Miropol massacre: 960 Jews executed in 1941

Miropol: 960 Jews executed and a photo silenced for 68 years

On October 13, 1941, in western Ukraine, 960 Jewish civilians were murdered in a single day. Not all were killed by gunfire: many were children thrown into the trench to die by drowning or being crushed under corpses, as every bullet was considered a treasure for the Reich. What is striking is not just the figure, but the fact that the Miropol massacre remained largely untraceable for decades—not due to denial, but because a larger event—Babi Yar, where nearly 34,000 Jews were murdered north of Kyiv—overshadowed the narrative.

This is the starting point of The Trench, a book by American historian Wendy Lower published in Spain by Confluencias, which reconstructs the episode using a single photograph and the identities of everyone appearing in it: executioners, victims, and bystanders.

What does Wendy Lower discover in a 1941 photo?

In August 2009, Lower stumbled upon a snapshot taken with a Zeiss Ikon Contax camera. The image captures the moment two German soldiers and three militiamen fire at an elderly woman at the edge of a trench, with a child by her side. From that point, the historian dedicated more than a decade to unearthing the past of this western Ukrainian region.

Her work is more than just a list of names. Acting more as a detective than a historian, she reconstructs the lives and misfortunes of the protagonists, as well as those of the executioners, the reasons behind the so-called Holocaust by Bullets, and its aftermath trinc the conflict. The investigation relies on testimonies from survivors, victims' families, and experts, revealing a fact that is often overlooked: one in four Jewish Holocaust victims was Ukrainian.

The violence was organized a day earlier. Three SS members went through taverns and houses recruiting those willing to wield a rifle and young girls to dig the trenches. The local militia, loyal to the Reich at the time, surrounded the village to ensure no one escaped. The Jews were locked in a fortress near a ravine. An invalid elderly woman was carried away in sheets; she was not shot, but simply thrown into the pit.

Dehumanize first, execute later

The pattern repeats in almost every episode of extermination. To kill, one must first strip the other of their humanity, and in this regard, words do half the work. Here, the German word Aktion became incorporated into the local vocabulary as a synonym for the mass murder of Jews. It remains there today.

There is a specific reading of this mechanism: those who intend to justify the murder of men, women, and children begin by labeling them—from the Stalinist landowner to the modern Ukro-Nancy—and ultimately find reasons to exterminate the enemy. The comparison, of course, is unsettling.

Why were Miropol and Babi Yar forgotten differently?

After the Second World War, the KGB investigated the massacre with relative success, and the case went to trial in 1986, during the Soviet era. However, everything remained buried under a pile of even greater atrocities. Babi Yar swallowed the Miropol narrative: smaller in scale, but not in gravity.

It is the same logic that explains why some deaths carry more weight than others. Allied bombings of Dresden are barely mentioned; the Japanese massacres in Nanjing are only noted in passing. The narrative of good versus evil does the rest, creating the sensation that some crimes deserve a series while others do not even merit a paragraph.

From the book to parallels with the war in Ukraine

The case is read today through the lens of the Russian invasion. It is argued that equally barbaric but more media-prominent events—such as what peine in Bucha or Mariupol—have displaced other massacres from the spotlight, just as Babi Yar did to Miropol. There is also a warning of the opposite risk: that the larger figure might erase the smaller one, or that the smaller one might be used to downplay the larger one.

This double-edged sword turns a history book into uncomfortable material. There is no clean side when reviewing the 20th century, nor is there one when reviewing the 21st.

Denial as a position

Not everyone accepts the narrative. A segment of the public rejects the historical version, claiming that Holocaust documentation is manipulated and questioning everything from gas chambers to the number of victims. In response, another current argues that denying these facts is not only false but a crime in several countries, and that the direct testimonies of those who witnessed the gassings are too numerous to be dismissed with a shrug.

The problem, some point out, is not a lack of evidence, but that the controversy shifts to a terrain where anything goes. If a photograph can be a montage, then no photograph is worth anything. Doubt ceases to be reasonable and becomes an alibi.

What the book leaves unresolved

One question remains that the subject expands upon but does not resolve: if the KGB already investigated and there was a sentence nearly four decades ago, why has it taken eighty years and a foreign historian for the episode to reach the general public? The suggested answer is uncomfortable: it was not a lack of data, but a lack of interest.

With the book on the table, the rest depends on who wants to look at the photo. How many massacres remain buried in a trench that no one has yet excavated?