Koriukivka is a Ukrainian town in the Chernihiv region with a population of 13,365 people (including 475 Jews, according to the 1939 census). During World War II, Koriukivka was occupied and, like the entire Chernihiv region, fell into the zone of the German military administration. On December 22, 1941, a unit of the 105th Hungarian Infantry Brigade shot 90 Jews in Koriukivka. The executions continued in February 1942. More than 40 Jews were taken to Chernihiv and killed there. But ahead of Koriukivka was an even more large-scale massacre - the cruelest punitive action in Europe during the entire of World War II. And it concerned the entire population of the town, regardless of nationality.
And it all started like this: in February 1943, the Soviet partisan unit under the command of Oleksiy Fedorov returned from Bryansk region and settled in the Koriukivka forests. On the night of February 27, 1943, the partisans defeated the German-Hungarian occupation garrison of Koriukivka. In response to the armed action, Bruno Franz Bayer, Chief of Staff of the 399th Main Field Command, ordered the destruction of Koriukivka. To implement the order, a combined punitive squad of servicemen from the 105th Hungarian Division, commanded by Lieutenant General Zoltan Johan Aldya-Pap, as well as an auxiliary police squad formed from collaborators, was sent to the town.
On the morning of March 1, 1943, a punitive squad led by representatives of the 4th Sonderkommando arrived in Koriukivka from Shchors (now Snovsk, Chernihiv Region). The settlement was surrounded. All the residents were herded into their houses in groups of 50-100 people under the pretext of checking their documents and shot. On March 1, the largest number of people were killed in a restaurant in the city center - up to 500 people. At the same time, a dozen cars with punishers combed all houses and the outskirts of the town for two days and killed residents both in their homes and on the streets. After the destruction of all found Koriukivka citizens, the punishers burned the village, first of all the houses where the shootings took place. Eyewitnesses testified that smoke and flames from the fires could be seen in Shchors (27 km), Sosnytsia (50 km), and Kholmy (25 km).
It is known that a certain number of residents managed to escape in Koriukivka. Small groups of people hid in industrial premises – sausage factories, sawmills, sugar factories. To save their lives and the lives of their loved ones, people used everything: toilets, large fuel tanks, piles of firewood, piles of manure, snowdrifts, burial pits, etc. The marshes that were on the territory of the city at that time – Rakove, Gaponove – and the so-called meadow became a saving place for the people of Koriukivka. On March 1, 1943, at least two women, hiding from the punishers in the swamp, gave birth to their children there. One of them, Natalya Isaakivna Koryuka, is in Gaponovo swamp. People also saved their cows by tying their jaws “so they wouldn't moan.”
The action continued the next day as well; and a week later, on March 9, the punishers returned to burn down Koriukivka and finish off those who survived and dared to return to their yards.
In the Act of the Chernihiv Regional Commission for Establishing and Investigating the Crimes of the German-Fascist Invaders in Koriukivka dated December 17, 1943, it is stated that at the beginning of March 1943, 6,700 people were killed, including 704 children and teenagers; 1,290 houses were burned, and only 10 brick houses survived. Among the victims of the punitive action, the document mentions 54 Jews who were hidden by the townspeople after the previous actions.
During the destruction of Koriukivka by a Nazi detachment (approximately 300-500 punishers), a partisan unit numbering at least 3,000 soldiers was located in the woods 15 km from the town, which defeated the occupation garrison in Koriukivka on the eve of the tragedy. Although the squad command could not be unaware of the systematic Nazi policy of retaliatory repression against the civilian population for the actions of partisans and underground fighters, the “people's avengers” did not come to the aid of the town's civilians. Obviously, they acted within the framework of the tasks set by the center: in the regulatory documents of the Soviet partisan movement, there is not even a mention of the need to protect the civilian population from occupation terror. On the contrary: it was calculated that precisely after such actions, the partisan movement would be fed by motivated local residents.
By the materials:
Корюківська трагедія 1943 року.: усна історія: зб. документів і матеріалів / Упоряд. Л. Бабич, С. Бутко. Чернігів: Десна Поліграф, 2018. 199 с.
Корюківська трагедія: як вижили живі? / К. Онищук // Сiверянський лiтопис. 2019. № 2. С. 132–136.
Olena Ishchenko