Metadata: Archive of the Odessa Regional Administration of the Security Service of Ukraine; Odessa
Collection
- Country:
- Ukraine
- Holding institution:
- State Archive of the Odessa Region
- Holding institution (official language):
- Державний архів Одеської області; Государственный архив Одесской области
- Postal address:
- 18, Zhukovskogo str., Оdessa, 65026, Ukraine
- Phone number:
- 380 (48) 722-9365
- Web address:
- http://archive.odessa.gov.ua/en/
- Email:
- archive@odessa.gov.ua
- Reference number:
- F. R-8065
- Title:
- Archive of the Odessa Regional Administration of the Security Service of Ukraine; Odessa
- Title (official language):
- Архив Управления СБУ в Одесской области, г. Одесса’ Архів Управління СБУ в Одеській області, м. Одеса
- Creator/accumulator:
- Archive of the Odessa Regional Administration of the Security Service of Ukraine; Odessa
- Date(s):
- 1927/2006
- Language:
- Russian
- Romanian; Moldavian; Moldovan
- Ukrainian
- Extent:
- (40,940 files)
- Type of material:
- Textual material
- Scope and content:
-
Op. 2 includes a significant number of archival and investigative files pertaining to Jews; these materials may be conventionally divided into three main groups.
1) Files from 1929-41 on a number of residents of the Odessa region and the Moldavian Autonomous SSR accused of Zionist and/or counterrevolutionary activities, espionage, etc. These include files on the case of R. S. Pavolotskaia, who was indicted by the Odessa Area Department of the GPU on 23 October 1929 on charges of belonging to the “counterrevolutionary” Zionist Labor Party (STP), and who would, because of this, be expelled from Ukraine for three years; and E. G. Makaronov, similarly subjected to political repression in February 1930 on charges of establishing the Zionist organization Arbeter-group and being connected with the Zionist Youth Union Sotsmol; E. B. Barskii, arrested 27 March 1938 (and shot 27 April 1938) for allegedly having been a member since 1924 of a Zionist spy ring said to be active in the Odessa region’s district centre of Krasnye Okny (also ordered arrested and executed by a “special troika” of the Moldavian Autonomous SSR NKVD were three other alleged Krasnye Okny Zionists: I. A. Poberezhskii, D. A. Kogonzon, and Sh. M. Nuterman); nine residents of the city of Berezovka (Odessa region) – Sh. M. Barer, M. M. Levak, L. Sh. Groisman, R. G. Meerovich, Sh. M. Tiazhelovskii, I. D. Tsitron, Kh. I. Rabich, Z. G. Abramovich, and B. Kh. Skliarevich – convicted as active members of a local “counterrevolutionary nationalist Zionist organization”) and shot on 27 May 1938; F. B. Abramovich, a resident of Akkerman shot on 13 June 1941 for allegedly having been a member of the central committee of the Zionist organisation Gordonia in Bucharest, holding meetings of members of this organisation in his apartment for the purpose of listening to radio broadcasts from Palestine, and “expressing pro-emigration views”; and others.
2) Files on cases of persons accused of Zionism and Jewish nationalism in the late 1940s and early 1950s, including charges brought by the Odessa Administration of the Ministry of State Security on 18 November 1949 against a group of Odessa residents (E. R. Eppel’, B. M. Aptekar’, A. L. Kupfer, I. R. Pochtar’, A.-Ia. I. Turi, L. F. Stavnitser, and G. S. Shkol’nik), who, according to investigators, were involved in an underground “anti-Soviet Zionist-nationalist organization” called the Jewish National Union, whose mission was to propagandise Odessa Jews and convince them to emigrate to Israel; and another group case involving representatives of the Odessa literary-cultural intelligentsia (the Jewish actors Kh. N. Nisentsveig and I. M. Mindlin; the writer and playwright A. Sh. Guberman; and S. A. Kit, a former teacher who would go on to serve as the accountant for Odessa’s Museum of Jewish Culture) arrested in October-December 1950 on charges of organising anti-Soviet nationalist activities ( Kh. N. Nisentsveig, in particular, was held culpable for having been involved in the Odessa Jewish Drama Ensemble’s staging of Perets Markish’s “nationalistic” play The Ghetto Uprising, and having provided his own apartment for rehearsals for it); and others.
