• Memorial to the murdered Jews of Kovel
Since 2015 a memorial in the forest near Bakhiv remembers the approximately 8,000 murdered Jews of Kovel who were shot there in June 1942. This »Aktion« marked the start of the liquidation of the Kovel ghetto. All in all about 15,000 Jews were murdered in Kovel between 1941 and 1942.
Image: Kovel, 1930s, Jewish market in town, Israeli Organization of the Jews of Kovel and its Surroundings
Kovel, 1930s, Jewish market in town, Israeli Organization of the Jews of Kovel and its Surroundings

Image: Kovel, 2015, View of the new memorial, Anna Voitenko
Kovel, 2015, View of the new memorial, Anna Voitenko
Located in the historic region of Galicia, Kovel was part of the Russian Empire from 1795 and became Polish again after the First World War. The history of the Jewish community can be traced back to the 16th century. In the inter-war period more than half of the population was Jewish. The political and social life of the Jews was diverse. From the end of the 1920s onwards their political participation was more and more curtailed when nationalist forces gained more influence in Poland.
As a result of the Molotov-Ribbentrop-Pact, Kovel fell to the Soviet Union in the autumn of 1939. Under Soviet occupation many Jews were imprisoned or expropriated. Still, the waves of refugees from the German-occupied part of Poland increased the number of Jews significantly.
A few days after their attack on the Soviet Union, the German Wehrmacht marched into Kovel on June 28, 1941. At that time, about 17,000 Jews were living there. Under German occupation Jews had to wear identifying armbands and conduct forced labour. During the summer of 1941 about 1,000 of them were murdered. On May 27, 1942 all of them had to move into two newly established ghettos. About 10,000 were forced into a ghetto in the old town, while approximately 3,500 workers and their families were confined to a ghetto in the new town.
In early June 1942 the Jews from the old town ghetto were taken by German and Ukrainian police to a previously dug-out sandpit near the village of Bakhiv. Within the next three days they shot more than 8,000 of them as well as several hundred in the city. About 1,000 Jews managed to escape during this »Aktion«. The inhabitants of the second ghetto were shot soon afterwards. Until October 1942 almost all Jews of Kovel were murdered, most of them on the Jewish cemetery.
Image: Kovel, 1930s, Jewish market in town, Israeli Organization of the Jews of Kovel and its Surroundings
Kovel, 1930s, Jewish market in town, Israeli Organization of the Jews of Kovel and its Surroundings

Image: Kovel, 2015, View of the new memorial, Anna Voitenko
Kovel, 2015, View of the new memorial, Anna Voitenko
All in all German units murdered about 15,000 Jews in and around Kovel between June 1941 and October 1942. About 8,000 of them were shot in a forest near Bakhiv. During the liquidation of the second ghetto German units murdered also approximately 150 Roma people. There were also buried on the Jewish cemetery.
Image: Kovel, undated, A man stands at the wooden memorial which was erected shortly after the liberation, www.jewishgen.org
Kovel, undated, A man stands at the wooden memorial which was erected shortly after the liberation, www.jewishgen.org

Image: Kovel, 2015, Dedication of the memorial in Ukrainian, English and Hebrew, Anna Voitenko
Kovel, 2015, Dedication of the memorial in Ukrainian, English and Hebrew, Anna Voitenko
About 200 Kovel Jews survived the Holocaust. On September 1 1944, two months after the Red Army had driven out the Wehrmacht, there were 22 Jews living in Kovel. Most surviving Jews left the Soviet Union in the years after the war.
Shortly after their liberation Jewish survivors erected a wooden stele in Bakhiv in remembrance of those who were shot there and surrounded the site of the mass grave with a wooden fence. These first memorials soon disappeared. The forest overgrew the mass graves.
Over the years two more memorials were erected on the site of the shootings. In 1998 survivors and their relatives erected a stone memorial with a Hebrew inscription. As part of the international project »Protecting Memory«, which was supported by the German foreign office, the American Jewish Committee Berlin built a memorial site in the summer of 2014. It encompasses four mass graves. The old monument and the newly installed memorial plaque lie at the heart of the site. Pathways connect these elements, which are located on a low hill, to the four mass graves.
It is assumed that more mass graves exist in the woods. In Kovel itself there is yet no memorial for the murdered Jews. The Jewish cemeteries are barely recognizable today.
Image: Kovel, 2015, View of the memorial site, Anna Voitenko
Kovel, 2015, View of the memorial site, Anna Voitenko

Image: Kovel, 2015, Information plaque at the memorial, Anna Voitenko
Kovel, 2015, Information plaque at the memorial, Anna Voitenko
Name
Pamjatnyk jewrejam zahyblym u Koveli
Address
TO 311
45031 Kowel
Phone
+380 (044) 285-90-30
Fax
+380 (044) 285-90-30
Web
http://www.protecting-memory.org/de/memorial-sites/rawa-ruska/
E-Mail
uhcenter@holocaust.kiev.ua
Open
The memorial is accessible at all times.