Tarashcha - Commemoration of Jewish Victims

After the war local residents used the place where the Jews of Tarashcha were murdered at the entrance to the Jewish cemetery as a dump. However, Holocaust survivors of Tarashcha, headed by a man named Moldavanskiy, soon organized the reburial of the bodies of the murdered Jews in the ravine where the massacres of Jews of Tarashcha took place in the fall of 1941. Jewish survivors from Tarashcha also collected money and erected a monument over the mass grave. The monument had a menorah carved on it, along with a Star of David (that was later transformed into a five-pointed Soviet star). The monument's Hebrew inscription says: "Here are buried the holy martyrs who were murdered in the year 5702 -- for the sanctification of God's name - by Hitler the Cruel, may God erase his name and his memory. Tarashcha." Subsequently, an inscription in Russian was added. It says: "Here rest the remains of Jewish and Russian civilians who were murdered by the German-Fascist gangsters during the occupation of the town of Tarashcha in 1941." The mass grave was later surrounded by a metal fence. This monument was desecrated several times by local antisemites. The remaining Jewish community of Tarashcha and students from the local high school undertook to take care of the monument. Until the end of the 1990s survivors gathered at it to commemorate their near and dear ones. Currently, no Jews visit the memorial.

A pillar with an inscription commemorating the Holocaust victims of Tarashcha was erected at the entrance to the town's Jewish cemetery, but the Hebrew or Yiddish inscription has become effaced over time and today one can only make out the Hebrew abbreviation signifying "Here are buried." In 2008 and 2012 the area of the memorial was redesigned and trees were planted there. In 2014 a memorial stone was placed in the area of the former Jewish cemetery. The inscription on the stone, in Ukrainian, Hebrew, and English, says :"Near this cemetery Nazi German forces killed and buried hundreds of citizens of Tarashcha in September 1941 during the Holocaust simply because they were Jewish. United States Commission for the Presevation of America's Heritage Abroad, Jonathan J.Ricoon, Member. With the assistance of Vaad of Ukraine, 2014."