In August 1942, during World War II, more than 2,400 Jews living in Shumsk were marched to pits near the Vilya River and shot to death by a German Einsatzgruppe unit.
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A memorial to the victims marks the site. The memorial was built in 1991 through cooperation between local authorities in Shumsk and a group of Israelis with roots in Shumsk. |
| Here is the memorial before and after a 2017 cleanup.  |
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| Click
here for a photo of Shumsk Jews visiting the mass grave site after the war, and more photos from Howard Freedman's visit to the mass grave site in 1999, in present-day Ukraine. At the time, the memorial was
badly overgrown,
and the Hebrew text on a stone marker was garbled and incorrect. A plaque had been made to cover up the incorrect text, and was leaning against the monument, but had not been bolted on. |
 1999 photo by Howard
Freedman
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 2003 photo by
Shimshon Bahat
When Shimshon Bahat visited the mass grave site in 2003, the plaque with the correct text was gone and a (subsequent?) black granite "cover-up" was in shattered pieces. Below and at the top of this page,
photos from 2006 show the site cleaned up, with a
new, corrected marker installed.
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 Unknown date
Correct Hebrew text covering the incorrect inscription |
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The
2006
inscription reads: In
this place are buried 2,432 Jews of Shumsk
who were murdered by the Nazis and their
accomplices in the month of Elul 5702,
August 1942. Their forefathers had settled
in Shumsk at the beginning of the 19th
century. This mass grave calls to the People
of Israel to return to their homeland in
Eretz Yisrael. May their souls be bound up
in the bonds of eternal life. The
translation from Hebrew is by Rachel Karni,
who noted that the wording is “almost the same
as the original plaque -- we didn’t want to
change the wording (although perhaps there are
things that might have been changed) because
the people who made the original plaque were
survivors themselves and we felt it important
to respect their wording.”
 2003 photo by Shimshon
Bahat
One side of the wall has
an image in relief.
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 2006 photo
A workman is reflected
in the new memorial stone Earlier pictures of the mass grave site More Images of Shumsk Back to the Shumsk Pages |