Gorodok Ghetto

The pre-war Town was a small town with the majority of the Jewish population. By the beginning of the war, 2400-2500 Jews lived in Gorodok ^{[1] [2]} .

In 1939, Jewish refugees from Poland appeared in Gorodok, but not everyone believed their stories about the Germans' attitude toward Jews and did not leave before the occupation. Only those who had a horse managed to evacuate, and they were able to get to the railway. But for the most part, local residents remained in place. In addition, many of those who still tried to escape to the East, the Germans cut the path and returned back to Gorodok ^{[1] [3] [4]} .

German troops occupied the town on July 9, 1941, and the occupation lasted until December 24, 1943 ^{[2] [5]} .

Almost immediately after the occupation of the city, all Jews, under the threat of death, were obliged to sew a yellow patch on their clothes ^{[2] [3] [6] [7]} .

Then the Germans robbed wealthy Jews. The Germans and policemen burst into Jewish houses and pulled things out onto the street, offering local non-Jews to pick it up for themselves (but having previously taken the best) ^{[2] [6] [7]} .

Soon a pogrom followed. The Germans and policemen went through all the Jewish houses that were shown to them by local traitors ^{[2] [6] [7]} .

Jews were used in forced, often meaningless, jobs - for example, pulling grass in the streets with their hands ^{[2] [6] [7]} .

The first "action" (the Nazis called the massacres organized by them) was carried out by such euphemism a few weeks after the occupation - in early August. The Germans were very serious about the possibility of Jewish resistance , and therefore, in the first place, Jewish men, aged 15 to 50, were killed in the ghetto or even before it was created, despite the economic inexpediency, as they were the most able-bodied prisoners ^[8] . Therefore, even before the Jews were driven into the ghetto, the Germans and policemen gathered young male Jews and some young women, took them away under the pretext that they were sent to work, and shot them near the village of Berezovka - thus depriving the Jewish community of those who could lead resistance ^{[1] [2] [3] [6] [9] [7]} .

In August 1941, the Germans, implementing the Nazi program of extermination of Jews , drove the surviving Jews of the Town into a ghetto on the outskirts of the city ^{[2] [6] [10] [11] [12]} .

When the Jews were ousted, the Nazis and the "Bobby" (as the people contemptuously called the policemen ^{[13] [14]} ) openly robbed Jewish houses with impunity and killed Jews. Even decades after the war, old-timers of the Gorodok recalled how the streets of the town were white from feathers from open Jewish pillows and feather-beds. Some boys ran along the street and shouted the slogan brought by the Germans: “Take it, lads, twig, drive a Jew to Palestine” ^[3] .

In total, about 2,000 people were detained in the Gorodok ghetto ^{[2] [6] [10]} .

Under the ghetto, the invaders took a place between the streets of Krasnoarmeyskaya and the name of Galitsky. The prisoners were placed in the old bathhouse, several buildings next to it and in the unfinished new bathhouse ^{[1] [3] [15]} .

The ghetto was fenced with barbed wire and, on the one hand, with a river. The wire fence went right up to the river. Policemen guarded the ghetto ^{[1] [2] [3] [15]} .

All prisoners suffered from hunger, women constantly cried, old people prayed. No food was given to people - they only ate what they could manage to take with them and the little things that some locals secretly passed ^{on [1] [15]} .

Until the final destruction of the doomed people, they were driven to forced labor, under the guise of which a group of Jews was often taken to execution ^[15] .

For two months, the prisoners were taken out in groups to the tract Vorobyovy Gory (before the war - the favorite resting place of the Gorodok residents) and were shot by Germans and policemen there. People were again taken under the pretext of forced labor, but everyone understood everything. The first to lead the younger and healthier. Children tried to hide, the Germans found them and pulled them from the shelters by their legs ^{[1] [2] [6] [9] [10] [16]} .

