Ghetto in Germanovichi

Before the war, 50 Jewish families lived in Germanovichi - about 350 people ^[1] .

After the occupation, the Germans, implementing the Hitler program for the extermination of Jews , organized a ghetto in the town, highlighting some of the worst houses on the edge of the village and driving all the Jews there. Local policemen helped the invaders identify Jews, because the Germans themselves did not know which of the inhabitants was Jewish ^{[1] [2]} .

Some Jews from the Germanovichi and Germanovichi village council were sent to the Sharkovshchina ghetto :

"Act on the crimes of Nazi invaders on the territory of the Germanovichi village council:" In September 1941, by order of the Glubokoe Gebitsomissar, 60 Jewish families, for a total of 270 people, were driven into Sharkovshchina, who, after all torment and bullying in May of 1942 among other Jews in the ghetto were brutally exterminated "

- “Memory. Sharkovshchinsky district ”, Minsk, BelTA, 2004, p. 225

Most of the remaining Jews were hiding in order not to catch the eye of the invaders and collaborators . But the rabbi and part of the Jews continued to openly go to the synagogue. They were detained by the Germans in order to mock and photograph. To these Jews, the Germans laughed out their paisers and beards or burned them with lighters ^[1] .

In the first half of August 1941 in Germanovichi, a German officer ordered all the inhabitants of the town to gather in the market and announced that within two hours all Jewish men, if they wanted to save the lives of their wives and children, should destroy the synagogue near the market, and books and put cult objects from the synagogue on the market square and set fire to their own hands. Saving the lives of relatives, the Jews complied with the order ^[1] .

Another “action” (the Nazis called the massacres organized by them) was such a euphemism occurred in the autumn of 1941. Drunk German soldiers smashed the house of the Jewish family of Rumanishek with a telephone pole for fun. The next day, the same Germans arrived on Luzhetskaya Street and demanded that the Jews give them all their fur coats, sheepskin coats and short fur coats, and after the robbery they beat Jewish men in front of their wives and children, begging sadists to stop bullying. In response to these requests, the Germans forced the Jews to crawl along the street on all fours and there was road dust, and at that time they themselves beat and kicked them. Then the Germans ordered their victims to lie under the wheels of the trailer, and the driver began to run into them. Then half-dead people were loaded into a trailer, taken away to Luzhkov and killed ^[1] .

The ghetto in Germanovichi was not fenced ^[2] .

The prisoners were forced to live in cramped conditions, several families in a room or in a barn ^[2] .

In the summer of 1942, the ghettos in Germanovichi were destroyed ^{[3] [4]} , and the surviving Jews were transferred to the ghetto of the Sharkov region ^[2] .

In July 1942, the Gebitsomissar issued an order to resettle the surviving Jews from Germanovichi, Drui, Miior, Sharkovshchina, Braslav and other 35 cities and towns in the Glubokoe Ghetto, assuring that from now on the Jews should not be afraid, because they would no longer be killed and guarantee life. The Nazi lies worked, and part of the Jews hiding in the district, dying of hunger, disease and persecution, gathered in the Glubokoe ghetto, where they were killed ^{[5] [6]} .

The list of Jews killed in Germanovichi, compiled in April 1945 by the ChGK , includes 270 people. The local historian Raychenok Ada Elyevna over the years of searching has compiled a more complete list of victims of the Jewish genocide in the village - 293 people ^[1] .

Edlya Milner escaped during the destruction of the ghetto, was saved by the family of Ivanov Efrem Savelyevich, and subsequently fought in partisans ^[1] .

Yakov Sosnovik, the last Jewish child born in Germanovichi on August 11, 1941, was rescued by Maria Frantsevna Levanovich (nee Kazachyonok), who in 1996 was awarded the honorary title “ Righteous Among the Nations ” from the Israeli memorial institute “ Yad Vashem ” “ as a sign of the deepest gratitude for the assistance provided to the Jewish people during the Second World War ” ^{[1] [7] [8] [9]} .

Police officer Vacek Rubnikovich personally shot 18-year-old David, the son of a cripple Zelda Reznik, and a 10-year-old boy, the son of a tailor ^[1] .

In the early post-war years, Jews found those who had done harm to their families, and arranged for lynching. For example, a farmer was killed by Jews, who killed a 7-year-old boy who escaped from the crowd of German Jews who were taken to be shot and asked to hide him ^[1] .

Incomplete lists of Jews killed by the Nazis and policemen in the Germanovichi Village Council were published ^[10] .

• L. M. Drabovich, G.F. Volakh i insh. (redcal.); L. M. Labacheачskaya. (way.). “Memory. Sharkaўshchynsky rayan. " Gistoryka-documentary chronicle of garadoў and raѐnaў Belarus .. - Mn. : "BELTA", 2004. - 512 p. - ISBN 985-6302-63-3 . (belor.)
• M. Ryvkin, A. Shulman. “Relative to the war”, Vitebsk, 1997, p. 21-24

• Holocaust in Sharkovshchinsky district