Rokitno

Jews settled in Rokitno in the second half of the 19th Century. In 1901, the town was home to 105 Jews. Its development was accelerated thanks to the construction of the Kiev-Olevsk-Sarny-Kowel railway and the establishment of a railway station near the town. An estimated 400 Jews lived in Rokitno on the eve of World War I. During the Russian Civil War, and especially under the rule of Symon Petlyura's Ukrainian army, several Jews were executed in the town. After World War I, Rokitno was incorporated into the Second Polish Republic. In 1921, the town was home to 663 Jews, who made up about 20 percent of the total population. In the interwar period, the local Jews made their living from the lumber trade and the manufacture of wood products; they owned a glass factory and practiced various crafts. The town had a Zionist Hebrew-language Tarbut school and kindergarten, in addition to a Talmud Torah. The Zionist parties and youth movements (such as HeHalutz and Beitar) were active in the town, as was the Bund. In 1939, Rokitno was home to an estimated 800 Jews. After September 17, 1939, in the aftermath of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, Rokitno was occupied by the Red Army, and it became part of Soviet Ukraine. Under Soviet rule, all political and religious activities in the town were banned. The Jews were forced to adapt to the new Soviet regime; several men who had been involved in Zionist activities and Hebrew teaching were arrested and sent to the town of Sarny for "reeducation". On July 10, 1941, following the outbreak of the Soviet-German War, the Soviets retreated eastward, and several hundred Jews left the town with them. During the brief "interregnum" (the period between the retreat of the Soviets and the arrival of the Germans), local Ukrainians set up their own municipal regime and police force in the town; an ethnic German named Ratzlaw was appointed chief of the Rokitno police. The Jews were ordered to provide teams of laborers, who had to clear the rubble of the bombed glass factory, repair the railway tracks, and clean up Ratzlaw's headquarters. On July 15, 1941, the Germans occupied Rokitno. A German Gendarmerie unit, under the command of an officer named Henkel Sokolowski, arrived to restore order in the town, and it temporarily disarmed the Ukrainian police. In the summer and fall of 1941, the German authorities introduced a number of anti-Jewish decrees in Rokitno. The Jews were ordered to wear armbands with the Star of David (which would eventually be changed to patches in the shape of a yellow circle on their clothes); they had to mark the entrances to their houses with blue six-pointed stars, and were required to perform hard physical labor. Following an order by Henkel Sokolowski, the Jews had to hand over all their gold, silver, and other valuables. A Jewish Council (Judenrat) with four members, under the leadership of Aharon Slutzki, was established in Rokitno. A Jewish Order Police was set up, as well. On May 1 (or April 15), 1942, the Jews of Rokitno were forced to move into an "open ghetto". The ghetto area comprised some 50 houses on the town's main street, as well as some 10 houses in the market square. Both the Jews of Rokitno and Jews brought in from the surrounding villages were imprisoned there. It was very overcrowded. The Jews were forbidden to leave the ghetto area. A second, smaller ghetto was established to alleviate the overcrowding. Inmates could not move between the two ghettos without the permission of the Judenrat. On August 26, 1942, several hundred ghetto inmates (out of the 1,631 who had been assembled for an alleged roll call) were shot dead in the town's market square; another several hundred managed to flee into the forests. The rest were transported to the Poleska camp in the town of Sarny on the same day. Some of the new arrivals took part in a mass escape from the camp on the following day, but most were murdered on August 27-28 in the Tutowicze Forest, along with the Jews of Sarny and the vicinity, as well as the Jews of Dąbrowica, Klesów, Bereżnica, and Tomaszgorod. Many of the Jews who had managed to flee Rokitno after the shooting in the market square were either caught in hiding or turned over to the German and Ukrainian forces by the local population; some of them were massacred in the local synagogue, while others were murdered in the nearby forest. Rokitno was liberated by the Red Army on January 6, 1944.