Mozyr Ghetto

According to the 1939 census , 6,307 Jews lived in Mozyr, accounting for 36.09% of the total population ^[1] .

Two months from the start of the war until the day of occupation, only part of the Mozyr Jews were able to leave the city. Many Jews did not have time to evacuate - mainly, they were people burdened with large families, the sick, the elderly and women, and some Jewish men were drafted into the Red Army .

Mozyr was under German occupation for 2 years 5 months - from August 22, 1941 to January 14, 1944 ^[2] . The German soldiers who entered the city burst into Jewish houses, robbed and killed their inhabitants, the bodies of the executed Jews lay on the streets of the city, not cleaned by anyone ^[3] .

In order to identify and isolate Jews, the occupation authorities first of all registered Mozyr Jews, listing all those who had Jews in the family up to and including the third generation, moreover, Jews who had undergone Christian baptism in the pre-war period were listed as the rest.

Having received full information about the Jewish population of Mozyr, the invaders demanded that money and jewelry be handed over as soon as possible. Mozyr’s Jews were ordered to wear decals on their clothes - yellow stripes of paint on the clothes front and back (or yellow patches the size of a palm), or yellow dressings on clothes.

The Nazis set the task not only to put in place a program of destruction, but also to humiliate and insult their victims. So, in Mozyr, the invaders drove away the old Jews and forced them to do meaningless work - to carry water from the Pripyat River to the mountain. This continued until people began to fall from exhaustion. After that, the Nazis killed the tormented old people, forbidding them to remove the bodies of the dead for 3 days ^[4] . A case was recorded when a German soldier forced two Jews to clean motorcycles, after which he ordered them to dance non-stop for an hour ^[5] .

The occupation power in Mozyr organized an administrative structure supposedly to control the Jewish population - the Judenrat . In fact, the Jewish Council was created to fulfill the orders of the occupiers, as well as a link between the Nazis and the Jews. A similar measure further isolated the Jews from the rest of the population.

The Judenrat Mozyr, according to the list dated December 17, 1941, included: Gofshtein Leyzer Getselevich (born in 1863), Lelchuk Natan Abramovich (born in 1908), Koyfman Yeisha Izrailevich (born in 1891), Joseph Berdichevsky Yankelevich (b. 1890), Katzman Yankel Nisanovich (b. 1876), Narovlyansky Itsko Nokhimovich (b. 1902), Radomyselsky Joseph Leibovich (b. 1876), Shekhtman Khatskel Ioselevich (b. 1876 .), Gerfer Abram-Nisel Girshovich (b. 1869), Mindlin Abram Movshevich (b. 1897), Belkin Boris Abramovich (b. 1875), Ravikovich Meer Elevich (b. 1894) ^{[5 ]} .

In the fall of 1941, an order was issued for the immediate resettlement of the Jewish population of the city in the ghetto ^[6] . Within one day, Mozyr Jews were driven to the Romashov moat ^{[7] [8]} . The gendarmerie, local police and Slovak soldiers took an active part in the expulsion of Jews from their own homes, who “... went to Jewish and Gypsy apartments, driving residents out into the street, allowing them to take food bundles with them, all the rest of their property remained in place in their apartments. The eviction in the ghetto was accompanied by the following: along the Slutskaya street, where I lived, there were four carts surrounded by Slovaks, on which old people of 70 from the number of Jews who were still in their homes were driven, that is, they could not move around on their own. Accompanying them, the assistant of the Slovak commandant beat the old men and women with a whip with a whip so that my body was trembling ” ^[9] .

Jews in the Yelsk , Mozyr , Narovlya and Yurovich districts were also brought to the ghetto on Romashov Street. In addition, the Nazis drove gypsy families here, placing them next to the ghetto on Saeta Street. Jews and gypsies from these areas were brought to the ghetto by local elders along with village policemen .

Jews in the ghetto on Romashov Street ditch settled in very tight crowds of 15-20 people in each house. The Mozyr ghetto was of a “closed” type - that is, it was fenced, guarded, and exit from it was prohibited. From 1,500 to 2,200 prisoners were in the ghetto.

Prisoners of the ghetto, constantly starving, were forced to do hard physical work, and all this happened amid bullying and violence. Elementary hygiene conditions, medical care, medicines and medicines were absent in the ghetto.

In Mozyr, there was another ghetto on Kimborovskaya Street ^[10] . Little is known about him, and it probably did not last long, playing the role of a gathering place before being shot. Presumably, the inhabitants of the ghetto on Kimborovskaya Street died during the execution in September 1941 ^[5] .

This mass execution was carried out on September 27-28, 1941 by a punitive detachment that arrived in Mazyr, headed by the commandant of the city, the gebitsomissar Galle. During this first major “action” (the Germans preferred to call the massacres organized by them) a euphemism , Jews were killed right on the streets of the city. The Nazis gathered most of the victims into groups of 30-40 people, drove them to the cemetery, where they forced them to dig graves and then shot them. Some Jews committed suicide: they hung themselves, took poison, drowned in the Pripyat River . Within two days, approximately 1,000 people were shot at Mozyr’s Jewish cemetery.

