Trochenbrod

For the landscape park in central Ukraine, see Sofiyivsky Park.
Trochinbrod / Zofjówka
Shtetl (completely destroyed)


Zofjówka Post Office, Wołyń Voivodeship, Poland before the Holocaust and Shtetl's meticulous eradication

Zofiówka location east of Belzec in World War II

Trochinbrod / Zofjówka

Location of eradicated town of Trochinbrod (Zofiówka) within present-day Ukraine

Coordinates: 50°55′15″N 25°41′50″E / 50.92083°N 25.69722°E / 50.92083; 25.69722Coordinates: 50°55′15″N 25°41′50″E / 50.92083°N 25.69722°E / 50.92083; 25.69722
Country  Ukraine
Founded 1835, Russian Empire
Destroyed 1942, occupied Poland (now Ukraine)
Named for Sofia of Württemberg
Area
 • Total 6.99 km2 (2.70 sq mi)
Website A Lost History

Trochenbrod or Trohinbrod, also in Polish: Zofjówka (pl), or in Russian: Софиевка (Sofievka), in Ukrainian: Трохимбрід (Trokhymbrid), Hebrew: טרוכנברוד‎‎, was an exclusively Jewish shtetl – a small town, with an area of 1,728 acres (6.99 km2) – located in the gmina Silno, powiat Łuck of the Wołyń Voivodeship, in the Second Polish Republic.[1] Following the invasion of Poland by Nazi Germany, and the Soviet Union in September 1939, Zofjówka (official Polish name) was renamed in Russian and incorporated by Joseph Stalin into the new Volyn Oblast of the UkSSR. Two years later, in 1941 it was annexed again, by Nazi Germany, into the Reichskommissariat Ukraine under a Germanized name.[2] Trochenbrod (Zofjówka) was completely eradicated in the course of Operation Barbarossa (1941), and the ensuing Holocaust.[3] The town used to be situated about 30 kilometres (19 mi) northeast of Łuck in the Kresy macroregion (present-day western Ukraine).[3] The nearest villages of today are Yaromel (Яромель) and Klubochyn (Клубочин).[2]

The original settlement inhabited entirely by Jews, was named after Sophie, a Württemberg princess (1759–1828) married to the Tsar of Russia Paul I (hence Sofievka or Zofjówka). She donated a parcel of land for the Jewish settlement in the Russian Partition after the conquest of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth (see new Pale of Settlement district).[2]

History

Sofievka (Trochenbrod) was founded in 1835, after the November Uprising, initially as a farming colony for the dispossessed Jews, and with time developed into a small town. The population grew from around 1,200 inhabitants (235 families) in 1889, to 1,580 in 1897 according to Jewish archives.[2] In sovereign Poland, the number of inhabitants reached 4,000 by 1939 according to Polish sources.[1] The name Trochenbrod in Yiddish stands for "Dry Bread" or "Bread without Butter" (German: Trockenbrod).

Towards the end of World War I, during the Polish-Soviet War, the forces of the re-emerging sovereign Poland and the Red Army fought over the town. It was ceded to Poland in the Peace of Riga signed with Vladimir Lenin,[4] and it became part of the Wołyń Voivodeship in the Kresy Borderlands. By 1938, the Jewish community of the town's had grown to at least 3,000.[2] Most of the population were engaged in agriculture, dairy farming and tanning.

There were seven synagogues in Trochenbrod, including three big ones. In 1939, the town, along with the rest of Kresy, was invaded by the Soviet Union (see Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact). The rabbi at that time was Rabbi Gershon Weissmann. The Communists exiled him to Siberia after accusing him of being involved in underground salt trading.[2]

The Holocaust

Holocaust memorial to Trochenbrod and Lozisht Jewery at the Holon Cemetery in Israel

After Nazi Germany attacked the Soviet forces in eastern Poland, the new German administration established a Jewish ghetto at Trochenbrod, confining there also Jews from nearby villages and towns. The Ghetto was liquidated in August and September 1942 in a series of massacres by uniformed police.[5] Most of the Jews of Trochenbrod as well as of the neighbouring village Lozisht (Ignatówka in Polish) were murdered by the local collaborators,[2] consisting mostly of the Ukrainian Auxiliary Police who rounded up the prisoners in the presence of only a few German SS men. According to Virtual Shtetl over 5,000 Jews were massacred, including 3,500 from Zofiówka and 1,200 from Ignatówka among other nearby settlements.[6][7]

Fewer than 200 Jews managed to escape death by fleeing into the forest. The Soviet partisans hiding in the nearby village of Klubochyn assisted some 150 survivors. Some Jews joined the resistance in the region and took up partisan actions against the Nazis.[5] The village was totally destroyed and burnt down in 1942, and subsequently leveled out after World War II in the Soviet Ukraine.[2] Now only fields and a forest can be found there, and an ominous flatland with an aimless country road running through it.[3] One Ukrainian family in Klubochyn was executed for assisting Jews.[5] After the end of World War II, the Jewish survivors from Trochimbrod, numbering between 33,[2] and 40,[5] lived in the area of nearby Lutsk.[2]

Trochenbrod in literature

A fictionalized historical portrayal of the shtetl life at Trachimbrod was featured in the 2002 non-fiction novel Everything Is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer as well as in the 2005 film based on the novel.[3]

Safran Foer, whose father and grandfather came from Trochenbrod, depicts fictionalized events in the village beginning in 1791 – the year in which the shtetl was first named – until 1942, when it was destroyed in the war.[3] Safran Foer's modern-day protagonist (who goes by the author's name and also by the name "Hero", or "the Collector" in the film version) comes to contemporary Ukraine to look for a woman named Augustine, who saved his grandfather in the war. The novel was criticized by a reviewer from Ukraine published by The Prague Post online.[5]

Notes

  1. 1 2 Jagiellonian Digital Library (2016) [1936]. "Wołyński Dziennik Wojewódzki". Volume 1; 96 pages. Łuck, Urząd Wojewódzki Wołyński. Pos. 345 at page 63 in DjVu reader. Digital copy identifier: NDIGCZAS003514 (public domain). See also: Strony o Wołyniu (2008). "Zofjówka". Town description in the Polish language, with location map, statistical data, and a short list of prominent individuals. Wolyn.ovh.org.
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Eleazar Barco (Bork), Samuel Sokolow (April 22, 1999) [original material written before World War Two]. "Trochinbrod - Zofiowka". Translated from Hebrew by Karen Engel. Transcribed by Gary Sokolow (tripod.com, Internet Archive). Retrieved 24 December 2014.
  3. 1 2 3 4 5 The Heavens Are Empty: Discovering the Lost Town of Trochenbrod by Avrom Bendavid-Val. A Lost History, official website.
  4. ↑ Zamoyski, Adam (2008). Warsaw 1920: Lenin's Failed Conquest of Europe. Harper Collins. ISBN 0007225520.
  5. 1 2 3 4 5 Ivan Katchanovski (7 October 2004). "Not Everything Is Illuminated". The Prague Post. Retrieved 24 December 2014 – via Internet Archive.
  6. ↑ Beit Tal (2010). "Zofiówka". POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews. Retrieved 25 December 2014.
  7. ↑ Beit Tal (2014). "Truchenbrod – Lozisht". The Nahum Goldmann Museum of the Jewish Diaspora – via Internet Archive.
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References

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