In the spring of 1942, the Gebietskommissar in Zdołbunów announced that a ghetto would be established in Mizocz. All Jews from Mizocz and the surrounding villages were ordered to move into the ghetto, but the actual transfer was probably not completed until June.5 The precise number of Jews in the ghetto is not known, but the number probably exceeded 2,500, with some sources putting it as high as 3,500. The ghetto was located in the old part of town called “miasto” (the town). It bordered on the Market Square on one side and the Stubła River on the other. It remained an open ghetto and was not surrounded by a wall or other physical barriers and was not closely guarded. People were able to move in and out rather freely, conduct business, buy food, and trade belongings. There was no starvation in the Mizocz ghetto. According to Asher Gilberg, the area of the ghetto was actually enlarged after its initial establishment.6
From the very beginning, Jews had to perform forced labor. The work included washing wounded soldiers’ laundry, snow removal, farmwork, and construction work in nearby Zdołbunów for the German fi rm Josef Jung from Solingen.
Despite the public hanging of Zeyde Gelman for illegal slaughtering, and several arrests, the German administration of Mizocz was relatively benign.7 The Germans promised members of the Judenrat and others who worked for them that their lives were safe because they were needed. Despite the slaughters that were taking place in surrounding areas, the Jews of Mizocz largely believed the Germans.
Early in the morning of October 13, 1942, the ghetto was cordoned off and surrounded by a combined force of the SD from Równe, German Gendarmerie, and armed Ukrainian Schutzmänner. Everyone was herded to the “Platz” in the market square with the assistance of large dogs. Helen Segall recalls that “the crowd of people moved as one huge body as they were being chased to the market square by Ukrainian Schutzmänner, and that the collective scream of the victims sounded inhuman, deafening, and unbearable.” She also remembers that as she and her Aunt Natalie ran back to the house where they had been staying, to the safety of a hiding place located between the walls of two buildings, she saw a man in brown trousers, a trench coat, and a fedora hat pouring gasoline from a large rectangular can onto the houses as he ran in the opposite direction. Segall further recalls that later as smoke began to penetrate their hiding place, they had to leave it. They discovered that the whole town was a burning inferno. Surrounded by burning buildings, together with others, they ran along the widest street downhill towards the river. They were fl anked on both sides by walls of raging hot flames.8
Late the same afternoon, people herded to the Platz were or ga nized into a column and marched under guard to the end of town where, on a knoll opposite the sugar factory, a huge 2- meter- deep (6.6- feet- deep) trench dug for the neighboring brick factory had been prepared, awaiting its victims. As in other Volhynian towns, people had to undress and walk in small groups into the trench and lie facedown, where they were shot by an SS man helped by a Ukrainian Schutzmann.9 The slaughter lasted long into the night and continued the next day as people trying to escape were caught and brought there. Thus, after two days, October 13 and 14, 1942, the Jewish community of Mizocz ceased to exist.
During the summer and fall of 1942, there seems to have been the beginning of a planned re sis tance movement in Mizocz, when a number of young people attempted to buy weapons in Zdołbunów, but they did not succeed. Thus, the major signs of re sis tance were the huge fi re set by ghetto residents and a brief struggle with blunt weapons while the ghetto was in the pro cess of being liquidated. Spector and others describe the Mizocz fi re as an act of re sis tance intended to create panic and confusion, to make it possible for a large number of people to escape. Segall writes that “at the time I resented the fi re which forced us from the seeming safety of our hiding place. I believed that the fi re was set to destroy all material goods and possessions so that they would not fall into German and Ukrainian hands.” Actually, there is little doubt that the fi re did cause panic and commotion and indeed helped a large number of people escape, although many were later caught and shot. The next day (October 14, 1942) dead bodies were strewn on the banks of the river and on both sides of the road leading from Mizocz. One of the side tragedies caused by the fi re was that about 200 people died in the fl ames, most probably caught in their hiding places.
The Soviet army liberated Mizocz in February 1944. Very few Jews had survived. Those who survived had hidden in the forests, joined the partisans, or were concealed by their Polish, Czech, and Ukrainian friends. In 1963– 1964 a series of trials of the German Gendarmerie offi cials were held in Nürnberg- Fürth. Joseph Paur and Wilhelm Wacker were tried and convicted for their role in the ghetto liquidations in Zdołbunów, Mizocz, and Ostróg. Paur received a sevenyear prison sentence, and Wacker was sentenced for three years.10
Thus, the Jewish community of Mizocz, which had been there for 300 years, was exterminated during those two days in October 1942. After the old town and its ghetto were reduced to ashes, Mizocz lost its “town status.” It is now listed as “a settlement with urban characteristics.”
SOURCES Relevant publications regarding the Mizocz ghetto include the following: Asher ben- Oni, ed., Mizocz: Sefer zikaron (Tel Aviv: Irgun yots’e Mizots’ be- Yisrael, 1961); Ray Brandon and Wendy Lower, eds., The Shoah in Ukraine: History, Testimony, Memorialization (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 200
; Justiz und NS- Verbrechen, vol. 19 (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 1979), Lfd. Nr. 553, pp. 319– 361; Shmuel Spector and Geoffrey Wigoder, eds., The Encyclopedia of Jewish Life before and during the Holocaust (Jerusalem: Yad Vashem; New York: New York University Press, 2001), p. 1003; and A. Kruglov, Katastrofa ukrainskogo evreistva 1941– 1944 gg.: Entsiklopedicheskii spravochnik (Kharkov: “Karavella,” 2001), p. 209. Relevant documentation on the fate of the Jews of Mizocz during the Holocaust can be found in the following archives: AYIH (301/1795); BA- L (B 162/1585- 1601, 4691, 14154); DARO; GARF (7021- 71- 59); USHMM; and VHF (e.g., # 7722, 46341). In addition, reference has been made to the author’s own unpublished manuscript, Helen Segall, “When the Lilacs Bloom: A Memoir.”NOTES 1. Yehuda Bronshteyn, “The Judenrat in Mizocz,” in ben- Oni, Mizocz, pp. 90– 94. 2. Nachum Kopit, “In the Ghetto, Forced Labor, and in the Forests,” in ibid., pp. 33– 53. 3. Bronshteyn, “The Judenrat in Mizocz,” pp. 90– 94. 4. Asher Gilberg, “The Life and Death of Mizocz,” in ben- Oni, Mizocz, pp. 5– 28. 5. JuNS- V, vol. 19, Lfd. Nr. 553, p. 328. 6. Gilberg, “The Life and Death,” pp. 5– 28. Bronshteyn, “The Judenrat in Mizocz,” pp. 90– 94, gives the fi gure of 3,500. 7. Gilberg, “The Life and Death,” pp. 5– 28; JuNS- V, vol. 19, Lfd. Nr. 553, p. 329. 8. Segall, “When the Lilacs Bloom.” 9. The document compiled by the ChGK (GARF, 7021- 71- 59) erroneously states that “the police consisted of Germans and Hungarians.” The interrogation of Vinogradski and the entry in the Diary of a Young Man located in Rivne Archive (DARO) confi rm that the Schutzmänner were Ukrainians. 10. JuNS- V, vol. 19, Lfd. Nr. 553, pp. 323– 334.
Note that it also refers to the nose and is the root of “nasal”, and that the words Woden and wood are cognate and refer to madness. Mind that Modern Hebrew is completely symbolic, and its symbols are retained in its descendents like German and English. Wiktionary.com is a good source if you want to dig into the words with me.
"Fucking aliens stole my car and shit on my lawn!"
"How do you know that? Did your ring camera catch a video of the Mexicans or something?"