Obj. ID: 45053  Holocaust memorial in the Oldest Jewish cemetery in Kolomyia, Ukraine

According to Liubov Solovka, there were about 19,500 Jews in Kołomyja before June 22, 1941. In July of that year, about 4,000 Jews, deported from Hungary, arrived in Kołomyja [Solovka, p. 170].

More than 54,000 Jews went through Kołomyja during the nazi occupation, including more than 15,000 residents of Kołomyja, about 20,000 or 30,000 residents of Kołomyja district, 4,000 Hungarian Jews, and about 3,000 refugees from the West. More than 3,000 Jews perished in a Jewish cemetery in Kołomyja, people murdered in the city were also buried in the cemetery. Between 11,000 and 14,000 Jews were shot in the Sheparivtsi Forest. About 28,000 Jews were deported from Kołomyja to the Bełżec killing center, between 1,500 and 1,800 were deported to the Janów camp in Lwów [Solovka, p. 175]. 

The Soviet Authority erected the first two monuments to the Victims of the Holocaust in Kolomyia in 1967. One of them is located in the Sheparivtsi Forest. Another one is situated at the crossroads of Stepana Bandery and Ivana Mazepy. Inscriptions on these monuments did not specify the ethnicity of the victims. The monument in the Sheparivtsi Forest has undergone several changes since 1997 by attaching new plaques with Ukrainian, Hebrew, and Yiddish inscriptions and a Magen David. The most recent plaque bolted to the monument in 2011, has inscriptions in Ukrainian and Yiddish. A new monument with a Ukrainian inscription was erected in the Oldest Jewish cemetery in Kolomyia by a Ukrainian politician in the 2010s. 

Commemoration activities took place every year near the monument at the crossroad of Stepana Bandery and Ivana Mazepy on International Holocaust Remembrance Day. Local authority representatives and members of the Kolomyia Jewish community take part in the ceremony. Participants lay flowers and wreaths on the monument [Pryvatne Pidpryiemstvo Teleradiokompaniia NTK, 2013 and 2017; Dzerkalo Media].