Holocaust

Monastyrishche is a town and the administrative center of a district with the same name.  The district consists of five communities:  Monastyrishche, Sarny, Tsibulev, Terlitsa and Lukashovka.  During the German occupation some Jews from these other communities were brought to Monastyrishche where they became victims of mass killings.  Others were shot in their own communities.¹

By the time the German military arrived in Monastyrishche on July 22, 1941, the number of Jews had increased to 3,000 as German troops moved faster than Jews fleeing east from their shtetls.  They departed on March 10, 1944.  About one thousand people or 70% of the prewar population were not able to escape prior to the German capture of Monastyrishche and neighboring communities.  An auxiliary Ukrainian police force helped the Germans control the local Jewish population.  A Jewish Council was set up to be sure that Jews followed rules imposed by the governing authority and to make work assignments.  The Germans created a ghetto on a few streets where Jews were crowded together ten in a small room.  Within a month of their arrival, the Germans rounded up at least ten members of the local intelligentsia and shot them.² 

Death squads committed two mass killings of Jews:  the first on May 29, 1942  had 5,500 Jews from Monastyrishche and nearby towns and villages in a mass grave along the road to Avramivka Village in the Poperechnyi ravine; the second on November 16, 1942 involved 555 Jews near the RayAhroStroy building (the District Agricultural Construction agency).³  The Germans executed other groups of Jews on different dates:  one for being physically unable to perform labor and another because some Jews escaped from the ghetto.  The last group of Jews to die consisted of seventy who were put in a house and shot on March 9, 1944, the day preceding the German evacuation from Monastyrishche.  The house was then set on fire.⁴

Endnotes
¹Geoffrey Megargee, ed., The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos, 1933-1945, vol. 1, p. 1546.
²Ibid.
³Lo Tishkach Foundation, European Jewish Cemeteries Initiative, Ukaine, Cherkassy Oblast
⁴Megargee, vol. 1, p. 1547.