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JewishHistoryעברית

Drobitsky Yar massacre

Date
26 December 1941 – 8 January 1942Hebrew date: 6th of Tevet, 5702 – 19th of Tevet, 5702
Location
Drobitsky Yar, near KharkivUkraine
Then part of
German-occupied Soviet Ukraine
Perpetrators
  • Sonderkommando 4a of Einsatzgruppe C (State)
  • German Schutzpolizei (State)
  • SS (State)
Killed (estimate)
15,000[2]Bodies found in the mass grave at Drobitsky Yar when the Soviet army liberated Kharkiv, according to YIVO ("more than 15,000"). Yad Vashem records a German-ordered census of 10,271 Jews in the occupied city and states that some Jewish inhabitants were probably not registered; it does not publish a separate Drobitsky Yar total.
Locality

12% of the Jewish population of Drobitsky Yar, near Kharkiv[2]

Country

0.98% of the Jewish population of Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic (c. 1939)[9]

Worldwide

0.09% – 0.091% of the worldwide Jewish population (c. 1939)[4]

Category
Massacre
Confidence
Medium

Summary

German forces occupied Kharkiv on 23 October 1941. A unit of Sonderkommando 4a under Paul Blobel arrived in the city. Yad Vashem records that Jews were given two days to move into barracks at a machinery plant in the tractor-factory zone; 305 were murdered during that transfer. The enclosed ghetto of twenty-six barracks had no running water or heat. On 24 December the Germans killed some 200 mentally ill Jews. On 26–27 December about 500 Jews who had volunteered for labor in Poltava, Romny, and Kremenchug were driven out of the city and murdered, and another 500 were killed before the end of the month. The ghetto was liquidated on 2–8 January 1942: the ill and disabled were taken by truck, and the rest, guarded by the Waffen-SS and the SD, were marched to two trenches at Drobitsky Yar and shot by the Schutzpolizei. YIVO locates the shooting near the village of Rohan, 8 km from Kharkiv, and states that more than 15,000 bodies were found there at liberation.

Sources

  1. Kharkov (Ukrainian: Kharkiv). Yad Vashem
  2. ChaeRan Freeze, Khar’kiv. YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe
  3. Einsatzgruppen and other SS and Police Units in the Soviet Union. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Holocaust Encyclopedia

Jewish population (estimates)

  • Worldwide: 16,500,000 – 16,633,675[4]c. 1939DellaPergola's revised core estimate for 1 January 1939 is 16.5 million. The American Jewish Year Book 1948–49 compiled 16,633,675 at the end of 1939.
  • Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic: 1,532,776[9]c. 1939Jewish nationality in the Ukrainian SSR in the 17 January 1939 All-Union census (5.0% of the republic).
  • Drobitsky Yar, near Kharkiv: 130,000[2]Jews in Kharkiv in 1939, two years before the German occupation of the city on 23 October 1941 and the Drobitsky Yar shootings of December 1941–January 1942. YIVO states that the Jewish population doubled from 65,000 to 130,000 between 1923 and 1939. This is the pre-occupation community; many left before the Germans arrived.

Sources for population estimates

  1. Sergio DellaPergola, World Jewish Population, 2024. American Jewish Year Book 2024, via Berman Jewish DataBank (2025)
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  3. Jewish Population of Europe in 1933. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Holocaust Encyclopedia
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