription in Ukrainian, which does not give any specific information about the events at this site or the victims.

Inscription in Ukranian:

Жертвам фашизму

Translation: To the victims of fascism

Commissioned by

The Soviet Authority

Summary and Remarks
Remarks

3 image(s)

sub-set tree:

Name/Title
First Holocaust Memorial on the North mass grave in Rohatyn | Unknown
Object Detail
Monument Setting
Date
circa 1985
Synagogue active dates
Reconstruction dates
Artist/ Maker
Historical Origin
Community type
Congregation
Unknown
Site
Unknown
School/Style
Unknown|
Period
Period Detail
Collection
Unknown |
Documentation / Research project
Unknown
Iconographical Subject
Unknown |
Textual Content
Languages of inscription
Shape / Form
Material / Technique
Concrete, black granite
Material Stucture
Material Decoration
Material Bonding
Material Inscription
Material Additions
Material Cloth
Material Lining
Tesserae Arrangement
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Colors
Construction material
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Length
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Condition
Extant
Documented by CJA
Surveyed by CJA
Present Usage
Present Usage Details
Condition of Building Fabric
Architectural Significance type
Historical significance: Event/Period
Historical significance: Collective Memory/Folklore
Historical significance: Person
Architectural Significance: Style
Architectural Significance: Artistic Decoration
Urban significance
Significance Rating
0
Ornamentation
Custom
Contents
Codicology
Scribes
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Number of Lines
Ruling
Pricking
Quires
Catchwords
Hebrew Numeration
Blank Leaves
Direction/Location
Façade (main)
Endivances
Location of Torah Ark
Location of Apse
Location of Niche
Location of Reader's Desk
Location of Platform
Temp: Architecture Axis
Arrangement of Seats
Location of Women's Section
Direction Prayer
Direction Toward Jerusalem
Coin
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Colophon
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Group
Group
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Group
Trade Mark
Binding
Decoration Program
Suggested Reconsdivuction
History/Provenance

In 1939, there were 9,685 Jews in the Rohatyn district, and 3,250 Jews in the city of Rohatyn itself [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 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, between 5,000 and 9,800 Jews perished in Rohatyn [Solovka, p. 550].

Most gravestones from the Old and New Jewish Cemeteries were demolished during the German occupation of Rohatyn. The headstones were used in construction and paving streets [Jewish grave markers].

The Holocaust memorialization process in Rohatyn began in the 1980s, when the Soviet authority installed two square slabs near the North and the South mass graves. These monuments only marked the killing sites and approximate locations of mass graves, their short inscriptions did not give any information about the events and the victims [Rohatyn’s Shoah Killing Sites].

In 1998, Rohatyn Jewish survivors erected two new monuments near the North and the South mass graves. A memorial plaque on the former Great synagogue and former Judenrat building was also installed about that time [Rohatyn’s Shoah Killing Sites]. In the 1990s, Jewish survivors and their descendants also installed Holocaust monuments in the New Jewish Cemetery and the Old Jewish Cemetery in Rohatyn [Jewish cemeteries of Rohatyn]. All these monuments bear inscriptions in Ukrainian, English, and Hebrew.

Since the 1990s, local Ukrainian activists, Jewish survivors, and their descendants returned gravestones from around the city to the Jewish cemeteries. In 2011, members of the Rohatyn Jewish Heritage NGO joined this process, accelerating it. Together with local residents, they currently maintain, investigate the territories of the cemeteries, and work on further memorialization [Jewish grave markers].

Among all the Holocaust monuments in Rohatyn, only the memorial plaque on the former Great synagogue and former Judenrat building was included in the List of Monuments of History and Monumental Art of Local Significance in the Ivano-Frankivsk Region as of 2023.

The "Rohatyn Jewish Heritage" NGO organizes annual commemorations 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, 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 [Rohatyn’s Shoah Killing Sites].  

Main Surveys & Excavations
Sources

Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos 1933-1945, ed. Martin Dean, vol. 2 (Bloomington: The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, 2012), pp. 821-822.

"Jewish Cemeteries of Rohatyn," Rohatyn Jewish Heritage, https://rohatynjewishheritage.org/en/heritage/cemeteries/ (accessed June 15, 2023)

"Jewish Grave Markers, Lost and Recovered," Rohatyn Jewish Heritage, https://rohatynjewishheritage.org/en/heritage/headstones/ (accessed June 15, 2023)

"Rohatyn: Brick Factory,"
Shoah Atrocities Map - Ukraine (Tsal Kaplun Foundation), https://shoahatlas.org/u1103.html.

"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.
Type
Documenter
Vladimir Levin | 2010
Author of description
Marina Sedova | 2023
Architectural Drawings
|
Computer Reconstruction
|
Section Head
|
Language Editor
Adam Frisch | 2023
Donor
|
Negative/Photo. No.
The following information on this monument will be completed: