Ghetto in Lunno

On the eve of the war, in 1938, 1,671 out of 2,522 inhabitants of Lunno, that is, 60% were Jews ^{[1] [2]} (about 300 families) ^[3] .

Before the occupation, part of the Jews of the town had time to move to the Land of Israel and other places, some were mobilized into the Polish Krayiv Army or the Red Army , and some were deported to the Soviet Union ^[4] .

On Saturday, June 28, 1941, the village of Lunno (Lunno-Volya) was captured by units of the Wehrmacht (according to other sources, 24 ^[5] or 25 June ^[3] ), and the occupation lasted until July 14, 1944 ^[6] . German soldiers began robbing Jewish homes and killing Jews immediately after the occupation of the city — on the first day several Jews were shot under the pretext of being connected with Soviet intelligence ^[3] . Following the troops in Lunno, the Einsatzgroup immediately arrived and was stationed ^[7] .

In July 1941, the Germans organized a Judenrat (Jewish Council) in Lunno. Jacob Velbel (Welbel), who had previously been the head of the Jewish community of the town, was appointed chairman of the Judenrat. Also, the Germans forced the Jews to create a "Jewish police" (6-8 people) to maintain order inside the future ghetto ^[7] .

Even before the creation of the ghetto, already in the first week of the occupation, the Germans ordered the Jews to wear yellow stripes on their right hand. A month later, the yellow band was replaced with six-pointed stars on the left side of the chest with the inscription “Jude” (“Jew”) and on the back ^[2] . Jews were forbidden any cultural and educational activities, it was forbidden to gather in large groups. The Germans imposed a curfew from 7 pm to 6 am, and additionally it was generally forbidden for Jews to leave the place without the written permission of the occupying authorities. Germans and policemen , taking advantage of complete impunity, robbed and killed Jews, hanging or shooting them for the slightest offense ^[2] . An eyewitness testimony was preserved, as the German military governor Lunno shot a Jew right in his office ^[7] .

With the arrival of the Germans in Lunno, all adult male Jews from 18 to 60 years old were forced to work hard to build roads, new fortifications, to dismantle captured Soviet military aircraft and to produce lumber. Parts of the Jews ordered to perform agricultural work and repair work on the house of the Belarusians and Poles in Lunno and in the neighboring villages. For this work, the Jews themselves did not receive payment - the owners transferred a small amount of money directly to the German municipal government. Every Jew engaged in forced labor received one kilogram of bread a day, and they had to sell or exchange clothes and tools for food in order not to die of starvation in such hard work ^{[2] [7]} .

On October 13, 1941, the Nazis issued an order to confiscate from the Jews of Lunno all movable and immovable property ^[2] .

In September 1941, before the holiday of Sukkot, the Germans announced the creation of a ghetto for Jews in the nearby town of Volya (they had long since been merged with Lunno, which is why they were usually combined toponymically as “Lunno Volya”) ^[3] . On November 2, 1941, from 12 to 6 pm, all the Jews of Lunno were resettled ^[2] . It was allowed to take only what could be carried on oneself or to be taken on a trolley. The Jews of Lunno were forced to leave their homes and move to the houses of the Jews of Will or to the synagogue and yeshiva in the Will. Jews from the nearby town of Volpa , almost completely destroyed by bombing, were also driven into this ghetto ^[5] . Before the relocation, the Germans collected the Torah scrolls and other holy books for Jews in the synagogues of Lunno and Volya and burned them in the courtyard of the synagogue in Volya ^[7] .

The houses of the Jews in Lunno were immediately occupied by the locals. The Jews of the Will of the Nazis left in their homes, instilling in each also several Jewish families from Lunno. When relocating, Jews were allowed to take personal items with them to the ghetto, such as beds, linens, kitchen utensils, and photographs ^[7] .

The ghetto was located on both sides of the main road connecting the Will with the neighboring villages. The Germans did not want to block this path, and therefore they cordoned off both parts of the ghetto with high fences with barbed wire, throwing a wobbly wooden bridge over the road ^[5] . Jews under the threat of death were prohibited from leaving the ghetto without permission. Polish policemen inspected the ghetto fences every day, looking for weaknesses in the fence ^[7] . Their anti-Semitism was one of the additional reasons that greatly worsened the situation of prisoners ^[5] .

Living conditions in the ghetto Volya were very difficult. The houses and synagogues were overcrowded - no more than 3 square meters were left for each ghetto prisoner. m. square. A part of the Jewish families was forced to occupy even unheated economic structures, and with the onset of cold weather several families had to dig dugouts for themselves. There is a case when water for engine cooling froze on an electric mill in Lunno, and the Germans ordered several Jews, including women and children, despite the frost, to carry water in buckets from the Neman River, located a kilometer away from the mill, for three days until the repair lasted ^[7] .

Commandant Skidler (Skidler) constantly instilled fear in the ghetto Jews. Initially, while the Jews still had valuables, he constantly demanded that the Judenrat bring him gold, silver, bottles of wine, coffee and other valuables, promising otherwise to immediately shoot the members of the Judenrat and the rest of the Jews ^[5] .

After the establishment of the ghetto, the situation with nutrition was sharply deteriorated. For non-Jews, the entrance to the ghetto was forbidden, and Jews could buy food only in secret on the way to work. Risking again, this food had to be brought back to the ghetto. Judenrat managed to persuade the Germans to allow returning to the ghettos ten of the cows confiscated from the Jews, who had to be fed with peeling potatoes. Some families were also able to grow some vegetables ^[7] .

