Osipovichi Ghetto

According to the pre-war census of 1939, 1,694 Jews lived in Osipovichi, accounting for 12.34% of the total number of city residents ^[1] . The Nazis carried out the first bombardment of Osipovich at night from June 22 to 23, 1941, and the families of many Jews escaped and went to nearby villages.

The city was occupied on June 30, 1941 by units of the 2nd Guderian Tank Group . The territory of the Osipovichi entered the zone of the army rear of Army Group Center ^[2] . The occupation lasted 3 years - until June 28, 1944 ^[3] .

After the occupation, Nazi punitive bodies arrived in the Osipovichi district - sonderkommandy , secret field police (HFP), security police and SD , gendarmerie and others. German military field and local commandants enjoyed unlimited power ^[2] . At one time, the burgomaster was Yazvinsky, the former senior agronomist of the Lipen MTS. Franzenko was appointed chief of the police for the Osipovichi and the district, who before the war worked as head of the passport office in the regional police department ^[4] .

One of the first activities of the invaders in the framework of the Nazi program of extermination of Jews was the registration of Jews ^[2] . Its implementation was vested in the Judenrat ("Jewish Council"), forcibly organized by the Nazis. The Jewish Council of the Osipovichs consisted of three people (only one of them was established - Afroim Khavkin, who worked before the war as chief accountant of the military trade ). Judenrat was appointed by the German commandant on the recommendation of the burgomaster of the city of Goranin, who before the war was a construction technician at the Office of Military Construction Work No. 76 in Osipovichi ^{[2] [5]} .

In early July 1941, Jews - 420-450 people - were resettled in the southern part of the city ^{[4] [6]} . The ghetto included the streets of Kommunisticheskaya, Chumakova, Oktyabrskaya, Gorky, Workers 'and Peasants', Polevaya, Kalinina, Serova from R. Luxemburg Street to V. Horuzhey Street and all the streets of K. Liebknecht, Abrosimova (former Krasnoarmeyskaya), Socialist, Revolutionary, K. Marx, Industrial, Protasevichskaya ^[2] . Jews who lived in other parts of the city were resettled in this area on Oktyabrskaya and Promyshlennaya streets (now Golanta Street) ^{[4] [5]} .

39 Jews were driven to Osipovichi from the village of Lipen, were held in a prisoner of war camp and civilians, and were used for heavy work ^[7] .

Bunk bunk beds were built in the ghetto houses. The ghetto prisoners were extremely crowded, did not receive food, and were forced to exchange things for food ^[4] .

The Osipovichi Jews were forced by the occupants under threat of death to wear yellow round-shaped tags with a diameter of 8-10 cm on clothes on the left side of the chest and back. Jews completely lost their rights as individuals. They were forbidden to appear in public places - including in the market, to teach children at school, to talk with a non-Jewish population and even just greet non-Jews, walk on sidewalks, and gather on the streets for more than 3 people. Those who did not comply with these restrictions were faced with the only punishment - execution ^{[2] [4] [5]} .

Every morning, the entire able-bodied population of the ghetto went to heavy and dirty forced labor, consisting in the analysis of the destroyed barracks, houses, the railway station and other facilities. There was a curfew - after 18:00 it was forbidden to go outside ^{[2] [4]} .

The mass extermination of the Jewish population began in the fall of 1941. The first massacre (which the Nazis called euphemism "action") the Germans held on October 11, 1941. Hiding their plans, the invaders collected able-bodied prisoners, supposedly to work, and, having delivered them to the Southern military town, they shot and buried them in prepared pits ^{[2] [4] [5]} .

Women with children and the elderly remained in the ghetto. The ghetto was completely destroyed on February 5, 1942. The last prisoners were shot at a Jewish cemetery. A total of 440 people were killed ^{[2] [4] [8]} .

