The Holocaust in Byelorussia

Last updated

The Holocaust in Belarus is the term that refers to the systematic discrimination and extermination of Jews living in the former Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic which was occupied by Nazi Germany after August 1941 during World War II. American historian Lucy Dawidowicz, author of The War Against the Jews estimated that 66% of the Jews residing in Byelorussian SSR died in the Holocaust, out of 375,000 Jews in Byelorussia prior to World War II according to Soviet data. By comparison, in the Baltic states about 90% of Jews were killed in the same period. [1]

Contents

Background

The Holocaust perpetrated by the Third Reich in the territory of Byelorussia began in the summer of 1941, during Operation Barbarossa, the invasion of the Soviet Union. [2] [3] Minsk was bombed and taken over by the Wehrmacht on 28 June 1941. [4] In Hitler's view, Operation Barbarossa was Germany's war against "Jewish Bolshevism". [5] On 3 July 1941, during the first "selection" in Minsk 2,000 Jewish members of the intelligentsia were marched off to a forest and massacred. [4] The atrocities committed beyond the German–Soviet frontier were summarized by Einsatzgruppen for both sides of the prewar border between BSSR and Poland. [6] The Nazis made Minsk the administrative centre of Reichskomissariat Ostland . As of 15 July 1941 all Jews were ordered to wear a yellow badge on their outer garments under penalty of death, and on 20 July 1941 the creation of the Minsk Ghetto was pronounced. [4] Within two years, it became the largest ghetto in German-occupied Soviet Union, [7] with over 100,000 Jews. [4]

Jewish prisoners of the Minsk Ghetto clearing snow at the station, February 1942 Bundesarchiv Bild 183-B07892, Minsk, Juden beim Schneeraumen auf Bahnhof.jpg
Jewish prisoners of the Minsk Ghetto clearing snow at the station, February 1942

The southern part of the modern-day Belarus was annexed to the newly formed Reichskommissariat Ukraine on 17 July 1941 including the easternmost Gomel Region of the Russian SFSR, and several others. [8] They became part of the Shitomir Generalbezirk centred around Zhytomyr. The Germans determined the identities of the Jews either through registration, or by issuing decrees. The Jews were separated from the general population and confined to makeshift ghettos. Because the Soviet leadership fled from Minsk without ordering evacuation, most Jewish inhabitants have been captured. [8] [9] There were 100,000 prisoners held in the Minsk Ghetto, in Bobruisk 25,000, in Vitebsk 20,000, in Mogilev 12,000, in Gomel over 10,000, in Slutsk 10,000, in Borisov 8,000, and in Polotsk 8,000. [10] In the Gomel Region alone, twenty ghettos were established in which no less than 21,000 people were imprisoned. [8]

Holocaust in Reichskommissariat Ostland, which included Byelorussia WW2-Holocaust-ROstland big legend.PNG
Holocaust in Reichskommissariat Ostland , which included Byelorussia

In November 1941 the Nazis rounded up 12,000 Jews in the Minsk Ghetto to make room for the 25,000 foreign Jews slated for expulsion from Germany, Austria and the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia. [4] On the morning of 7 November 1941 the first group of prisoners were formed into columns and ordered to march singing revolutionary songs. People were forced to smile for the cameras. Once beyond Minsk, 6,624 Jews were taken by lorries to the nearby village of Tuchinka (Tuchinki) and shot by members of Einsatzgruppe A. [11] The next group of over 5,000 Jews followed them to Tuchinka on 20 November 1941. [12]

Holocaust by bullets

Resulting from the Soviet 1939 annexation of Polish territory comprising the Soviet Western Belorussia, [13] the Jewish population of BSSR nearly tripled. [14] In June 1941, at the beginning of Operation Barbarossa, there were 670,000 Jews on the Polish side and 405,000 Jews on the Soviet side of present-day Belarus. [14] On 8 July 1941, Reinhard Heydrich, head of the Reich Security Main Office, gave the order for all male Jews in the occupied territory – between the ages of 15 and 45 – to be shot on sight as Soviet partisans. By August, the victims targeted in the shootings included women, children, and the elderly. [15] The German Order Police battalions as well as the Einsatzgruppen carried out the first wave of killings. [16]