Another problem of the Jews in the ghetto was the lack of firewood for heating and cooking. Once, the occupying authorities agreed to sell the roots of trees to the Judenratha, which the Jews harvested in forced labor ^[7] .

In the summer of 1942, the Nazis set up a Jewish labor camp near Berestovitsa . About 150 young Jewish men from Lunno and neighboring settlements were sent to this camp. In November 1942, all remaining prisoners were deported to Treblinka and killed ^{[7] [8]} .

On the night of 1 to 2 November 1942, all the inhabitants of the ghetto (1,700 people ^[8] ) in carts collected in nearby villages were taken to the Kolbasino transit camp (not far from Grodno), where people quickly died of hunger, cold and disease ^{[2 ] [5] [8] [9]} .

On December 5, 1942, as part of the program of extermination of Jews , prisoners from the Kolbasino camp began to be moved to the Auschwitz death camp , forcing at night, in the cold, to walk to Lososno station ^[2] .

The last Jews in Lunno were killed no later than March 5, 1943 ^[10] .

According to archival documents, during the years of the Second World War, 1,549 Jews from Lunno-Volya were tortured and killed ^{[10] [11] [12] [13]} . The vast majority of them were killed by the Germans on arrival in Auschwitz on December 8, 1942. Practically all of the survivors died in the next few months ^[4] . Only 15 people survived from the entire Jewish population of this town ^{[1] [14]} .

The database of Holocaust victims at the Yad Vashem Institute in Jerusalem contains archival records of the names of 265 dead Jews - residents of Lunno, and the names of another 71 Lunne Jews killed in Auschwitz-Birkenau during the winter of 1942-1943. These records are fragmentary and incomplete ^[4] .

Zalman Gradovsky , a resident of Lunno (a former member of the Judenrat Lunno who was responsible for sanitary issues ^[3] ), managed to survive in the Kolbasino camp, went to Auschwitz, lost his entire family there, but before his death he managed to record what he had experienced (including and about the Lunn ghetto) and bury it in the ashes near the crematorium. Records were discovered and published ^[3] . Gradovsky was one of the leaders of the uprising of prisoners of Auschwitz on October 7, 1944, and died in a shootout ^[2] .

In 1951, 1953 and 1957. the descendants of the former residents of Lunno held in Tel Aviv "Days of the memory of the inhabitants of Lunno", who died during the Holocaust . In 1952, such a meeting took place in New York . In March 2006, nearly 150 people from all over Israel came to meet people from Lunno in Givatayim ^[15] .

On the territory of the former ghetto in Lunno there is no monument to the murdered Jews, and the erected memorable sign is on the side ^[16] . On this sign, established in 2005 on Kirov Street (formerly Zagoryany Street), is written in Yiddish (but there is no direct indication that this is about Jews): “ Eternal memory of 1549 residents of the town of Lunno, killed innocently during the Great Patriotic War ” , and in July 2006, a memorial plaque was installed next to the stone ^[15] .

In September 2006, a stone in memory of the Jewish communities destroyed by the Nazis in the Grodno region (including Lunno) was installed in Israel at the Kiryat Shaul cemetery in Tel Aviv ^[15] .

Books and Articles

• A.R. Кісялёў, Т.М. Muryna, A.U. Apalonik i Innsh. (redkal.), A.S. Sabastsyan (styled). “Pamyat. Mastoўski rayon. - Mn. : “Paligrafarmlenne”, 2002. - 590 p. - ISBN 985-6351-15-4 . (white)
• 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 .
• G. P. Pashko, Ya. M. Zhabrun, V. Ts. Osipa i insh. (redkal.), I. P. Kren, W. A. ​​Nyadzelka, E. S. Yarmusik (orderly). “Pamyat. Grodno. - Mn. : “Belarusian entsiklapedya”, 1999. - 712 p. - ISBN 985-11-0147-8 . (white)
• Zalman Gradovsky. "At the core of hell." Ed. Gamma-Press, ISBN 978-5-9612-0021-8
• "The Destruction of Lune-Volie" by Etel Berachowicz-Kosowska, 1948 (Grodner Aplangen, no. 2) (Yiddish) (English)
• Ghetto in Lunna Volya (English)
• Lunna - article from the Russian Jewish Encyclopedia ;
• Krayaznaўtsa napіsaў knіgu pra mrastechka, yakoe znіkla mapy Belarus (Belor.)

Archive sources

• State archive of the Grodno region (GAGO):
  • fund 1, list 1, case 54, sheets 37-38;
  • Foundation 1029, opis 1, case 77, sheets 6, 9;
• National Archives of the Republic of Belarus (NARB), - fund 845, opis' 1, case 8, page 31;
• State Archive of the Russian Federation (GARF). - fund 7021, inventory 86, case 40, sheets 4, 56, 58;

additional literature

• L. L. Smilovitsky. The Catastrophe of the Jews in Belarus, 1941-1944 . - Tel Aviv: Matthew Black Library, 2000. - 432 p. - ISBN 965-7094-24-0 .
• 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
• Chernoglazova R.A., Heer H. The Tragedy of the Jews of Belarus in 1941-1944: a collection of materials and documents. - Ed. 2nd, rev. and additional .. - Mn. : E. S. Halperin, 1997. - 398 p. - 1000 copies - ISBN 985627902X .

• Ghetto in Mostovsky district