The documented number of those executed is much lower than the pre-war number of Jews Osipovich. Probably more Jews were exterminated, as eyewitnesses of the events confirm, naming not only a military town and a Jewish cemetery among the places of executions, but also the Soviet village and the so-called “Triangle” (district of R. Luxemburg, Lyulkova, Lugovaya streets) ^{[2] [ 5]} .

Difficult living conditions in the ghetto forced some prisoners to passive confrontation. The family of Chernetskikh doctors (Grigory and Faina) committed suicide by leaving a note: “It is better to die standing than to live on your knees” ^[9] .

During the execution on October 11, 1941, Khavkin Afroim (member of the Judenrat), Durets Mikhail and Fayn Yakov were able to escape, the Nazis shot Khavkina, and Durets and Fayn fell into the partisan detachment.Even before the execution, the partisans left: Gorelik Mota and Paloyko Moses (detachment No. 210), Karasik Khaim (1st Bobruisk brigade, detachment No. 252), I. Sh. Rusakov (1st Bobruisk brigade, fighter platoon) ^[5] .

In the winter of 1942, veterinarian Aleksey Denisov, under the guise of a relative (so that someone would not give out), took Sarah Utevskaya from Osipovich to Starye Dorogi ^[2] . The Jews were also saved by the family of E. I. Khlus from the village of Zborsk, V. I. Sankovich, the family of Nikolai Nikolaevich and Efrosinya Mironovna Silitsky, N. Astapovich and E. A. Gladkaya ^[5] .

From the story of the middle daughter of the four Silitsky (G. Tkacheva): “ In our house, in the cellar, on the instructions of the partisan detachment, the parents hid a family of Jews, adults and young children, for their further transfer to the partisan detachment. They did not go up until late at night to eat hot and warm up. I remember on one of these nights, my mother put everything to us, and to us, too, boiled potatoes in plates. I sat at the table next to one of the girls, her name was Sonya, she was about my age, about 8-9 years old, we were all very hungry then, and it seemed to me that my mother put Sonya more potatoes than me. I quietly asked my mother - why did she give the potatoes more than me, because I am her own daughter? Mom, Efrosinya Mironovna, answered me this: “Daughter, I can put you more than Sofochka, but then tomorrow you will have to sit in the cellar instead of her all day.” I have remembered this lesson forever . ”

The Mikhadyuk family from Daraganovo and Alexander Zvonnik for saving Jews were awarded the honorary title “The Righteous Among the Nations ” from the Israeli Yad Vashem Memorial Institute “ as a token of deepest gratitude for the help provided to the Jewish people during the Second World War ”.

In the Jewish cemetery of Osipovichi in 1968, a monument to the dead was erected ^[10] . Here, in 1993, the remains of 76 Jews who were shot in the village of Lapichi were reburied ^[5] .

• Osipovichi - article from the Russian Jewish Encyclopedia
• National Archives of the Republic of Belarus (NARB). - fund 845, inventory 1, file 60, sheet 57;
• State Archive (GA) of the Mogilev region. - f. 852, op. 1, d. 1, l. 169 ^[7] ;
• The tragedy that was not expected (inaccessible link)
• Adamushko V.I., Biryukova O.V., Kryuk V.P., Kudryakova G.A. Directory of places of forced detention of civilians in the occupied territory of Belarus 1941-1944. - Mn. : National Archive of the Republic of Belarus, State Committee for Archives and Record Keeping of the Republic of Belarus, 2001. - 158 p. - 2000 copies. - ISBN 985-6372-19-4 .
• Yitzhak Arad . The extermination of the Jews of the USSR during the years of German occupation (1941-1944). Collection of documents and materials, Jerusalem, Yad Vashem Publishing House , 1991, p. 16 ISBN 9653080105

• G. R. Vinnitsa. Holocaust in the occupied territory of Eastern Belarus in 1941-1945. - Mn., 2011, ISBN 978-985-6950-96-7
• 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
• L. Smilovitsky , "The Holocaust of Jews in Belarus, 1941-1944.", Tel Aviv, 2000

• Ghetto in Osipovichsky district