Volhynia and Wlodzimierz

Volhynia – an area in North West Ukraine. With Nazi Germany’s attack on the Soviet Union in June 1941, the German army advanced so rapidly that most of Volhynia’s Jews were trapped, and only an estimated 5% were able to flee eastwards. As soon as the area was occupied, pogroms perpetrated by the local population as well as mass shooting of Jews by the German Einsatzgruppen began. Ghettos were established where Jews lived in terrible conditions and under a regime of terror and forced labor.

Periodic executions of Jews took place in Wlodzimierz in summer and fall 1941. The remaining Jews were herded into a ghetto in April 1942. The ghetto didn’t last long, and by the end of 1942 most of the Jews of Wlodzimierz had been executed in the second wave of killing of Ukraine’s Jews.  Until October 1942 some 142,000 Jews in Volhynia had been murdered. By the beginning of 1943 all remaining Jews in ghettos and camps where liquidated. Those who managed to escape joined the partisans in Volhynia’s forests. Even there, Jews were often faced with hostility and antisemitism and found that they were rejected by non-Jewish resisters. It is estimated that only 1.5% of Volhynia’s Jews survived.