The ghetto in Prozoroki (summer 1941 - December 6, 1941) is a Jewish ghetto , the place of forced resettlement of Jews in the village of Prozoroki, Glubokoe district, Vitebsk region and nearby settlements during the persecution and extermination of Jews during the occupation of Belarus by Nazi Germany during the Second World War .
| Ghettos in the Prophets | |
|---|---|
 Prophets on the list of Jewish communities destroyed during the Holocaust in the Valley of Destroyed Communities at the Yad Vashem Museum | |
| Type of | open |
| Location | The prophets Glubokoe district Vitebsk region |
| Period of existence | summer 1941 - December 6, 1941 |
| Death toll | 420 |
Content
The Occupation of the Prophets and the Establishment of the Ghetto
Before the war, more than 40 Jewish families lived in the Prophets [1] [2] .
On July 3, 1941, the Prophets were captured by German troops , and the occupation lasted 3 years - until June 30, 1944 [2] [3] [4] .
Of the local collaborators, the Germans chose Traykovsky and set him up as a village (village head) [2] [5] .
The Nazis, implementing the Nazi program of extermination of Jews , organized a ghetto in the town. Several other families who worked on the railroad were brought to the ghetto, all 6 Jewish families from Yazno - a place between Disna and Prozoroki, and later - all Jews from Zyabok [1] [2] .
Ghetto Conditions
Jews were left to live in their homes [2] .
| From the recollections of the witness [2] ]: “... The next day we learned that the two sisters, Rosa and Rita Yakerson, were on a visit the other day and are still alive. In the evening from the commandant’s office they were taken to execution. These were the beauties known throughout the district. They walked hand in hand, calmly, carefully concealing fear. The Germans smoked, and the policeman forced the girls to undress. ... Put on the very edge facing the pit. When two Germans with rifles approached them, they turned to them. Feldfebel and the policeman yelled, ordered to turn to the pit, but the girls held hands and remained motionless. They looked soldiers in the eye. Two beautiful girls, barefoot, in short shirts, with loose black hair and big sad eyes. Before the salvo, I involuntarily closed my eyes, and opened - the girls were already lying in the pit with disfigured scary faces. They probably fired explosive bullets. The Germans were calmly talking about something, and the policeman was collecting clothes and shoes from the dead. ” |
Jews were robbed daily and threatened to surrender their jewels daily. This continued until the prisoners found an opportunity to pay off, and as soon as it turned out that there was no more gold, the invaders decided to kill everyone [4] .
Ghetto Destruction
The punitive detachment in Prozoroki arrived from Glubokoe. On December 5, all the Jews of Prozorok, Zagatya, Zyabok - in total more than 350 people - were driven to the Prozorok school without belongings and without food. The Germans ordered the locals to close the shutters in the houses, curtain the windows tightly and not leave the houses [2] [5] .
On the same day, several dozen peasants were driven from nearby villages who were ordered to dig a huge hole on the outskirts of the forest, a kilometer from Prozorok, next to the highway [4] .
On the morning of December 6, 1941, policemen entered Jewish houses and ordered all remaining Jews to immediately appear at school without belongings. Gentiles were ordered to close in their homes [2] [5] .
At 11 a.m., in a 20-degree frost, the Jews were taken to execution. A large group of women and children was led by a German convoy. When the convoy of doomed people began to turn into the street that led to the church, shots and desperate cries were heard from the side of the Marusinsky forest [2] [5] .
At the same time, another convoy of women and children was leading along the street. Men and adolescents were taken out of school by a field, bypassing a place under a reinforced convoy, and killed first in the same pit [2] [5] .
On December 6, 1941, at 2 pm, 380 Jews were killed in Prozoroki from the town itself and from nearby villages - mainly women, old people and children. Germans and police escorted people in families of 4-5 people each. The path passed from the school, near the church turned onto a country road leading to the forest. There, people were stripped to their underwear (naked [1] ), their shoes were removed and they were forced to jump into the pit, where they killed from rifles. Some could not stand on their feet, fell - they were killed on the ground and dumped in a pit. Those killed in the pit were covered with sand, and new victims fell upstairs. Children were thrown into the pit alive [2] [3] [4] [5] .
