Holocaust in Berezovsky district (Brest region)

The Berezovsky district was completely occupied by German troops in June 1941. The Nazis included the Beryozovsky district in the territory administratively assigned to the Reich Commissariat of Ukraine in the Volyn-Podolia General District. All power in the area belonged to the Nazi military occupation administration, acting through the field and local commandant’s offices created by the Wehrmacht . In all large villages of the district, district (volost) councils and police garrisons from Belarusian collaborators were created .

To carry out the policy of genocide and carry out punitive operations, immediately after the troops, the punitive units of the SS troops, Einsatzgruppe , Sonderkommando , secret field police (SPF), security and SD police, gendarmerie and the Gestapo arrived in the area.

Simultaneously with the occupation, the Nazis and their henchmen began the mass extermination of Jews. “Actions” (such as the euphemism by the Nazis called the massacres organized by them) were repeated many times in many places. In those settlements where Jews were not killed immediately, they were kept in ghetto conditions until they were completely destroyed.

Until the very end - until the ghetto was completely eliminated - Jews were used in heavy and dirty forced labor, from which many prisoners died from excessive loads in the conditions of constant hunger and lack of medical care.

During the occupation, almost all the Jews of the Berezovsky district were killed. The Germans and policemen even hunted for every single Jew, despite the disproportionate effort and time spent on this. For example, when a Jewish teenage girl was spotted in 1942 in the village of Lisichitsy ( Beloozersky Village Council ), a group of police officers led by I. Yuzefovich (later the deputy commandant of the Peskovsky volost police) was sent to capture her. The child was caught, brought to Sands, and from there, under the escort, they were transported to the ghetto in Birch ^[3] . Near the village of Peshki, local policemen tracked down and eventually killed a Jewish family of 8 people who fled from the Drogichin ghetto . Their remains were found and in 2012 they were reburied at the Jewish cemetery in the village of Motykaly ^{[4] [5]} .

The most massacres of Jews took place:

• on Bronnaya Gora - by November 1942, more than 50,000 people were killed near the Bronnaya Gora, the vast majority of Jews ^[6] .
• in the Berezovsky ghetto - more than 8,000 Jews;
• near the village of Smolyarka ( Sokolovsky Village Council ) - more than 3,000 Jews ^[7] .

The occupying authorities, on pain of death, forbade Jews to take off their yellow armor or six-pointed stars (identification marks on their outer clothing), leave the ghetto without special permission, change their place of residence and apartment inside the ghetto, walk on sidewalks, use public transport, be in parks and public places to attend schools ^[8] .

The Germans, implementing the Hitler program for the extermination of Jews , created 3 ghettos in the district.

• In two ghettos in the city of Birch (July 1941 - October 15, 1942) more than 8,000 Jews were killed on the spot or taken out and killed in other places.
• In the ghetto in the village of Malech (summer 1941 - October 1941) there were 750 Jews who were driven and killed in the ghetto in Birch.

In the Berezovsky district, 3 people were awarded the honorary title “The Righteous Among the Nations ” from the Israeli memorial institute “ Yad Vashem ” “ as a sign of deepest gratitude for the help provided to the Jewish people during the Second World War ”: Senkevichi Peter, Maria and Eugene - for saving Epelbaum Adam in the village of Yasevichi ^[9] .

At one of the places of mass killings of the inhabitants of Birch there is an obelisk in memory of the dead ^[10] .

Two monuments ^{[11] [12] [13]} and a memorial plaque ^{[14] were} erected on Bronnaya Gora.

A memorial to the victims of the Holocaust was opened in the tract Smolyarka ^[15] .

A monument has been erected in Malechi to all civilians in the village (including Jews) who were killed by the Nazis during the occupation (in memory of the victims of the Jewish genocide, a separate plaque was installed near the monument).

Incomplete lists of murdered Jews in the region have been published.

• 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.
• Birch - an article from the Russian Jewish Encyclopedia ;
• State Archive of the Russian Federation (GARF). - fund 7021, inventory 83, file 9, sheets 144-145;

• 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 .

• Monuments to the victims of the Holocaust in Belarus