3) Files from the late 1930s through the early 1950s pertaining to Jewish religious figures, including on the prosecution of persons involved in a “reactionary Jewish clergy group” (Ia. A. Kuklin, Z. Iu. Genikhovich, T. F. Goikhman, Sh. A. Dembin, as well as Rabbis Kh.-Sh. K. Fishman and A. Z. Fridman), who were accused of being closely linked with underground Hasidic associations, indoctrinating young Jews “in a counterrevolutionary religious spirit,” engaging in “nationalist agitation” to influence Jewish believers to emigrate to Palestine, where they were to “organize an independent Jewish state on the national-fascist model,” etc. (These persons were arrested on 31 January 1938, and shot 23 March 1938 by order of a “troika” of the Odessa Regional Administration of the NKVD.) Also included is a file from 1951 pertaining to B. Ia. Birenbaum, one of the leaders of the Jewish community of Odessa, who was sentenced to ten years in a “correctional-labour camp”; aside from other accusations, he was held culpable for maintaining “ties” with B. Goldberg, a correspondent from the American Jewish newspaper Der tog, and spying on behalf of US intelligence. Minutes of interrogations of arrested persons also include information on their earlier activities and involvement in various Jewish entities (real and imagined), their attempts to emigrate to Palestine in the early 1930s, etc.; in particular, statements made on 6 June 1937 by S. I. Shakhvorostov include mention of his having met and engaged in discussion with Sholem Schwarzbard during the latter’s stay in Odessa in 1936, and his intention to “publish a Yiddish-language book on the Petliurite pogroms in Ukraine and on [S. V. Petliura’s] assassination [carried out in Paris by Schwarzbard in 1926]”; basic biographical data and photographs of persons who had been prosecuted; letters and statements of their relatives; materials from the latter half of the 1950s and the 1980s-90s pertaining to their exoneration; etc.
- Administrative/biographical history:
-
The collection creator began operations in February 1920 as the Odessa Provincial Emergency Commission (OGChK). It was subsequently renamed in connection with administrative-territorial reforms and changes in the structure of the institution itself: from 1922-32, it was the Odessa Provincial (Area) Department of the Emergency Commission (Cheka); from 1932-34, the Odessa Regional Department of the Ukrainian SSR State Political Administration (GPU); from 1934-46, the Odessa Regional Administration of the Ukrainian SSR People’s Commissariat of Internal Affairs (NKVD); from 1946-54, the Odessa Regional Administration of the Ukrainian SSR Ministry of Internal Affairs / Ministry of State Security (UMVD MGB); from 1954-78, the Odessa Regional Administration of the Ukrainian SSR Council of Ministers’ Committee of State Security (KGB); and from 1978 on, the Odessa Regional Administration of the Ukrainian SSR KGB.
After Ukrainian independence was declared, the Supreme Rada decreed (20 September 1991) the Ukrainian SSR KGB dissolved, whereupon the National Security Service of Ukraine was established, with a corresponding administration for the Odessa region. Subsequently, upon adoption of the law on the Security Service of Ukraine (15 March 1992), this entity was called the Odessa Regional Administration of the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU). Documents from the archive of the Odessa Regional Administration of the Security Service of Ukraine came to the State Archive of the Odessa Region pursuant to an edict of the presidium of the Supreme Rada of Ukraine (9 September 1991) stipulating that so-called filtration files be transferred to state archives, as well as files pertaining to discontinued criminal cases (regarding persons subjected to political repression) in which rulings had been rendered by extrajudicial entities. [These included, in particular, the “Special Conference” that operated through collegia of the USSR GPU, OGPU, NKVD, and Ministry of State Security from 1929 on, and the so-called troikas, which were established on 27 May 1935; these latter entities functioned at the republic, area, or regional level, and consisted of the director of the regional administration of the NKVD, the secretary of the regional party committee, and the regional public prosecutor. Sentences of persons subjected to political repression, including death sentences, were pronounced by these entities in absentia on the basis of minimal documentation, and were not subject to appeal.]
Most of these cases were discontinued pursuant to the edict of the presidium of the USSR Supreme Council (16 January 1989) “On supplementary measures to restore justice with regard to victims of repressions of the 1930-40s and early 1950s,” the edict of the president of the USSR (13 August 1990) “On restoring the rights of all victims of political repressions of the 1920s-50s,” and the law of Ukraine (17 April 1991) “On the exoneration of victims of political repressions in Ukraine.”
- Access points: persons/families:
- Abramovich, F. B.
- Abramovich, Z. G.
- Aptekar’, B. M.
- Barer, Sh. M.
- Barskii, E. B.
- Birenbaum, B. Ia.
- Dembin, Sh. A.
- Eppel’, E. R.
- Fishman, Kh.-Sh. K.
- Fridman, A. Z.
- Genikhovich, Z. Iu.
- Goikhman, T. F.
- Goldberg, B.
- Groisman, L. Sh.
- Guberman, A. Sh.
- Kit, S. A.
- Kogonzon, D. A.
- Kuklin, Ia. A.
- Kupfer, A. L.
- Levak, M. M.
- Makaronov, E. G.
- Markish, P. D.
- Meerovich, R. G.
- Mindlin, I. M.
- Nisentsveig, Kh. N.
- Nuterman, Sh. M.
- Pavolotskaia, R. S.
- Petliura, S.
- Poberezhskii, I. A.
- Pochtar’, I. R.
- Rabich, Kh. I.
- Schwarzbard, Sholem
- Shakhvorostov, S. I.
- Shkol’nik, G. S.
- Skliarevich, B. Kh.
- Stavnitser, L. F.
- Tiazhelovskii, Sh. M.
- Tsitron, I. D.
- Turi, A.-Ia. I.
- System of arrangement:
- The fonds includes two inventories (op. 2 is in five volumes) systematised by index number of discontinued case file (in ascending order, with exceptions).
- Finding aids:
- Inventories are available.
- Yerusha Network member:
- Jewish Theological Seminary
