Memorial Book of Mizocz (Mizoch, Ukraine)

Mizoch lies in the heart of today's western Ukraine, with Jews first arriving there in the 18th century. By 1897, while under the rule of the Russian Empire, the Jewish community numbered 1,175 and comprised 44 percent of the population, and operated factories to produce felt, oil, and sugar as well as sawmills and a flour mill. Many Mizoch Jews were followers of the Trisk Hasidic movement.After World War I, the town was incorporated into Poland and referred to as Mizocz. During this period, some families emigrated, establishing roots in Israel and the United States. By this time, the town had three synagogues, branches of Zionist parties and youth movements, as well as Polish, Hebrew and Yiddish libraries. In 1939, under the short-lived Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact, Mizoch became part Soviet Ukraine. By 1941, the Jewish population swelled to more than 2,000 with arrival of refugees from German-occupied areas. Some fled ahead of the Germans into the Soviet Union. Germany captured the town on June 1941. In March 1942, Jews from the town and the surrounding villages were ordered into a ghetto, located in the old part of the town.Mizoch was one of the few Jewish communities to resist the Holocaust. On October 14, 1942, as German murder squads arrived, organizers of the resistance set many houses in the ghetto afire. About 200 died in the flames. The remaining 1700 Jews in Mizocz ghetto were gathered and shot to death at a ravine near the sugar factory outside the town. The few survivors took to the forests and their stories, too, are included in this book.As the Editor wrote: "This book was neither made nor written by people who are professionals at such craft. "So, too, with this translation: it was done entirely by students working with their professors at universities across the United States. As they translated, in their minds these dedicated volunteers walked the streets and fields of Mizocz, joined youth groups, hid in the forests, and witnessed unfathomable tragedy.
The Passover Haggadah says, "In every generation, each person must look inward as though they personally were among those who went forth from Egypt." In the same way, I ask the readers of this YizkorBook to embrace this book as though they were personally a part of this tragedy. It is our story.