Bronnaya Gora

May-June 1942

In May-September 1942, holes were dug in the tract from 25 to 50 meters long, 10-12 meters wide, and 4 meters deep. The pits were surrounded by barbed wire and the surrounding area was carefully guarded by members of the SS and SD , allowing only residents driven from neighboring villages to dig holes ^[2] .

The first five trains with doomed people arrived in June 1942.

The first train arrived from the station Bereza-Kartuzskaya , it consisted of several wagons with guards and ammunition and 16 crowded wagons with Jews - at least 200 people each. All of them were prisoners of the ghetto “B” in Birch ^[3] .

The second echelon consisted of 46 wagons and arrived from Drogichin , Yanovo and Gorodets stations. In cars, the vast majority were Jews. As in the first echelon, the cars were extremely crowded - at least 200 people in each ^[1] .

A third train with 40 railcars crowded with Jews arrived from Brest ^{[1] [4]} .

The fourth tier of 18 cars came from Pinsk and Kobrin stations. In all the cars were Jews ^[5] .

The fifth train arrived from Brest . All of its 13 wagons were filled with prisoners from Brest prison - Jews, Poles and Belarusians ^{[5] [4]} .

All cars were fed to the railway line, which ran from the central highway at 250-300 meters to the grave pits. Many people already died on the way from unbearable conditions - exhaustion, stampede and lack of air ^[5] .

At specially created sites, the people brought in were ordered to unload and strip naked - everyone, women, children and men. Then they were carefully examined and selected jewelry was taken. Naked people were driven to the pits, forced to go down the stairs and lay in dense rows face to the ground. The filled row was shot from machine guns, and the following victims were ordered to go to bed from above - and so it was repeated until the pit was completely filled ^{[5] [6]} .

After the shootings, the cars were loaded with clothes of the killed people and sent back ^[7] .

In June 1942, about 800 workers of military depots were also shot - they were killed and buried near barracks 400 meters from the station in the direction of the Moscow-Warsaw highway ^[5] .

September-October 1942

The sixth transport arrived from Birch in September 1942 in the amount of 25 wagons ^[5] .

The seventh echelon arrived from Brest in early October 1942 - 28 wagons. All people from these two echelons were killed there in the same way as people from the first five echelons ^[5] .

Also in September 1942, the Germans killed about 200 people from Birch, 200 meters south of the Moscow-Warsaw road towards the village of Smolyarka, and they were buried there ^[5] .

Fall 1942 - Summer 1944

In total, 186 wagons with doomed people arrived at the Bronnaya Gora station during the occupation. By November 1942, more than 50,000 people were killed at Bronnaya Gora, the vast majority of Jews ^{[8] [9]} .

In 1943, 2 passenger cars with looted gold coins and things were sent from Germany to the station ^[7] .

The inhabitants of the village of Bronnaya Gora as witnesses of mass crimes - about 1000 people, sometimes helping people who miraculously got out of the shooting holes, were shot by the Nazis ^[10] .

In order to hide the traces of mass crimes, in March 1944, the German occupation forces drove here about a hundred prisoners, who dug up and burned the bodies of the dead for two weeks. After a short time, the performers of these works were also shot and burned ^{[11] [6]} .

The head of the railway station was a German named Heil ^[12] .

The “actions” were led (the Hitlerites called the massacres organized by them) the head of the Brest Regional Police Bureau, Major Rode, who was replaced in early 1944 by Captain Biner, the head of the 1st police station of Brest, Lieutenant Hoffmann, deputy chiefs of the police of Brest, Holter, Griber and Bos , the chief of the 2nd police station of Brest, Lieutenant Preizniger, the chief of the criminal police of the SD Obercharführer Zavadsky, the deputy chief of the SD of the Obersturmführer Zibel, the head of the executions, the officer of the SD Gerik, the chief lieutenant Gerdes, officers of the SD, Griber and Vanzman ^[3] , officers of the gendarmerie in Birch.

Two monuments were erected at the site of mass executions ^{[13] [14]} .

On June 3, 2007, a memorial plaque was opened at the site of the murders of Jews ^{[15] [16]} .

• 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 .
• I.P. Shamyakin (Ch. Ed.), G.K. Kiselev, P.L. Lebedev et al. (Red.). "Memory. Historical and documentary chronicle of the Beryozovsky district. " - Mn. : “Belarusian Soviet Encyclopedia”, 1987. - 440 p.
• G.K. Kisyalyo (halogens of redactar), R.R. Rysyuk, M.M. Kuish i insh. (redcal.), A.P. Kondak (laying). “Memory. Brest (Volume II). " - Mn. : “BELTA”, 2001. - 688 p. - ISBN 985-6302-30-7 . (white)
• State Archive of the Russian Federation (GARF). - fund R-7021, inventory 83, file 9, sheets 144-145;
• State Archive of the Brest Region (GABO), - fund 514, inventory 1, file 298, sheets 1-2;

• S. Granik. “This should not be repeated,” the newspaper “Our Land - Zagorodye”, publisher: Military-Historical Museum of Drogichin, No. 16-17, August 2012, p. eight
• Christopher Browning . Judenmord. NS-Politik, Zwangsarbeit und das Verhalten der Täter. Frankfurt 2001.
• Wolfgang Curilla . Die deutsche Ordnungspolizei und der Holocaust im Baltikum und in Weißrußland 1941-1944. 2. Aufl., Schöningh, Paderborn 2006, ISBN 3-506-71787-1
• Christian Gerlach . Kalkulierte Morde. Die deutsche Wirtschafts- und Vernichtungspoltik in Weißrußland 1941 bis 1944. Hamburg 1999.
• Harada i vëski Belarusi. Bresckaja voblasc. Kniha I. Minsk 2006 (Harada i vëski Belarusi. Encyklapedija. Bd. 3).
• Lagerja sovetskich voennoplennych v Belarusi. 1941-1944. Spravočnik. Lager sowjetischer Kriegsgefangener in Belarus. Ein Nachschlagewerk. Minsk 2004. (Zweisprachig Russisch und Deutsch.)
• Svod Pamjatnikov istorii i kultury Belorussii. Brestskaja oblast. Minsk 1990 (Svod Pamjatnikov istorii i kultury narodov SSSR).

• Mass extermination of Soviet citizens in the tract Bronnaya Gora
• M. Rinsky. The history of the monument. Monument to the victims of fascism on the Bronnaya Gora.
• Over the Bug.
• To remember ... (inaccessible link)

• Holocaust in Berezovsky district