Documents and Materials on the History of the Great Patriotic War of 1941-45 in the Territory of the Odessa Region: The Underground and Partisan Movement

Documents on the underground and partisan struggle that took place in the territory of the Odessa region during World War II began to be put into storage in 1944 at the former Party Archive of the Odessa Regional Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine, where they were stored in fond P-11, op. 45 (Odessa Regional Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine). These documents were made into a separate consolidated collection (f. P-92) in 1975. In subsequent years, a number of units therefrom were transferred to the corresponding party archives of the Nikolaev and Kirovograd regions, and some came from fond P-13 (Party Archive of the Odessa Regional Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine). The collection includes two inventories systematized according to the structural-thematic principle. Documentary materials in the collection contain, among other things, data on the condition of Jews during the German-Romanian occupation of the Odessa region and on the occupation authorities’ policies toward them. These materials may be provisionally divided into a number of thematic groups. 1. Copies of translations into Russian of the Romanian military command’s daily situation reports for 1942-43 on the city of Odessa (op. 1, d. 8); among other things, these contain information on the expulsion of Jews from the city, and the reporting of Jews to collection points to be sent to the ghetto; on persons hiding in or fleeing the city and measures taken to find them; the attitude of the Christian population toward the internment of Jews; the activities of a “terrorist” organization of sailors led by Capt. Shirman; the shooting of a Jewish woman for attempting to destroy her residential building via the arson of her own apartment; the arrest of the Jewish lawyer [A. E.] Brodskii, and “a certain dissatisfaction” caused thereby on the part of Christian believers (insofar as Brodskii had been well known as a defender of the Christian clergy and had been persecuted under Soviet power); anti-Semitic sentiments in the ranks of the Red Army said to be connected to the alleged desire of Jews to serve mainly in the rear rather than the front, and to the accumulation of a large number of evacuated Jews in Tashkent and Ashkhabad; etc. 2. Correspondence (1943-44) on the creation of courses to train propagandists and specialists for work in units containing Russian “volunteers” (op. 2, d. 65). The curriculum included lectures on, among other things, “The Yids in Russia” and “World Jewry.” 3. Secret reports of the German military command on the political outlook and morale of the population during the Soviet offensive; these make reference to property of ghetto-interned Jews turning up in the possession of local townspeople, as well as conversations about a “Bolshevik terror” allegedly being planned as revenge for the destruction of Jews; etc. 4. Information compiled in 1944-48 on the activities of partisan detachments and underground organizations and groups having operated in the territory of the Odessa region (op. 1, d. 3); these include, in particular, information on O. and E. Kantarovich (both women earlier arrested as Jews, but soon freed when they turned out to be Karaites) and their participation in arranging parcels for prisoners in the Odessa jail.