Many of the young guys tried to escape into the forest, taking advantage of the turmoil during the "action" (the Nazis called the massacres organized by them), but they were caught up on horses, beaten with whips, returned to the pit and killed. 13-year-old Mulka Polyachek ran away, they shot at him, but didn’t hit him, and then the young policeman caught up with him from the cordon and dragged him to the pit. 18-year-old Tevka Shapiro escaped and managed to escape, but two policemen chased after him on a sleigh, caught 10 kilometers later, brought back and killed - the last one that day. They killed mostly drunken policemen, and the Germans only watched. Already in the dark, the potholes were brought in by local men, and the “Bobby” (as the people scornfully called the policemen [6] [7] ) collected the shoes and clothes of the dead and went to school to share these things with each other [2] [4] [5 ] .
| From the recollections of the witness [2] [5] ]: “... Four people failed. They undressed, took off their shoes and stood on the edge of the pit, their backs to the German soldiers. A command followed, and a volley was heard. Before our eyes, women, children and the elderly were killed. The executioners changed after several salvos. The next four were brought to the pit - a mother and three children. They undressed silently, but when the policeman showed his mother a place near the pit, the children clasped her hands on all sides, clung to her shirt and pressed themselves against her. The police, swearing, began to take them away. But the children seemed to be attached to the mother's body. Then they began to beat them with butts. Then dragged dragged to the pit. The Germans killed them, lying in the snow, with headshots. ” |
Cases of Salvation
The son of the owner of the mill from Zyabok Itman Borakh and the son of the owner of the leather workshop Hodas Burka managed to escape to the partisans. They fought in the partisan detachment "Terrible" brigade them. V.M. Korotkina. In one of the battles, Khodas died, and Itman remained alive and after the war he left for America [4] .
For another unknown reason, two pro-Prophet Jews - Hoffmann and Yudka (surname not preserved) - were sent to the Glubokoe ghetto , where they participated in the uprising in the summer of 1943, escaped and fought in partisans. Hoffmann died, and Yudka survived [2] [5] .
Resistance
From the very beginning of the war, Jewish families hid on islands in local swamps. They lived in dugouts and were armed. Many of the Jews who escaped from the ghetto made their way through the swamp to this island. In 1943, after about seventy partisans from the 4th Belorussian partisan brigade, after heavy fighting with the Germans, they ended up in these places and connected with the Jews in the swamp. So the 6th partisan detachment of the 4th Belarusian partisan brigade was created. This detachment spoke almost entirely in Yiddish , and on Saturday a partisan minyan gathered there [1] .
Memory
On the mass grave of the victims of the Jewish genocide near the Polotsk-Glubokoe highway, a few hundred meters from Prozorok, near the village of Marusino, a monument was erected after the war. In the early 2000s, a new monument was erected on this site - a boulder with the inscription “ On December 6, 1941, the Nazis shot 420 Jews: men and women, children and the elderly - residents of the towns of Prozoroki and Zyabki. Bright memory to them! This must not be forgotten! " [2] [3] .
Sources
- ↑ 1 2 3 4 Memoirs of Sosnovik Joseph Simkhovich Archival copy of October 30, 2016 on the Wayback Machine
- ↑ 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 A. Shulman. A Place in the Center of Europe Archival Copy of August 19, 2014 on Wayback Machine
- ↑ 1 2 3 Prophets - an article from the Russian Jewish Encyclopedia
- ↑ 1 2 3 4 5 6 The Black Days of the Prophets , Belarus Today , January 31, 2001
- ↑ 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Black days of the Prophets
- ↑ "Memory. Asipovitsky district ”/ structure: P. S. Kachanovich, V. U. Xypcik ; redkal .: G.K. Kisyalyou, P.S. Kachanovich i insh. - Minsk: BelTA, 2002 ISBN 985-6302-36-6 (Belarusian)
- ↑ A. Adamovich , J. Bryl , V. Kolesnik . “I’m driven to know ...” / Minsk: Mastatsky Literature, 1975
Literature
- Prophets - an article from the Russian Jewish Encyclopedia ;
- Gulp. P.N. “Black Saturday in the Prophets” , the newspaper Belarus Today , November 29, 2016
Further reading
- Smilovitsky L. L. The catastrophe of the Jews in Belarus, 1941-1944 . - Tel Aviv: Matthew Black Library, 2000 .-- 432 p. - ISBN 965-7094-24-0 .
- 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 .
See also
- Ghetto in Glubokoe District