As a result of the conventionally designated second “action”, the invaders drowned about 700 Jews in Pripyat ^[11] . In August 1941, the Nazis drove a group of Jews into Pripyat and drowned. In the fall of 1941, 250 old people, women, and children were drowned in Pripyat. Presumably in December, the occupiers, having made an ice hole on the ice of the Pripyat River, drove the Jews to them and forced them to jump there, and the Germans who resisted were pushed with rifle butts.

The third "action" was held on January 6-7, 1942 ^[12] . In two days near the village of Beavers ^[13] , more than 1,000 Jews (1,500 ^[3] ) were killed by the Nazis in a quarry. At first, the ghetto prisoners were taken to prison, and the next day, January 7, 1942, Jews were escorted in groups of 100-150 to the place of execution. Women and children were pushed into the grave alive ^[5] .

As a result of the fourth “action” in February 1942, the Mozyr ghetto was completely destroyed ^[6] . The last prisoners were taken out of the ghetto and driven to a freshly dug ditch in the tract Romashov Moat. The death toll during the last mass execution is approximately 1,150 people ^[14] .

The head of the city gendarmerie Tizze and the head of the SD Rosenberg took an active part in the extermination of the Jews of Mozyr.

Some publications cited the number of 1,500 Jews who were shot on January 6-7, 1942 near the village of Beavers, as the total number of Mozyr Jews who died. However, in this case we are talking only about Jews driven into ghettos from nearby villages after the extermination of Mozyr Jews ^[6] . The mass executions made at the Mozyr Jewish cemetery on September 27-28, 1941, in the tract Romashov Moat in February 1942, as well as the number of drowned Jews in the Pripyat River, were missed. According to the chairman of the city community, Grigory Shkolnikov, Jews were also shot near Svidovka Street (607 dead), but no documentary evidence has yet been found ^[5] .

The total loss of the Jewish population of Mozyr was approximately 3,850 - 4,000 dead.

On August 31, 1941, several Jewish families of 21 people gathered in house number 19 on Pushkin Street, doused the building with kerosene and burned themselves - they cast lots, which fell on the nineteen-year-old Sosha Hofsten, she took a torch and set fire to the house, and then burned down together with others.

About 40 people who died unconquered died in the fire, and among them: Gofshtein Ale (b. 1900), Hofshtein Feig [b. 1905), Gofshtein Sosha (b. 1922}, Gofshtein Eer (1913 b.), Gofshtein Khaya (b. 1915}, Hofshtein Shlema Eerovich (b. 1935), Hofshtein Rosa (b. 1917), Hoffmann Ale (b. 1870), Hoffmann Malka (1910 born), Gutman (born in 1885), Gutman Nisel (born in 1860), Domnich (born in 1895), Domnich (born in 1896), Zaretskaya Brocha (born in 1887) ), Zaretsky Berka (b. 1897), Kagan Isroel (b. 1901), Ravinovich Movsha (b. 1905), Sonya Raginskaya (b. 1908), Sandamir Gneisha (b. 1890) ), Shekhtman Fan (born in 1908), Yitzhak Farber (1890) ^{[5] [15] [16]} .

In the post-war period, a memorial sign was erected in the tract Romashov Rov with the inscription: "Here Soviet citizens lie, brutally murdered by the Nazi invaders in February 1942."

In subsequent years, 3 monuments and 3 memorial plaques were erected in Mozyr in the places of mass murder of Mozyr Jews ^[17] .

• G. R. Vinnitsa. Holocaust in the occupied territory of Eastern Belarus in 1941-1945. - Mn., 2011, ISBN 978-985-6950-96-7
• Adamushko V.I., Biryukova O.V., Kryuk V.P., Kudryakova G.A. Reference book on the places of the forced detention of the civilian population in the occupied territory of Belarus 1941-1944. - Mn. : National Archives of the Republic of Belarus, State Committee on Archives and Records Management of the Republic of Belarus, 2001. - 158 p. - 2000 copies - ISBN 985-6372-19-4 .
• Crimes of Nazi occupiers in Belarus 1941-1944 , ed. Belarus, 1965, pp. 319-320;
• National Archives of the Republic of Belarus (NARB). - fund 845, inventory 1, file 12, sheet 32 ^[6] ;
• National Archives of the Republic of Belarus (NARB). - fund 861, inventory 1, file 12, sheet 2, 8, 9 ^[6] ;
• State Archive of the Russian Federation (GARF). - fund 7021, inventory 91, file 20, sheet 3, 4 ^[6] ;
• Itzhak Arad . The destruction of the Jews of the USSR during the German occupation (1941-1944). Collection of documents and materials, Jerusalem, Yad Vashem , 1991, ISBN 9653080105
• Mazyr - an article from the Russian Jewish Encyclopedia ;
• “Crimes of Nazi occupiers in Belarus,” pp. 319-320;
• Zonal State Archive (ZGA) in Mozyr, f. 310, op. 1, d. 15, p. 4, 12, 14 ^[6] ;

• L. Smilovitsky , "The Holocaust of Jews in Belarus, 1941-1944.", Tel Aviv, 2000
• R. A. Chernoglazova, H. Heer. The tragedy of the Jews of Belarus in 1941-1944.: Collection of materials and documents. Mn .: publishing house E. S. Halperin, 1997, ISBN 985627902X
• Belarusian Masada, or the history of the twenty-year struggle for memory
• I. Khalip. Death by Lot
• E. Blockchain. Terrible murders of Jews of the Mozyr ghetto