In the Holocaust by bullets, no less than 800,000 Jews perished in the territory of modern-day Belarus. [14] Most of them were shot by Einsatzgruppen , Sicherheitsdienst and Order Police battalions aided by Schutzmannschaften . [14] Notably, when the bulk of the Jewish communities were annihilated in first major killing spree, the number of Byelorussian collaborators was still considerably small, therefore the Schutzmannschaft in Byelorussia consisted in most part of Lithuanian, Ukrainian, and Latvian volunteers. [17] Historian Martin Gilbert wrote that the General-Commissar for Generalbezirk Weißruthenien , Wilhelm Kube, personally participated in the 2 March 1942 killings in the Minsk Ghetto. During the search of the ghetto area by the Nazi police, a group of children were seized and thrown into deep pit of sand covered with snow. "At that moment, several SS officers, among them Wilhelm Kube, arrived, whereupon Kube, immaculate in his uniform, threw handfuls of sweets to the shrieking children. All the children perished in the sand." [18]

Saving Jews

The Pit is a monument on the corner of Melnikayte and Zaslavskaya streets dedicated to the victims of the Holocaust in Minsk Belarus-Minsk-Memorial Pit-2.jpg
The Pit is a monument on the corner of Melnikayte and Zaslavskaya streets dedicated to the victims of the Holocaust in Minsk

As of 1 January 2017, the Yad Vashem in Israel recognized 641 Byelorussians as Righteous Among the Nations. [19] All of the awards were granted after the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Many of the distinguished individuals came from Minsk, and are already deceased. [20]

Postwar research

In the 1970s and 1980s historian and Soviet refusenik Daniel Romanovsky who later emigrated to Israel, interviewed over 100 witnesses, including Jews, Russians, and Byelorussians from the vicinity, recording their accounts of the "Holocaust by bullets". [21] [22] [23] [24] Research on the topic was difficult in the Soviet Union because of government restrictions. Nevertheless, based on his interviews Romanovsky concluded that the open-type ghettos in Byelorussian towns were the result of prior concentration of the entire Jewish communities in prescribed areas. No walls were required. [21] The collaboration with the Germans by most non-Jews was in part a result of attitudes developed under the Soviet rule; namely, the practice of conforming to a totalitarian state. Sometimes called Homo Sovieticus. [25] [26] [27]

See also

Related Research Articles

Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic Republic of the Soviet Union

The Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic, also commonly referred to in English as Byelorussia, was a federal unit of the Soviet Union (USSR). It existed between 1920 and 1922, and from 1922 to 1991 as one of fifteen constituent republics of the USSR, with its own legislation from 1990 to 1991. The republic was ruled by the Communist Party of Byelorussia and was also referred to as Soviet Byelorussia by a number of historians.

Reichskommissariat Ostland Belarus, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania as occupied by Germany during the Second World War

The Reichskommissariat Ostland (RKO) was established by Nazi Germany in 1941 during World War II. It became the civilian occupation regime in the Baltic states and the western part of the Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic. German planning documents initially referred to an equivalent Reichskommissariat Baltenland. The political organization for this territory – after an initial period of military administration before its establishment – involved a German civilian administration, nominally under the authority of the Reich Ministry for the Occupied Eastern Territories led by Nazi ideologist Alfred Rosenberg, but actually controlled by the Nazi official Hinrich Lohse, its appointed Reichskommissar.

Ghetto uprisings

The ghetto uprisings during World War II were a series of armed revolts against the regime of Nazi Germany between 1941 and 1943 in the newly established Jewish ghettos across Nazi-occupied Europe. Following the German and Soviet invasion of Poland in September 1939, Polish Jews were targeted from the outset. Within months inside occupied Poland, the Germans created hundreds of ghettos in which they forced the Jews to live. The new ghettos were part of the German official policy of removing Jews from public life with the aim of economic exploitation. The combination of excess numbers of inmates, unsanitary conditions and lack of food resulted in a high death rate among them. In most cities the Jewish underground resistance movements developed almost instantly, although ghettoization had severely limited their access to resources.

Maly Trostenets

Maly Trostenets is a village near Minsk in Belarus, formerly the Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic. During Nazi Germany's occupation of the area during World War II, the village became the location of a Nazi extermination site.

Lakhva town in Brest Region, Belarus

Lakhva is a small town in southern Belarus, with a population of approximately 2,100. Lakhva is considered to have been the location of one of the first, if not the first, Jewish ghetto uprisings of the Second World War.

