“This Invisible Group”

The article examines the forced involvement of locals of the Poltava region in performing work related to the implementation of the Holocaust. The actions of the requisitioned civilians (a term coined by Father Patrick Debois, who singled out and conceptualized the significance of this group for studying the Holocaust at the local level) in the Poltava region are being investigated for the first time. The author analyzed historiographical works related to the topic and drew on a wide range of sources (many of which are being introduced into scientific circulation for the first time). The article analyzes the local dynamics of the unfolding of the Holocaust, taking into account the need (or lack thereof) for the performance of related work connected to the Holocaust. From this perspective, it is explored how the local auxiliary police and Soviet prisoners of war (if available) could be used as primary labor resources to do this type of work.It has been researched that in the Poltava region, the requisitioned civilians performed the following types of work: digging pits where Jews were later shot and burying them, bringing necessary items to the shooting sites, sorting the clothes of murdered Jews and loading them onto trucks. Further research may expand this list. This, in general, echoes the situation in other occupied regions of the Soviet Union. At the same time, our research demonstrates that residents of small villages located near the execution sites were more often “requisitioned” than local residents of the settlement the Jews came from (usually these were small towns), but this issue requires further analysis involving a wider range of sources. The analysis also revealed the need for further detailed study of the activities of local government actors in “requisitioning” local residents to perform Holocaust-related work. Finally, the article outlines factors that could have influenced the (non)engagement of local residents as requisitioned civilians

Clothing · Deportation · Digging · Historiography · Local History · The Holocaust · Memory, Trauma, and Commemoration · Polish-Jewish Holocaust Memory Studies · Soviet and Russian History