Obj. ID: 49598 Holocaust memorial in Berezyno Tract (Taniava Forest) in Bolekhiv, Ukraine
Memorial Name
No official name
Who is Commemorated?
Jewish Holocaust Victims from Bolechów, who were murdered and buried here
Description:
The monument is located on the mass grave in the Taniava Forest, north-west of Bolekhiv, near Sichovykh Striltsiv Street. It is a concrete horizontal slab, surrounded by concrete boundaries in a rectangular shape of about 6 meters in width and about 9 meters in length, with several poles on the corners of the rectangle and near the slab. According to the Rohatyn Jewish Heritage NGO, the Soviet plaque on the memorial bore an inscription which didn't mention the ethnicity of the victims. A new plaque added in 2009 bears Hebrew, Ukrainian, English, and Polish inscriptions. Flanking the Ukrainian inscription, are the coats of arm of the City of Bolekhivused between 1991 and 2020 with the Ukrainian name of the city above them. There are several mistakes in the Ukrainian and Polish texts: the word "bratni" ("fraternal") is used in Polish inscription, which is not inherent in this context, and the abbreviation "DKA," which means House of Red Army (in Russian - Dom Krasnoi Armii) is used in all of the inscriptions.
Inscriptions (on the 2009 plaque)
Hebrew:
קבר אחים טאניאבה
כאן קבורים כ 950 יהודי העיר בולחוב
שנרצחו במקום זה ע"י [=על ידי] הנאצים ב 29 לאוקטובר 1941 ה'תש"ב
אחרי יומיים של עינויים בבנין ״ד.ק.א״. בבולחוב
ת.נ.צ.ב.ה [=תהי נשמתם צרורה בצרור החיים]
עבור מנוחתם וזכרם מתפללים:
משפחות הנרצחים, צאצאי בולחוב בפזורה
״חסידי אומות העולם״ ואנשי קהילת בולחיב העכשווית.
אוגוסט 2009, אלול תשס"ט
***
Translation: Taniava mass grave // Here rest about 950 Jews of the Bolechow city / who were murdered on this site by the nazis on October 29, 1941 5702 after two days of tortures in "DKA" building in Bolechow / May their souls be bound in the bundle of life / [Those who] pray for their resting and memory: / families of murdered [people], descendants of Bolechow in the diaspora / "Righteous among the Nations" and contemporary Bolekhiv community. / August 2009, Elul 5769
Ukrainian:
Братська могила Танява
Тут спочиває около 950 євреїв з Болехіва,
які були вбиті тут нацистами 29 жовтня 1941
після двохденних нелюдських катувань
в болехівському "ДКА" під час першої "Акції".
В ічна їм памʼять.
За них моляться:
Сімї закатованих, болехівська діаспора,
" Праведники Народів Світу" і сучасна Болехівська спільнота.
Серпен 2009
***
Translation: Taniava mass grave // Here rest about 950 Jews from Bolekhiv, / which were murdered by nazis on October 29, 1941 / after two-day inhuman tortures / in Bolekhiv "DKA" during the first "Action". / Eternal memory to them. / [Those who] pray for them: / families of tortured [people], Bolekhiv diaspora, / "Righteous among the Nations" and contemporary Bolekhiv community. / August 2009
English:
Taniava Mass Grave
Here rest about 950 Bolechow Jews
murdered on this spot by the Nazis
on October 29, 1941
after two days of brutal torture at the "DKA" House.
We pray for their blessed eternal memory.
Dedicated by families of the Jewish martyrs,
Bolechow descendants, "Righteous Among The Nations"
and the recent Bolekhiv community.
August 2009
***
Polish:
Bratni grób Taniava
Tu spoczywa okolo 950 Żydow Bołechowskich
zamordowanych na tym mjejscu 29-go pazdzeirnika 1941 roku
przez nazistowskich oprawców, po dwudniowych
bestialskich torturach w Bolechowskim "DKA".
O wieczną o Nich pamięć proszą:
Rodziny Pomordowanych, Bolechowiacy z Zagranicy.
"Sprawiedliwi Wśród Narodow Swiata"
oraz teraźniejsze społeczeństwo Bołechiva.
Sierpień 2009
Translation: Taniava fraternal grave // Here rest about 950 Bolechów Jews / murdered on this site on October 29, 1941 / by the nazi executioners after two-day / brutal tortures in Bolechów "DKA". / [Those who] ask for their eternal memory: / families of tortured [people], Bolekhiv diaspora. / "Righteous Among The Nations" / and contemporary community of Bolekhiv. / August 2009
Commissioned by
The Soviet Authority. In 2009, the Bolechow Jewish Heritage Society made renovations to the monument.
History/Provenance
According to Liubov Solovka, 3,900 Jews lived in Bolechów in 1939.
According to the Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos, the Hungarian and Slovak armies entered Bolechów on July 6, 1941. Nazi Germany took control of it in August 1941.
