Video: 'Return to Rivne'

(Monday, July 13, 1942, 10:00 p.m. Central European Summer Time; part of The Holocaust during World War II) — The Rovno Ghetto, a World War II Nazi ghetto established in December 1941 in the city of Rovno, western Ukraine, in the territory of German-administered Reichskommissariat Ukraine, was liquidated tonight when a “shared” division of the SS and Ukrainian police units surrounded the ghetto, positioned spotlights around it and turned them on.

Brigade SS and Ukrainian police were divided into small groups, broke into houses and pushed the people out, herded them into a freight train which took them to a stone quarry near Kostopol (or Prokhorov) where they were shot to death. 5,000 Jews were killed in this manner.

On Nov. 6, 1941, about 21,000 Jews in Rovno were massacred by Einsatzgruppe C and their Ukrainian collaborators. The remaining Jews were imprisoned in the ghetto, which was liquidated starting tonight. Only a handful of Jews managed to escape deportation.