Glossary

Genocide is the process of mass murder with the intent of eliminating a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group in whole or in part. According to international law, genocide is defined as: the murder of members of such a group, the infliction of physical harm or mental trauma on them; deliberate creation of conditions that lead to complete or partial extermination of a group; actions designed to prevent the birth of children, or the forcible transfer of children to another group. The concept of genocide was originally formulated by Raphael Lemkin to describe Nazi crimes, primarily the Holocaust.The Holocaust is the name given to the Nazi policy which started in 1933 with discrimination and evolved into the mass murder of about six million Jews during World War II. More than a quarter of Holocaust victims lived in occupied Ukraine, including more than 200 thousand inhabiting Western Volhynia.Roma people constituted another group that fell victim to the Nazi genocide; more than 1,200 Roma were killed in Western Volhynia. Genocidal violence was also committed against Soviet prisoners of war and against villagers, held collectively responsible for the anti-Nazi resistance. In 1942–1944, the occupiers burned at least fifty villages in Western Volhynia and killed more than 10,000 of their inhabitants.

The terms war crimes and crimes against humanity are frequently used together, although they are significantly different. Since the 19^th century, war crimes have been defined in international law as a deliberate gross violation of the laws and customs of war. This applies to both violence against civilians and unacceptable acts by one military force against another. In contrast, crimes against humanity target civilian population only. The concept of crimes against humanity was first formulated by Hersch Lauterpacht in the 1940s, and its generally accepted definition was established in the late 1990s.Today, the term “crimes against humanity” is understood to encompass a wide range of acts committed as part of a deliberate, widespread or systematic attack on any civilian population, including murder, physical extermination, enslavement, deportation or forcible transfer of population, imprisonment or other cruel deprivation of physical liberty in violation of fundamental norms of international law, torture, any form of sexual violence, persecution of any identifiable group or community on political, racial, national, ethnic, cultural, religious, or gender grounds, enforced disappearance of persons, and other inhumane acts of a similar nature intentionally causing great suffering, or serious bodily harm, or harm to mental or physical health. During World War II in Western Volhynia, both the Soviet and Nazi regimes committed many acts of violence that fall under the definition of crimes against humanity.the process of mass murder with the intent of eliminating a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group in whole or in part. According to international law, genocide is defined as: the murder of members of such a group, the infliction of physical harm or mental trauma on them; deliberate creation of conditions that lead to complete or partial extermination of a group; actions designed to prevent the birth of children, or the forcible transfer of children to another group. The concept of genocide was originally formulated by Raphael Lemkin to describe Nazi crimes, primarily the Holocaust.The Holocaust is the name given to the Nazi policy which started in 1933 with discrimination and evolved into the mass murder of about six million Jews during World War II. More than a quarter of Holocaust victims lived in occupied Ukraine, including more than 200 thousand inhabiting Western Volhynia.Roma people constituted another group that fell victim to the Nazi genocide; more than 1,200 Roma were killed in Western Volhynia. Genocidal violence was also committed against Soviet prisoners of war and against villagers, held collectively responsible for the anti-Nazi resistance. In 1942–1944, the occupiers burned at least fifty villages in Western Volhynia and killed more than 10,000 of their inhabitants.

Discrimination refers to any restrictions imposed on a person and/or a group of people based on race, skin colour, political, religious, and other beliefs, gender, age, disability, ethnic and social belonging, family or property status, place of residence, language, or other grounds.Discrimination is a form of violence that precedes its more extreme manifestations in the form of war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocides. The latter are often unleashed against groups whose representatives have been subjected to various kinds of discrimination over a long period of time. During World War II, this was the case with Jews and Roma: starting from 1933, they were systematically discriminated against in Nazi Germany. The preexisting discrimination against Jews, Roma, and other groups in other European countries made it easier for the Nazi occupation regime to carry out genocide.

