The remains of 286 Jewish Holocaust victims were found recently in two basements in the town of Sataniv in southwest Ukraine, Ynet reported.
Most of the victims were women and children. The report said that the remains will be buried in a mass grave in the ancient Jewish cemetery in the town.
The Nazis entered the town on July 6, 1941, eventually murdering most of the town’s Jews, with only a few dozen survivors.
A Jewish community had existed in Sataniv since at least the 16th century, with the community numbering about 2,500 Jews prior to World War II. Today, there are no Jews in the town and all that is left are remains: Holocaust victims, the ancient Jewish cemetery, a shul and a few Jewish houses.
The 286 victims found in the basements were locked inside on May 15, 1942, by the Nazis and Ukrainians, who suffocated them to death, according to witness records as well as KGB records.
The bodies were not removed after the town was liberated and instead a sign was placed indicating the location as the site of a mass grave. The house above the cellars eventually fell into ruin and the entrance disappeared in the rubble. Eventually, an outdoor market opened over the area and remained there for many years.
The local Jewish community, headed by Rabbi Alexander Feingold of the Khmelnytsky and Ternopil districts in Ukraine, waged a six-year legal battle with the landowner to search the basements for the victims’ remains, a battle they eventually lost in court.
However, the community finally reached a private agreement with the property owner and searches began through the rubble in 2019. Little by little, bones and remains of clothing were found and even a mezuzuah. The remains of the 286 victims were found about two weeks ago.
Rabbi Feingold told Ynet that a park will be established near the site in memory of the victims.
(YWN Israel Desk – Jerusalem)
Join the official YWN WhatsApp status
5 Responses
The Nazis entered the town on July 6, 1941, Same day as the tragic demise of the venerated גדול הדור Moreienu hoRav אלחנן Wasserman הי”ד;
Following this grisly find in Ukraine, how could anyone even considering going to Ukraine this ראש-השנה even if there would be no corona.
Good point 147, even in 2020 it’s not as safe as most westerners think, especially if you look very different.
FYI baseball cap does not automatically make you look like regular tourist.
Again holocaust victims .
We never seem to be able to stop agonizing over it.
For some Jews it has, unfortunately (for lack of true Torah centered Jewish identity), become an identity badge.
There is one huge problem here; the holocaust is always treated as a Jewish issue.
It is not!
It is a Christian issue!
Yes, I know, six million innocent men women and children (including members of my family) were brutally murdered in cold blood.
But that is not the real issue.
The real issue is that each and every one of these inhuman murderers was a Christian.
Born and baptized as a Christian, educated in a Christian educational system, brought up in a Christian society. Almost all denominations were represented. And in those days, most people took their Christianity seriously.
Instead of remembering the victims we should be asking what it is about Christianity that turned so many normal human beings into vicious animals.
If we really want it to happen “never again” we should concern ourselves with what made it happen in the first place.
147,
Does Uman carry the same Tumah as the Nazis? Should we abandon the kevarim of the kedoshim?
147, people go because Reb Nachman wants them to go. They go davka to Uman, where 30,000 Jews were murdered al kidush haShem — that’s why Reb Nachman was buried there in the first place, and he davka asked people to go to that place.
Edgar, the Nazis were not Xian, they were anti-Xian. The Holocaust is what happens when people abandon Xianity for socialism, atheism, and paganism. For 2000 years Xianity put a limit to how much harm antisemites could do to Jews; it insisted that Jews must be kept forever as dhimmi, as a living example of what happens when you reject their god, and must never be wiped out. And it insisted that Jews had to be treated with justice, given fair trials. Only when people threw Xianity out the door could they come up with such depravity.