August 27, 2021 marks 79 years since the Sarny Massacre, a two-day execution in the Nazi-occupied city of the same name in Ukraine that saw the deaths of some 14,000-18,000 Jews.
The city of Sarny, located today in Rivne Oblast in Ukraine, had been part of Poland from 1919 until 1939 when it was taken by the Soviet Union. In July 1941, after the Nazis launched Operation Barbarossa and invaded the Soviet Union, the city was taken by German forces.
Sarny also had a notable Jewish population. It is though that Jews first came to the city when the railroad station was opened there in 1901. Notably, the city's Jews went through the Civil War after World War I ended and did not suffer from any of the pogroms that plagued other Jewish communities in Ukraine. By 1937, the Jewish community numbered nearly 5,000 people, which was 45% of the city's population. However, by 1941, that number was likely even larger, as there were many Jews who fled to Sarny in 1939 from other cities, as well as other Jews brought from the surrounding villages by the German forces. As a result, over time, the number of Jews in the city swelled.
But the city's Jews did not avoid the horrors of the Nazis. According to the 1961 book Sefer Yizkor li-Kehillat Sarny (Memorial Book of the Community of Sarny), the very first thing the Nazis did upon occupying Sarny was to force 50 Jews to work in warehouses and threatening to kill all of them should anything happen to a single German.
After that, the local Ukrainians were allowed to steal all Jewish assets and property at their leisure for three days. From there, the Nazis went about creating a ghetto, demanding the creation of a Judenrat, that Jews all wear armbands with a Star of David and have a Star of David marked on their homes, and eventually the creation of a proper ghetto itself. The Jews were also forced to give up significant amounts of gold and all other assets, most notably fur coats and boots, which would be used by the army.
All of this was done with the help of the Ukrainische Hilfspolizei. Better known as the Ukrainian Auxiliary Police, or the Schutzmanshaft, these were the local police forces created by the Nazis in Ukraine. This group significantly helped the Nazis in their atrocities on the Eastern Front, and according to historian Prof. Alexander Statiev, they helped kill 150,000 Jews just in the Volhinya region alone.
As noted by historian Dieter Pohl, the police guarded ghettos, loaded convoys to execution sites, registered Jews and helped organize and even kill Jews, noting that they may have even been involved in the infamous Babyn Yar massacre.
Their legacy remains a controversial subject to this day, with many Ukrainian Auxiliary Police and nationalists who collaborated with the Nazis in favor of Ukrainian independence are still held in some regard in Ukraine today.
On August 27, the massacre began. All the residents of the ghetto, which also included some Poles and Roma, were ordered to come to the gate of the ghetto. According to the Memorial Book of the Community of Sarny, a resistance had actually been planned at the time. Just a day earlier, they had secured grenades, caustic soda and gas to attack the Germans and the city. However, they were mistakenly told that the Nazis were only calling them to pick healthy men for manual labor.
Ultimately, the massacre was carried out, with hundreds of Jews funneled out, stripped of all their clothes and belongings and forced to lie in a pit, where they were executed.
Soon, many Jews attempted to flee the massacre, some even breaching the barbed wire.
One account by survivor Zvi Pearlstein in the Memorial Book of the Community of Sarny reads as follows:
“When I ran over the barbed wire, there had already accumulated a mound – a meter high – of dead people, wounded people, and people who had fainted. They fell from the shooting of the German and Ukrainian gendarmerie. I also saw that the barracks, full of people, were burning. It was the Germans who had fired on them.
“I ran, coursing over the piles of the dead bodies. Bullets whistled by my ears. Grenades fell, it was a fire and a Hell on all sides.”
Pearlstein would eventually escape and ended up joining the partisans until the end of the war. He would also go on to help write the Memorial Book in 1961.
However, he was one of the lucky ones. Ultimately, thousands more were killed, some while trying to flee the city or just on the streets and in pits.
Today, the community is remembered in their Memorial Book, as well as in a memorial erected in the Holon Cemetery in Israel and in three memorials at the site of the massacre itself.