During the shootings on the Sparrow Hills there were no attempts at resistance and flight. The remaining old men and women with small children could neither run nor resist. The doomed people were forced to dig graves themselves, while the Germans and policemen stood by, talking and laughing ^{[2] [6]} .

In mid-October 1941, the ghetto was completely destroyed. On one of the October days, in the morning, all the Jews, among whom there were already only old people, women and children, gathered and drove to the Vorobyovy Gory, beating on the road with the butts of those who no longer had the strength to go. Everyone was shot. Then, until the end of the occupation, participants in the resistance and those dissatisfied with the “new order” were shot at this place ^[17] .

At the end of December 1943, after the liberation of Gorodok, a commission of representatives of the district authorities, the 11th Guards Army and residents of the city examined the site of the massacres on the Sparrow Hills. The grave was 12 meters long, 4 meters wide and deep. Most of the victims were shot in the back of the head, others had their heads broken with a blunt object, and many children were buried alive - their skeletons had no damage ^{[18] [12]} .

There were attempts to escape, but not numerous, because there was nowhere to go - there were no partisans yet, most of the local residents were afraid to help - death was a punishment for helping Jews, everywhere there were many traitor collaborators who wanted to extradite Jews to the invaders. Many refugees therefore returned back, and the cases of salvation were isolated against the backdrop of the almost complete death of the Jews of the region ^{[1] [2] [19]} .

Olga and Anna Corago from Gorodok for the salvation of Alpatova (Turnyanskaya) Galina were awarded the honorary title “ Righteous Among the Nations ” from the Israeli memorial institute “ Yad Vashem ” “ as a sign of the deepest gratitude for the help provided to the Jewish people during the Second World War ” ^{[3] [20]} .

Alexei Ananievich Prokofiev and his daughter Valentina Alekseevna Prokofieva (Glushneva) rescued the Jewish girl Sora Shofman ^{[3] [6] [21]} .

Dunya Skryaga and her daughter Tamara saved Alta Kozhevnikova and her husband, and when they were in the ghetto, they supported them to the last. The woman who occupied the Kozhevnikovs' house reported this to the police. Dunya Skryag was seized and tortured, after which she soon died, and her daughter was behind her. The son of the killed Kozhevnikovs, Reuben Zakharovich, came from the front and tried to shoot the one that gave out the rescuers of his parents, but they prevented him ^[22] .

Family of Uversky P.M. helped to save Galina Bukhbinder. Escaped from the ghetto and escaped 14-year-old Peysakh Shmuylovich. Maria Osipovna Polkhlebova saved Galya - the small daughter of the teacher Berta Evseevna Berman (Ermoshenko). Ida Dobromyslova miraculously escaped from the convoy of Jews who were led to kill on the Vorobyovy Gory, and then Nadezhda Fedorovna Zagnetova and Zdeseva AI helped her to survive. I. Semyon Dobromyslov also managed to get out of the doomed people column and survived thanks to the help of the Sivakov family ^[23] .

The names of some executioners, organizers of the killings and their minions remained known.

The mayor of Gorodok was Uversky, and after him - Lenchenko P. R. ^[24]

The head of the Gorodok police was Mordik Anatoly Grigoryevich, who was caught in 1959, brought to Gorodok, was tried and sentenced to death there ^{[25] [12]} . His active assistants were police officers Filatov, Krasnenko, Rulev and others ^[12] .

Nina Ivanova, whose daughter got a job in the German commandant’s office, actively sought out and issued hiding Jews ^[3] .

The daughter of the chief physician of the district, Inna Bakshtaev, M. Vozhik, who became the principal of the school under the Germans, Chirvinskaya Galina, actively helped the Germans and policemen ^[26] .

The names of more than 400 Jews killed in Gorodok during August-October 1941, but there were more deaths, were found ^[27] .

After the war, nearly 400 Jews returned to Gorodok, and Aron Yakovlevich Usvyakov became the unspoken leader of the Jewish community. A minyan was gathering in Gorodok, matzah was baked, there was a shoikhet ^[9] .

