Równe (Rovno) Victims Killed in the Kostopol Forest

This database contains information about 5,166 victims from Rovno who were killed in the Kostopol Forest in July 1942.

Background

Rovno (Polish: Równe, Yiddish: ראָװנע) was the largest city in the Polish province of Volhynia (Wołyń) prior to World War II.  The city's current name is Рівне (Rivne) and is now in Ukraine.  The city of Rovno, which included approximately 25,000 Jews, fell to the Germans in June of 1941.  The Germans then made Rovno a regional capital city.  In the next two months, 2,000 to 3,000 Jews were killed.

To create more office and residence room for incoming Germans who would work in Rovno, the Germans decided to clear out many of the remaining Jews.  Between November 6th & 7th, 15,000 to 18,000 Jews who thought they were reporting for work assignments were marched into the Sosenski Forest and murdered.

Finally, a ghetto was established in the Wola neighborhood or Rovno, which included approximately 5,000 Jews.  The ghetto was liquidated between July 13th and 14th, 1942 by transporting the remaining Jews by train to the forest near Kostopol and murdered.

Below is the introduction for the list as composed by the Korets Landsmanschaft in Israel:

LIST OF 5,000 ROVNO JEWS WHO WERE MURDERED IN JULY 1942, IN THE FOREST OF KOSTOPOL, NAMES THAT WHERE GIVEN BY THE JUDENRAT TO THE MUNICIPALITY OF ROVNO

The 5,000 names were translated from Ukranian from the original documents, as presented to Yad Vashem by the Municipal Archives in Rovno.  It was difficult to translate from the original Ukranian documents; therefore, you will note the question marks.

This is the least we can do to for the martyred who were transported by train from Rovno ghetto on July 1942 to the forest near Kostopol, murdered and buried in mass graves.  There were 17,500 Jews in Rovno, most were murdered in June-July 1941, in the Sosniki forest near the town of Rovno.

Database

This database includes 5,166 records of victims from Rowno who were killed in the Kostopol forest.  The fields for this database are as follows:

• Name (Surname + Given Name)
• Place of Birth
• Year of Birth
• Father's Given Name
• Last Address
• Family Relationship
• Occupation
• Page Number

Note: Each column appears in both English and Hebrew.

Acknowledgments

The information contained in this database was indexed from the files available at Yad Vashem (Record Group M.52 File Number 579).  The original Ukrainian source material was from the Regional Archives in the Ukraine.  Yad Vashem translated the list into Hebrew, and Gilberto Jugend, a JewishGen volunteer, translated the Hebrew list into English.

In addition, thanks to JewishGen Inc. for providing the website and database expertise to make this database accessible.  Special thanks to Warren Blatt, Avraham Groll, and Michael Tobias for their continued contributions to Jewish genealogy. 

Nolan Altman
Coordinator - JewishGen's Holocaust Database
January 2010

Searching the Database

This database is searchable via JewishGen's Holocaust Database, the JewishGen Ukraine Database, and the JewishGen Poland Database.