Documentation of the State Archives of the Rovno Region

USHMM RG-31.017M The archives was established in March 1940 as the historical archives of the region, and as of 1941 it was called the State Archives of the Rovno Region. The material for the archives was collected gradually. At the start, the archives received documents from local institutions and from factories, non-profit organizations, associations, and from educational and healthcare institutions that were in existence from the period when Rovno still belonged to Poland. By 1940, collections that dated from 1921-1939 were transferred to the archives. With the start of the Great Patriotic War, the archives halted its activities and they were resumed on 05 February 1944, immediately after the liberation of Rovno. The archives contain many documents from the period of World War II and the German occupation of the region (1941-1944): documents of the regional administration during this period, documents of the Gebitskommissariat, municipalities, labor bureaus, industrial factories and of socio-political and public non-profit organizations. The documents attest to the activities of the occupation institutions, the establishment of the ghettos, and the establishment of the concentration camps. The collection includes information regarding industrial factories and commerce, schools, statistical reports regarding the population of the Rovno region according to age and gender, lists of workers in various institutions, POWs, and information regarding the sending of the residents to forced labor in Germany. Among the unique documents of the period is the Collection of Documents of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) - UPA, including the organization's legislation, "The Large Congresses of the OUN", original invitations, reports, and diaries the organization's personnel. The archives also include the collection of [documentation of] the Communist underground and the partisans movement. All of the documents from the German occupation period are accessible today. This Sub-Record Group includes lists of voters from the Rovno region [in the elections] for the Polish Sejm, prepared, 1938; documentation of the German occupation authorities, 1941-1944, and documentation of the Soviet Extraordinary State Commission; Documentation of the Gebietskommissariat, 1941-1943, including lists of homes in Rovno in which Jews resided; orders by the Reichkommissar (Reich commissioner) of Ukraine, the Gebietskommissar (district commissioner) of Rovno, and the Generalkommissar (regional commissioner) of Wolyn and Podoliya, regarding the collection of taxes from the population and, in particular, from the Jews; announcements, publications and forms, 1941-1942; statistical reports regarding the population of the districts of the Rovno region and of the city of Rovno itself, including of Jewish workers and unemployed Jews; list of Jews from Rovno who were deported to the Rovno Ghetto by order of the Gebietskommissar, 14 April 1942; documentation of the Soviet Extraordinary State Commission, including testimonies, survey reports, summaries and indictments of the regional State Prosecutor, including statistical reports regarding the people murdered in the Rowne region and its districts: Aleksandriya, Berezno, Dubno, Zdolbunow, Klevan, Kostopol, Rokitno, Mizoch, Stefan and Rafalovka, and in the following places: Varkovichi, Barkovich, Ozeryani, Derazhno, Lipniki, Klesovo, Yarinovka, Kozin, Verba and Vysotsk; establishment of ghettos or the organization of camps nearby for the implementation of the murder in the Mizoch district, March 1944-April 1945; - Survey report of the Soviet Extraordinary State Commission, including statistical reports regarding the people murdered in Mizoch and Svatye, and in villages in the Mizoch district, including their nationality (Ukrainians, Poles, and Jews) and the number of people murdered by Germans and Ukrainian nationalists; - Report of the Soviet Extraordinary State Commission, prepared, April 1945, regarding the murder of the Jews of Mizoch; the document includes information regarding the mass murder during 14-15 October 1942, the murder site, and the number of Jews buried at the murder site, until January 1943; suicide of 200 Jews in the ghetto area, which they set on fire by themselves; included in the document are names of Nazi war criminals; survey report of Tishchenko, the director of the NKVD archives department in the Rovno region, dated, 19 September 1945, regarding the occupation of Rovno, the registration of the Jews, the separation of skilled professionals from their families, the establishment of the ghetto, and the murder of Jews on 06 November 1941; the survey report is based on statistical data from archival documents and the testimonies of two survivors.