From the very first days after returning from the war, relatives of the victims began to search for the exact place of executions in Berezovka in order to erect a monument there. They began to dig and quickly stumbled upon the bodies of the dead - about 1.5 kilometers from the highway Petersburg - Odessa. Money was collected, and the surviving Jews of Gorodok erected a monument in Berezovka in the second half of the 1960s ^{[2] [3] [9]} .

In the 1970s, they began to erect a new monument in Berezovka. A. B. Budman supervised everything, and the chairman of the district executive committee P. P. Shersheny allocated funds and workers. In the summer of 1983, a new monument was unveiled. The monument is a column resembling a chimney or a jamb of a house where, in a rectangle-window, an old Jewess is mourning her children. Next and separately - the second part of the composition in the form of a truncated pyramid resembling a tombstone. At the opening of the monument was attended by representatives of the city authorities, who, contrary to official guidelines, did much to create a memorial to the victims of the Jewish genocide ^{[2] [3] [9]} .

During the years of Perestroika, vandals stole a metal tablet from the monument in Berezovka with an inscription agreed upon in the propaganda department of the party’s district committee: “To Soviet citizens of Gorodok who was shot by Nazi invaders in 1941.” It was replaced with a concrete slab with the words: “Jews are victims of fascism” ^{[2] [3] [9]} .

In the mid-seventies, a group of people gathered and decided to protect and tidy up the places of mass executions during the Holocaust . The group was led by Aron Yakovlevich Usvyatsov. Also announced a fundraiser. Thanks to these efforts, on the Sparrow Hills on the forest road, on the way to the monument, there are two concrete pillars with a metal arch, on which six-pointed stars are located. This construction was done by Zyama Gelfand and Israel Nordstein. Next is a monument made of black granite, erected in the early 1980s, with embossed words about "citizens of the Soviet Union, shot in August 1941" without mentioning the Jews. At this place, women, old people and children were killed - men were dealt with even before the creation of the ghetto. The date on the monument is inaccurate - the execution of Jews on the Sparrow Hills was not in August, but on October 13, 1941. Near the mass grave is a shooting moat. In the 1990s, they decided not to change the inscription, preserving it as a historical fact, and the monument was registered and entered in the official register. The district executive committee landscaped the area around the monument, put up a new fence and the star of David was added to its ornament ^{[2] [3] [9]} .

The folk museum of military glory of secondary school No. 1 of Gorodok stores materials about the Righteous of the World of the Gorodok district ^[6] .

• N.A. Burunova, G.K. Kisyalyo i insh. (redcal.); S. I. Sadoskaya. (way.). “Memory. Garadotsky Ryan. " Gistoryka-documentary chronicle of garadoў and raѐnaў Belarus .. - Mn. : "Belarus", 2004. - 894 p. - ISBN 985-01-0546-1 . (belor.)
• 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 .
• L. Smilovitsky , "The Holocaust of Jews in Belarus, 1941-1944.", Tel Aviv, 2000
• National Archives of the Republic of Belarus (NARB). - fund 845, inventory 1, file 7 (5?), Sheet 18; fund 861, inventory 1, file 4, sheet 45;
• State Archive of the Russian Federation (GARF). - fund 7021, inventory 84, file 5, sheets 3, 5-6;
• State Archive of the Vitebsk Region (GAVO), - fund 2926, inventory 3, file S. 1029

• Yitzhak Arad . The extermination of the Jews of the USSR during the years of German occupation (1941-1944). Compilation of documents and materials, Jerusalem, Yad Vashem Publishing House , 1991, ISBN 9653080105
• Chernoglazova R. A., Kheer H. The tragedy of the Jews of Belarus in 1941-1944: a collection of materials and documents. - Ed. 2nd, rev. and more .. - Mn. : E. S. Halperin, 1997 .-- 398 p. - 1000 copies. - ISBN 985627902X .

• Untidy place of mass destruction
• V. Gapeenko. Long road to your

• Holocaust in Gorodok district