Repressions are the persecution of an individual or a social group by the state authorities in order to control the population.For this purpose, various punitive measures are used, including detention and/or imprisonment, confiscation of property, deportations, executions, etc. Repressions were an integral part of the violence perpetrated in Western Volhynia by the Soviet and Nazi occupation regimes during World War II. In 1939–1941, the Soviet authorities in Western Volhynia arrested all real and imaginary political opponents. In the summer of 1941, about six thousand prisoners were shot or otherwise killed in Western Volhynia prisons. Arrests and other forms of political repressions were also used by the Nazi occupation authorities, with the regime targeting, among others, representatives of political organizations that in 1941 counted on the cooperation with the Reich: members of the OUN (m) and OUN (b), different factions of the Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists.

Deportation refers to forced resettlement within the borders of the state, including occupied and annexed territories.Deportations are driven by different motives and objectives. Most often, they are used as a violent method of neutralizing regime’s real or imaginary opponents. This is especially true of the areas where the regime holds insufficient sway: border, occupied, or annexed regions. In the Soviet Union, deportations gained particular momentum due to the need to develop lands with a harsh climate; a shortage of labour; and the push to eliminate or re-educate those considered disloyal and politically suspect. In 1940–1941, Soviet authorities deported about 200 thousand people, mostly ethnic Poles, Jews, and Ukrainians, from the western regions of Ukraine to Siberia, Central Asia, and the Far East. Deportations resumed immediately after the Soviet regime had been reestablished in the region. The first train carrying deportees departed from the Zdolbuniv station in the Rivne region on May 7, 1944. Over the next nine years, more than 210 thousand people were deported from the western regions. About a third of them were from Western Volhynia.

Confiscation of property is the repressive practice of legalized robbery of certain persecuted groups.For instance, within the framework of Soviet policy, confiscation was applied to wealthy farmers and business owners. In Nazi Germany, the practice of confiscation of property was most often enacted against Jews. It comprised an integral part of the Holocaust policy. The confiscated property of Holocaust victims was nationalized and sold off, with the revenue financing World War II. In Western Volhynia, confiscating the property of Holocaust victims also served the aim of legitimizing the genocidal policy among the local population, who were given the chance to purchase the belongings and real estate of the Jews — murdered or moved into ghettos — for next to nothing. The policy was intended to neutralize negative sentiment and any forms of passive or active resistance to the Holocaust policy among the locals. In practice, this did not always work; in a number of cases, even after obtaining the property of the murdered Jews, people continued to help the surviving victims. More frequently, though, people who had purchased a better house from Jews (for example) were uninterested in the survival of the property’s former owners or their relatives.

Forced labour is any work performed by an individual against their will and under the threat of punishment. Forced labour can be used by both state authorities and private enterprises or individuals.In the context of World War II, forced labour primarily means the use of labour of foreign POWs, concentration camp prisoners, and civilian workers on the territory of Nazi Germany – a total of over 12 million people. Ukrainian forced labourers, at least two million people, constituted one of the largest groups of forced labourers. More than 50,000 of them came from Western Volhynia; they were called “eastern workers”, forced to wear discriminatory patches with the letters “OST”, and strictly controlled.In the occupied territories, millions of local residents, especially Jews, Soviet prisoners of war, and prisoners of correctional labour camps, were also forced to perform labour duties. For Jews alone in Western Volhynia, the occupiers created 26 forced labour camps.The Soviet Union also used forced labour during World War II: both that of foreign prisoners of war and that of its own citizens, such as prisoners of the Gulag camps or people transferred to special prison settlements. Even after the war, the Soviet regime applied various punishments, including long-term imprisonment, to those who left their workplaces without permission or were simply late.

Rescue: helping the persecuted to survive.In the context of World War II, the idea of rescue is predominantly associated with the rescue of Jews during the Holocaust: organizing their escape and subsequent hiding, providing them with false documents, food, clothing, or other resources necessary for survival. Assistance to Jews often carried with it the risk of a serious punishment, including the death penalty.Nevertheless, several hundred people have been awarded the title of “Righteous Among the Nations” by the Israeli Yad Vashem memorial for rescuing Jews in Western Volhynia. Among the rescuers, there were people of various ethnic origins and even representatives of the Nazi occupation structures. Mariia Babych from Rivne was the first person to receive the honorary title of “Righteous Among the Nations”; most recently, in 2022, it was awarded, among others, to spouses Fedir and Sofiia Korotiuk and Yukhym and Anna Kibukevych, as well as to Vira Krasova and her daughter Iryna from the Rivne region. The title is awarded if a person participated in the rescue actively and consciously and was not motivated by financial or other gain; if there was a real threat to the life of the rescuer and/or their family; if, for the rest of the rescuer’s life, they never harmed anyone. Generally speaking, the number of people who saved Jews significantly surpasses the number of those officially awarded the title of "Righteous Among the Nations". An even greater number of people provided ad hoc assistance to Jews, but did not dare to hide them on a long-term basis.

