EVENTS OF THE “SECOND BAZAAR” AND THE FINAL SOLUTION OF THE JEWISH ISSUE IN THE TOWN OF BAZAAR BY THE NAZI OCCUPATION AUTHORITIES

Abstract

This study supplements factual data on the commemoration of the twentieth anniversary of the execution of the UPR army soldiers by Bolshevik troops, identified in historiographic sources as the “Second Bazaar”. Another issue considered in the paper is the execution of the local Jewish population, carried out exactly on the day of commemoration of the victims of the Bazaar tragedy. The methodological basis of the study is constituted by the methods of source heuristics. By detecting, processing, and introducing a new set of archival sources – archival and criminal cases – into scientific circulation, the existing factual basis on the specified events has been expanded. The contradictory and subjective nature of the given sources also necessitates the use of appropriate methodological tools. Therefore, the method which Robin George Collingwood once described as “cross-examination on the bench” is utilized, when the historian “cross-interrogates the sources to extract information that they did not disclose in their previous testimony, or because they did not want to give it, or because they did not have it”. To fully cover and reconstruct the specified events, a descriptive method is employed. The scientific novelty of the paper lies in the fact that it presents a comprehensive account of specific details of the preparation and commemoration of the 20th anniversary of the Bazaar tragedy, and in fact, it is the first in modern Ukrainian historiography generalized study of the local Jewish population’s execution on the day of the Bazar anniversary. Conclusions. The events of the “Second Bazaar” have become one of the symbols of the Ukrainian national struggle for statehood, representing another tragic page in the history of the Ukrainian and Jewish peoples. Further research might be conducted to personalize the members and sympathizers of the OUN, participants of the commemoration events of the “Second Bazaar”, victims of Nazi repressions and determine the exact number of Jewish people killed.