The first mass murder took place on October 28–29, 1941. Between 700 and 900 Jews were gathered in a Catholic building (the House of the Red Army or DKA), tortured there, and then brought to the Taniava forest and shot. In April 1942, about 450 Jews were shot near the Jewish cemetery in Bolechów. In August 1942, Jews from Wełdzirz, Wygoda, Wyszków, Mizun Stary, and Rożniatów were brought to Bolechów. On September 3–5, 1942, about 600 Jews were murdered in the Jewish cemetery in Bolechów (400 according to the Encyclopedia) and more than 450 Jews (1,600 according to the Encyclopedia) were deported to the Bełżec killing center. About 2,000 Jews, workers in the Bolechów labor camps, were murdered in 1943 during liquidation actions. Mass murders took place on March 10–12, and June–August in the Jewish cemetery. About 3,050 Jews perished in the Jewish cemetery in Bolechów [Solovka, Liubov and Svitlana Oryshko, pp. 189–195, 526].
According to the Rohatyn Jewish Heritage, the Soviet Authority erected the monument in the Taniava Forest in the late 1940s. The plaque bore an inscription about Soviet citizens, victims of fascism, without specifying their ethnicities. By 2003, this plaque was no longer on the monument. In 2007, descendants of Bolechów Jews and other stakeholders established the Bolechów Jewish Heritage Society, which aimed to protect and commemorate the Jewish cemetery and other Jewish heritage sites in Bolechów. In 2009, the members of this organization from Israel and the United States organized and financed the cleaning of the mass graves in the Taniava Forest and in the Jewish cemetery in Bolekhiv. Descendants of a local Christian family, who saved Jews during WWII, agreed to clean up the territory systematically. In 2009, members of Bolechow Jewish Heritage Society also installed three Holocaust memorial plaques - on the mass grave in the Taniava Forest, in the Jewish cemetery near the entrance, and on the former House of Red Army ("DKA"). The House of Red Army burned down and was demolished together with the memorial plaque.
The dedication ceremony and installation of the memorial plaque in the Jewish cemetery took place on August 18, 2009. L. Kitsul, R. Matkovskyi, deputies of the city Head, and V. Lutsyk, the editor of the Newspaper of the Bolekhiv City Council "Ratusha" met about 40 descendants of Bolekhiv Jews from Israel, the United States, and France in the cemetery that day. The ceremony consisted of two parts. The first part was composed of speeches in Ukranian by Natalia Ivanochko, Vasyl Lutsyk, and priests Ivan Petriv and Kshyshtof Panasovets. The second part started with a speech by Larry Kirsch, a descendant of Bolekhiv Jews followed by the sounding od a shofar. After that, Shlomo Adler spoke and Susan Wolf Turnbull, on behalf of the organization, presented gifts to the priests of three Bolekhiv communities. Then, Psalm 23 was read, and a guest from Israel sang a song in two languages.
On August 19, 2009, dedicatory ceremonies for new memorial plaques took place near the former House of the Red Army and at the mass grave in the Taniava Forest. During the ceremony near the former House of the Red Army, a descendant of Bolekhiv Jews, Josef Adler spoke about the first "Action" in October 1941 in Yiddish. The speech was translated into English and Ukrainian. After a short prayer, all the participants moved to the Taniava Forest, where a Rabbi from Lviv took the floor with a sermon, prayer, and the sounding of a shofar.
According to the Tsal Kaplun Foundation, there is a Holocaust monument in the Jewish cemetery in Bolekhiv that was erected in the 1990s, but we could not confirm this information ["Bolekhiv: Jewish Cemetery"].
"Case Study 15 – Informational Signage: Bolekhiv Cemetery and Forest Mass Grave," A Guide to Jewish Cemetery Preservation in Western Ukraine (Rohatyn Jewish Heritage), https://jewishheritageguide.net/en/case-studies/cs15 (accessed May 20, 2023)
Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos 1933-1945, ed. Martin Dean, vol. 2 (Bloomington: The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, 2012), pp. 751–753.
Lutsyk, Vasyl, "Bolekhivchany usogo svitu - piznaimosia," Ratusha Hazeta Bolekhivskoi Miskoi Rady, 32 (603), August 21, 2009: pp. 1, 3
Photos of the monument in 1996:
"Bolechow Stryj Synowodsko Wyzne," Bolechow Jewish Heritage Society, https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5ec83f9827ca2b5f11977eba/t/5ec84e0a5f3fe97c730c9137/1590185483715/TripBooklet.pdf (accessed September 6, 2023)
Solovka, Liubov and Svitlana Oryshko, 150 iz 150 tysiach... Holokost yevreiv Prykarpattia yak skladova etnodemohrafichnoi Katastrofy Skhidnoi Halychyny, (Ivano-Frankivsk: Foliant, 2019), pp. 189–195, 525–526.