Pin made in Ukraine. The text on the the pin reads:”Kharkiv”. Kharkiv is the second-largest city and municipality in Ukraine. It has a population of 1,421,125 (2022 est.).
During World War II, Kharkiv was the focus of major battles. The city was captured by Nazi Germany on 24 October 1941. A disastrous Red Army offensive failed to recover the city in May 1942. It was retaken (Operation Star) on 16 February 1943, but lost again to the Germans on 15 March 1943. 23 August 1943 saw a final liberation.
On the eve of the occupation, Kharkiv’s prewar population of 700,000 had been doubled by the influx of refugees. What remained of the pre-war Jewish population of 130,000, were slated by the Germans for “special treatment”: between December 1941 and January 1942, they killed and buried an estimated 15,000 Jews in a ravine outside of town named Drobytsky Yar. Over their 22 months occupation they executed a further 30,000 residents, among them suspected Soviet partisans and, after a brief period of toleration, Ukrainian nationalists. 80,000 people died of hunger, cold and disease. 60,000 were forcibly transported to Germany as slave workers (Ostarbeiter).