Page 20 - Jewish News_Oct2021

20A October 2021 JEWISH INTEREST

The massacre at Lubny Aging Jewishly – What our traditions teach us about growing old

By Paul R. Bartrop, PhD Johannes Hähle, took 29 color pho-The saga of the purple coat:
he city of Lubny is located According to this order, which dered in the space of two days. Later,
tos of Babi Yar and Lubny, though he
in the Poltava Oblast of cen- called for the mass murder of non-com- in November 1941, Blobel would also could not bring himself to make them Do resentments hold back your happiness?
Ttral Ukraine. In October 1941 batants by German combat troops, receive and put into operation the first
– 80 years ago this month – the Jewish thousands of executions took place – gas vans in Ukraine. public or deliver them to his unit. At By Rabbi Barbara Aiello
population was destroyed in a one-day not only of captured Soviet political As perpetrated by Blobel’s unit, Lubny, he documented the concentra-
Aktion that followed commissars, but also of all Jews (re- all the Jews were then herded just out- tion of the population, their waiting hen I was a little girl, one of
up the Babi Yar mas- gardless of whether they had anything side of Lubny. They never made it to to be murdered, and then the killing my greatest adventures was
sacre of the previous to do with communism) and of huge the village of Zasule, which was just itself. Although Hähle died during the Wshopping with my mother.
month. Today, very numbers of Soviet prisoners of war, a ruse to assemble the population, and Normandy landings in June 1944, his We were a struggling immigrant fam-
few people recall seen as racial enemies just as much as they were murdered in small batches at widow kept these photos safe and sold ily, but my mother found creative ways
what happened at bearers of Bolshevik ideology. the Zasylskiy ravine. As many mem- them to a journalist in Berlin after the to distract from situations that empha-
Lubny, a situation In Lubny at the time of the Ger- bers of the population as could be lo- war. The original color photos only sur- sized how little we had. Her endeav-
not helped by the man invasion, the Nazis counted cated were shot into the ravine: men, faced in the year 2000, when they were ors worked for
Dr. Paul Bartrop fact that there were around 1,500 Jewish residents of the women, children, babies and the elder- acquired and placed in the archive of a while, but as I
so few survivors left alive able to relate city, though this did not consider those ly. On the single day of October 16, Hamburg’s Institut für Sozialforschung got a little older it
what had happened there. from outlying villages who had come 1,865 Jews were murdered; not just (Institute for Social Research). was no longer fun
Lubny is reputed to be one of the in looking for refuge. the Jews of Lubny, but also those from The fate of the Jews of Lubny is to go to Goodwill
oldest cities in Ukraine, allegedly On October 10, 1941, the occupy- Stalag-328, a makeshift concentration just one of countless massacres that or the Salvation
founded in 988 by Prince Vladimir the ing authorities sent an order out to the camp that had been established earli- took place in the wake of the German Army and “shop”
Great of Kiev. The first written record Jews of Lubny that they were to gather er in Lvov (modern-day Lviv) and the invasion of the Soviet Union 80 years for clothes.
concerning Lubny dates from 1107. in the nearby village of Zasule for re- areas around Babi Yar. The SS and ago. Though overshadowed by much What used to
Jews settled there in the first half of the settlement, making sure to take with Wehrmacht troops did not stop the larger events, it was, for that small Rabbi Barbara Aiello be a great adven-
17 century. On the eve of World War them warm clothes and valuables. The killing there. In the second half of community, on October 16, 1941, the ture, riding with
th
II, in 1939, the Jewish population num- “resettlement” was to take place a few November 1941, they found and killed epicenter of the Holocaust. Today, we my Mama all over Pittsburgh on the
bered 2,833, about 10.5% of the total. days later, on October 16. another 73 Jews who had been missed remember them. streetcars, now became an ordeal of
After the Nazi invasion of the So- On the appointed day, the Jews of in the first sweep. Those who, despite all Paul R. Bartrop is Professor Emeritus great embarrassment. I started making
viet Union (Operation Barbarossa) on Lubny gathered at the Kirov Square. this, still managed to survive as skilled of History and the former Director of excuses about why I couldn’t go, and
June 22, 1941, the residents of Lub- Unknown to them was the fact that laborers in demand for the German the Center for Holocaust and Geno- after a while my mother stopped asking
ny became immediately vulnerable to Sonderkommando 4a, one of the units military, were killed during April and cide Research at Florida Gulf Coast me. She’d just go alone.
German attacks, but the city was not of Einsatzgruppen C under the com- May 1942. University. I remember one winter when she
occupied until September 13, 1941. mand of SS colonel Paul Blobel (and Overall, therefore, across the pe- came back from a “shopping trip.” She
Lubny and its surrounds became a later, convicted war criminal), had also riod from October 1941 to May 1942, had found, she said, something brand
major center of partisan resistance, received orders to commence the liqui- approximately 2,000 Jews were mur- Need to reach the editor new. “Look, a new winter coat!”
with Soviet partisan forces fighting the dation of the entire Jewish population dered at Lubny. Their fate would have of The Jewish News? And what a coat it was. Deep pur-
German invaders outside of the city. of Lubny. been largely forgotten were it not for ple wool with a leopard collar, leopard
With the German takeover, however, Blobel was one of the SS officers the fact that several photographs were Send an email to cuffs and six leopard covered buttons,
all Jews were immediately registered who had organized the massacre of taken by the SS themselves during the big as 50-cent pieces. A coat fit for a
under the so-called Kommissar Order Jews at Babi Yar in late September killing process. jewishnews18@gmail.com. queen, I thought. And putting aside all
(Kommissarbefehl). 1941, where 33,771 Jews were mur- One photographer in particular, of my uneasiness, I dressed myself up
extra nice and wore my new coat to
school.
That afternoon, on the playground,
one of the “cool” girls came over to
me. I was flabbergasted and I thought,
“This coat must really say something.
Look who’s noticing me.” And notice
she did. From halfway across the play-
ground she shouted, “That’s my coat.”
“Is not!” I responded with great
indignation. My mother bought it for

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