Free The Heavens Are Empty: Discovering the Lost Town of Trochenbrod by Avrom Bendavid-Val

with the Soviets when Germany invaded. Even after Germany invaded, many Trochenbroders remembered the milder treatment at the hands of “Germans” than at the hands of Russians in World War I and simply did not—could not—believe that the Germans would treat them as terribly as some were saying.
    Trochenbrod and its sister village of Lozisht had a combined population of over six thousand Jewish souls when the Germans invaded Soviet-held lands on June 22, 1941. In the first days after their invasion of Trochenbrod the Germans marked the town’s houses with Jewish stars, carried out random murders, and invited destruction and looting of Jewish possessions by rampaging Ukrainian villagers freed from restraint by the departure of the Soviets. The Germans immediately set up a local administration system. This included a Judenrat, or Jewish Council, to help carry out German orders like providing Jews for forced labor or collecting “taxes” for the Germans. The German administration system also included Ukrainian auxiliary police and a Ukrainian militia to do the work of policing the Jews, hunting them down when they tried to escape the terror, and assisting the liquidations.
    The auxiliary police were known as Schutsmen ( Schutz is the German word for protection); many of them saw their new roles as nothing more than opportunities for looting, extortion, and brutalizing Jews. The militia tended to be made up of members of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN). Known as “Banderovtsi,” after their ultranationalist leader Stepan Bandera, they were virulently anti-Jewish, and vicious. They worked closely with the Germans as a convenience: their aim was to purify Ukraine by ridding it of Jews, Poles, Russians, and ultimately Germans, and fulfill the long-cherished dream of an independent and “pure” Ukraine. People with whom Trochenbroders had friendly relations before, people from nearby villages, suddenly turned up as collaborators with the Nazi regime and treated their Trochenbrod neighbors with cruelty and brutality.
    The Germans wasted no time establishing terror and death as the distinguishing marks of their occupation, particularly for Jews. At the beginning of July they had their Schutsmen gather 150 Trochenbrod men, men selected by the Judenrat, and ship them by truck to Kivertzy. Everyone understood, or perhaps just assumed, that this was a work crew for the railroad depot. At Kivertzy the men were handed over to a detachment of German soldiers, who took them to the yard of the local jailhouse and slaughtered them. Word of what happened came back to Trochenbrod immediately.
    Like other settlements, Trochenbrod had to supply a quota of laborers who were sent mostly to Kivertzy to work for the Germans. The Judenrat had to make arrangements to meet the quota, but the Schutsmen would also snatch people off the street for these work crews. Each work crew labored a week or so before it was replaced by the next. The workers slept on the floors in empty warehouses and stables near the railroad station. They worked mostly loading and unloading trains but were put to other heavy work for the Germans as well, like digging trenches or hauling building supplies or doing construction work. At night the men in these crews would be beaten and terrorized by their Ukrainian guards and German overseers; some men never returned.
    In October, Trochenbrod’s agricultural farmsteads were confiscated, as were the townspeople’s furs, other warm clothing, and valuable property like farm equipment. The Jews were also commanded to pay a heavy burden of special taxes. Meanwhile, Schutsmen and Banderovtsi extorted gold, silver, and other valuables from them. Jewish life in Trochenbrod became worthless. The temptation and opportunity this provided to walk into the homes of their Jewish neighbors and take what they wanted was, for some Ukrainians, irresistible.
    Soon after, the Germans ordered that all Trochenbrod’s cattle be