1 Execution site(s)
Omelian H., born in 1930: “Romanians and Hungarians brought Jews from Zalischyky to the entrance of Rozhanivka. They were brought here by truck. In the early days, when there were no barracks, the Jews bartered with the local villagers. Later, a labor camp was set up by the Germans. The camp consisted of two wooden barracks. The Jews built the barracks, they didn’t exist previously. Jews from Hungary and Romania were also gathered in this camp. The camp inmates were used for labor in the rubber fields. They were guarded by a villager in civilian clothes while they were working. The villagers also worked in the manor fields, but they were separated from the Jews. One day, the Germans came to take the Jews from the camp to Tovste.” (Witness n°2354U, interviewed in Mukhavka, on March 16, 2018)
Rozhanivka is located 80 km (50mi) south of Ternopil, and 2 km away of Tovste. The village was home to Ukrainians, and the nearest Jewish community could be found in the town of Tovste. There was a big manor with fields left by a Polish noble and transformed into a collective farm by the Soviets. Most villagers worked at the farm. The Jews from Tovste would come to the village to sell goods, or the villagers went to Tovste if they needed to buy something. According to estimates, circa. 2,000 Jews out of a total population of 3,000 remained in Tovste on the eve of the war.
Rozhanivka was occupied by German troops on July 7, 1941. For two months the village was controlled by the Hungarians, who had arrived three days later. From September 1941, it was taken over by a German civil administration. According to the Soviet archives, a labor camp was created in the former Polish manor in the fall of 1941 and existed until 1943. A group of Jews of about a hundred or more, men, women, and children, were taken there for agricultural work. According to the witness’ accounts, they were from Romania and Hungary. The camp was composed of two wooden barracks, was fenced-in and had watchtowers. The Jewish inmates from the camp were murdered along with the local Jews. It was impossible to establish when the camp was liquidated, but according to an eyewitness account, the Jews were shot in the spring, maybe 1942, at the same time as the Tovste Jews. The execution was most probably conducted by the German Security Police.
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