Memory. Collective memory and politics of memory ensure the development and preservation of rituals, values, and ideas about life in society, in particular about such events of the past as wars, mass repressions, and changes of political regimes. Collective memory manifests itself in how society talks about the events of the past and what those stories highlight, how we define heroes and antiheroes, etc.Collective memory is shaped through personal and/or family experiences of the past, as well as through processes of purposeful construction of collective memory by political means, or the so-called politics of memory. They ensure that certain historical events are remembered or forgotten, and even make us “remember” events that never happened.Collective memory and politics of memory play an important role in reconciliation with the legacy of mass crimes committed in the past. To a great degree, the concept of memory and the politics of dealing with the complicated and painful past evolved in Western culture in the process of rethinking the Holocaust.

Useful resources on the history of World War II and the Holocaust
in Western Volhynia

The Arolsen Archives website, https://arolsen-archives.org/, contains a wealth of documents concerning forced labourers, concentration camp prisoners, prisoners of war, as well as Jews from Western Volhynia who managed to survive the Holocaust and later emigrated to other countries.

The website of the State Archive of the Volyn Oblast – https://volyn.archives.gov.ua/ – contains digitized criminal cases of people persecuted by the Soviet regime during and after World War II, as well as a documentary exhibition “The Tragedy of the Jewish People in Volhynia”.

The website of the State Archive of the Rivne Oblast – https://rv.archives.gov.ua/ – contains documentary exhibitions dedicated to the Soviet repressions of 1939–1941, the mass murder of Rivne Jews in the Sosonky area, and other events of World War II.

The website of the State Archive of the Ternopil Oblast – https://archives.te.gov.ua/ – contains digitized cases listing the losses incurred as a result of the Nazi occupation in Vyshnivets, Kremenets, Shumsk, and other areas of Western Volhynia.

The website of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum – https://www.ushmm.org/ – offers various sources related to the history of the Holocaust (documents, photographs, video footage, oral history testimonies), as well as the digital version of the Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos, 1933–1945, which contains articles about Jewish ghettos in Western Volhynia.

The website Libraria. Archive of Ukrainian Periodicals Online – https://libraria.ua/ – offers digitized periodicals, including those published in Western Volhynia during the Nazi occupation: “Volyn”, “Kostopilski Visti”, “Kremianetskyi Visnyk”, “Samostiinist”, “Ukraiinske Zhyttia” and others.

The website of the Main Editorial Board of the Scientific and Documentary Series of Books “Rehabilitated by History” – https://www.reabit.org.ua/ – offers information about people from Western Volhynia persecuted by the Soviet regime during and after World War II.

The website of the Ukrainian Center for Holocaust Studies – https://holocaust.kyiv.ua/ – offers research on the history of Jewish communities in Western Volhynia, in particular in Holoby and Melnytsia, Kysylyn, Kovel, Mizoch, Ostrozhets, Ratne, as well as the memoirs of Michael Diment, a former prisoner of the ghetto in Lokachi.

The website of the Center for Studies of Memory Policy and Public History "Mnemonics”– https://mnemonika.org.ua/ – offers publications, virtual exhibitions, podcasts and other materials on the history of the Holocaust in Western Volhynia.

The Yad Vashem website – https://www.yadvashem.org/collections.html – offers various sources on the history of the Holocaust (documents, memoirs, photographs, oral history testimonies), databases of Holocaust victims and Righteous Among the Nations, and materials from the “Untold Stories” multimedia project – https://collections.yadvashem.org/en/untold-stories – dedicated, in particular, to the history of Jewish communities in Western Volhynia during World War II.

The Yahad-In Unum website – https://www.yiu.ngo/en – offers a multimedia map of the mass murders sites during the Holocaust, including those in Western Volhynia.