Rossonsky ghetto

The place was captured by Wehrmacht units on July 15, 1941, and the occupation lasted 3 years - until July 12, 1944 ^[1] . Rosson territory entered the military zone of occupation, assigned to the headquarters of the rear of Army Group Center .

Presumably in September-October 1941, the Nazis, on the orders of local commandant Otto Lenz, drove the Jews to a ghetto located on Sovetskaya Street (modern name). The ghetto was placed in the building of the consumer services complex (BWC), in sewing workshops ^{[2] [3] [4] [5] [6]} .

Jews from nearby villages and towns (most of Osveysky and Drissensky districts) were also brought here: Albrekhtovo, Gorbachevo, Zaborye, Klyastits, Yukhovich (33 Jews have lived in Yukhovichi since 1939) ^[3] . There were also Jews from Latvia and Jewish refugees from Poland ^{[7] [5]} .

The Nazis hid their plans for a Jewish extermination program . To those who were resettled from the settlements of the Rossonsky district , the Nazis announced that they would send them to Palestine . In this case, the Jews had to take with them all the values ​​and the best things, which were then taken from them.

The prisoners were placed in the ghetto wherever possible: in houses, barns, in the open air on the street. Jews, deprived of all rights, were forced, under pain of death, to wear blindfolds with a six-pointed yellow star. The ghetto was guarded by German soldiers and Belarusian policemen ^[5] .

At first, the ghetto was not fenced, but by December 1941, its territory was cordoned off with barbed wire. “The penal servitude regime was established in the camp: they didn’t give food, in the evenings drunk Germans burst into the ghetto camp, mocked the prisoners, beaten and tortured” ^[8] . Prisoners who did not receive food were initially released from the ghetto - they dispersed to the homes of local residents and asked for food.

Starting in December 1941, Jews were not allowed out of the ghetto. “A poster was written at the gates of the camp that anyone who dares to go beyond the camp will be shot for wire on the spot” ^[9] . The weakest of the prisoners - the elderly and children could not stand the existence in such conditions and died. Their bodies lay directly in the premises where the Jews lived. “They were in this state until January 1942. The number of Jews reached 488 people ” ^{[10] [2]} .

The history of the Rossony ghetto can be divided into two periods. The first, “softer,” “open ghetto,” lasted from late September to December 1941. The second, “tough” - “closed ghetto” - from December 1941 until the day of liquidation ^[3] .

In 1941–42, Jews from the ghetto were shot on the eastern outskirts of the town near Korotkevich Street ^[4] .

Presumably on January 10, 1942, the Jews were taken out of the ghetto and a column stretching for a hundred meters, drove along Sebezhsky Lane (now Shkolnaya Street) to the northern outskirts of Rosson towards the forest and killed about 150 meters from the place where the monument to the dead stands ^{[4] [6] [11] [5]} : “Under a reinforced convoy of Germans and the local police, the entire camp in the amount of 488 people was taken out to the place of Rossony and near the railway track all the prisoners were shot from rifles and machine guns. Before this, by order of the commandant Otto Lenz, the Germans scoffed at the Jews in every possible way: they tied the hands of one person with another and, in this form, led them to be shot. Before being shot, they were forced to take off their clothes and shoes, which they took to themselves ” ^[12] .

The dead were dumped in a sand pit and were not bombarded. Only in April 1942, the commandant Lenz allowed the buried bodies to be buried in three holes ^[5] .

After the execution, the invaders left about twenty Jewish specialists alive, who were also shot after about two months ^[3] . Only in April 1942, the local commandant Lenz ordered to bury the bodies of the dead prisoners of the Rosson ghetto in three pits.

A total of 488 Jews were tortured and killed in the Rosson ghetto ^{[6] [11]} .

Among the killed - 8 Jewish families from Poland (from Warsaw and Pultusk ) who found refuge in Yukhovichi ( Klyastitsky village council ) after 1938 - only 33 people ^[13] .

Jews could leave the ghetto, but they did not dare to leave their families. Invaders for the escape of someone executed not only family members - all the Jews who lived in the fugitive's house were destroyed. Only loners tried to escape. Sixty-year-old Yevsey Abramovich Meiksan from Gorbachev got out of the ghetto, but he was detained by collaborators and shot. Abram Khitrov from Yukhovichi in January 1942 on the eve of execution, at night, left the ghetto (crawled under the fence). He hid in the bathhouse of the pre-war neighbors, but they immediately informed the invaders about him, after which Abram was shot ^{[3] [5]} .

Five people got out of the pit and went towards the village of Dvorishche, but someone gave them away and they were shot ^[5] .

V.E. Vorotynskaya rescued her friend Vera Rabinovich (after her husband Terekhov) from Klyastits. Vera got out of the ghetto and came to her, deciding that the easiest way to save is to change her name (she still remained a girl's). The friends went to the burgomaster Vasily Ragach, who before the war worked as a teacher and knew them. He issued a certificate on the name of the spouse, which allowed Vera to go to the village of Prokhorovo with her husband's parents.

Some prisoners tried to escape, taking refuge in a shelter. Near the village of Popovka (now Ozernoye), a Jewish family was hiding on the island. Someone reported them to the invaders, and they were shot. A Jew Novik from the village of Zaborye was hiding in a dugout in the Black Forest, but he was also extradited ^[3] .

A memorial plaque was erected at the place of execution (Sebezhsky Lane) in 1962, and in 1974, a monument with the standard inscription for those years without mentioning the word “Jew”: “488 people are buried here - victims of fascism, executed in February 1942.” The date on the stele is inaccurate - the execution was January 10, 1942 ^{[4] [5] [14]} .

In the post-war years, Roman Naumovich Smotkin did a lot to preserve the memory of the dead compatriots. He corresponded with witnesses and compiled lists of those killed on January 10, 1942 - more than 130 people, then published in the book “Pamyat. Rasonsky rayan ” ^{[5] [15]} .

In 1965, an obelisk was installed on the mass grave of prisoners of war and Jews killed in 1941–42 on the eastern outskirts of the village on Korotkevich Street ^{[4] [5]} .

• B. I. Sachanka (gal. Red.); G.K. K_syalyoў, L.M. Drabovich i insh. (redaktsyya); I. V. Tysyanchuk, V. M. Zyalenka i insh. (Ramen camicia). “Memory. Rasonsky Ryan. " Gistoryka-dakumentalnaya chronika Rasonskaga raёna .. - Mn. : "Belarusian encyclopedic", 1994. - 558 p. - ISBN 5-85700-118-8 . (Belarusian) (Russian)
• 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. 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 .
• Zonal State Archive in Polotsk. - fund 687, inventory 1, file 1, sheet 56;
• State Archive of the Russian Federation (GARF). - fund 7021, inventory 92, file 222, sheet 2;
• Rossony - an article from the Russian Jewish Encyclopedia
• A. Shulman. Footprints on the ground
• D. Shirochin. What books are silent about
• "Winter magic." Nazi punitive operation in the Belarusian-Latvian borderland. Documents and materials. - M.: Fund “Historical memory”, 2013. - 512 p. ISBN 978-5-9990-0020-0

• 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
• 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

• Ghetto in Rossonsky District