German occupation of Byelorussia during World War II

The German occupation of Byelorussia, now known as Belarus, started with Nazi Germany's invasion of the Soviet Union on 22 June 1941 and ended in August 1944 with the Soviet Operation Bagration. The western parts of the Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic became part of the Reichskommissariat Ostland in 1941, but in 1943 the German authorities allowed local collaborators to set up a client state, the Belarusian Central Rada, that lasted until the Soviets liberated the region. During the occupation German actions led to about 1.6 million civilian deaths including 500,000 to 550,000 Jews in the Holocaust in Belarus.

Jewish partisans Anti-Nazi and anti-German fighting groups of Jews in World War II

Jewish partisans were fighters in irregular military groups participating in the Jewish resistance movement against Nazi Germany and its collaborators during World War II.

Skidzyelʹ Place in Grodno Region, Belarus

Skidzyelʹ is a town in the Grodno Region of Belarus located 31 kilometers from Grodno.

Dzyatlava Ghetto

The Dzyatlava Ghetto, Zdzięcioł Ghetto, or Zhetel Ghetto was a Nazi ghetto in the town of Dziatłava, Western Belarus during World War II. After several months of Nazi ad-hoc persecution that began after the launch of Operation Barbarossa, the invastion of the Soviet Union, the new German authorities officially created a ghetto for all local Jews on 22 February 1942. Prior to 1939, the town (Zdzięcioł) was part of Nowogródek Voivodeship of the Second Polish Republic.

Jewish ghettos in Europe Neighborhoods of European cities in which Jews were permitted to live

Jewish ghettos in Europe were neighbourhoods of European cities in which Jews were permitted to live. In addition to being confined to the ghettos, Jews were placed under strict regulations as well as restrictions in many European cities. The character of ghettos fluctuated over the centuries. In some cases, they comprised a Jewish quarter, the area of a city traditionally inhabited by Jews. In many instances, ghettos were places of terrible poverty and during periods of population growth, ghettos had narrow streets and small, crowded houses. Residents had their own justice system. Around the ghetto stood walls that, during pogroms, were closed from inside to protect the community, but from the outside during Christmas, Pesach, and Easter Week to prevent the Jews from leaving at those times.

The anti-Jewish violence in Central and Eastern Europe following the retreat of Nazi German occupational forces and the arrival of the Soviet Red Army – during the latter stages of World War II – was linked in part to postwar anarchy and economic chaos exacerbated by the Stalinist policies imposed across the territories of expanded Soviet republics and new satellite countries. The anti-semitic attacks had become frequent in Soviet towns ravaged by war; at the marketplaces, in depleted stores, in schools, and even at state enterprises. Protest letters were sent to Moscow from numerous Russian, Ukrainian and Belarusian towns by the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee involved in documenting the Holocaust.

Byelorussian Auxiliary Police

The Byelorussian Auxiliary Police was a collaborationist paramilitary force established in July 1941. Staffed by local inhabitants from German-occupied Byelorussia, it had similar functions to those of the German Ordnungspolizei in other occupied territories.

Minsk Ghetto

The Minsk Ghetto was created soon after the German invasion of the Soviet Union. It was one of the largest in Belorussian SSR, and the largest in the German-occupied territory of the Soviet Union. It housed close to 100,000 Jews, most of whom perished in The Holocaust.

Krupki City in Minsk Region

Krupki is a small city in Krupki Raion, Minsk Region, Belarus.

Grodno Ghetto

The Grodno Ghetto was a Nazi ghetto established in November 1941 by Nazi Germany in the city of Grodno for the purpose of persecution and exploitation of Jews in Western Belarus.

Nikolay Yakovlevich Kiselyov, also commonly transliterated from the Russian language as Nikolai Kiselev, was a Soviet Red Army soldier, prisoner of war, and partisan leader during World War II.

Bronna Góra Mass killing site in Belarus

Bronna Góra is the name of a secluded area in present-day Belarus where mass killings of Polish Jews were carried out by Nazi Germany during World War II. The location was part of the eastern half of occupied Poland, which had been invaded by the Soviet Union in 1939 in agreement with Germany, and two years later captured by the Wehrmacht in Operation Barbarossa. It is estimated that from May 1942 until November of that year, during the most deadly phase of the Holocaust in Poland, some 50,000 Jews were murdered at Bronna Góra forest in death pits. The victims were transported there in Holocaust trains from Nazi ghettos, including from the Brześć Ghetto and the Pińsk Ghetto, and from the ghettos in the surrounding area, as well as from Reichskommissariat Ostland.

Daniel Romanovsky is an Israeli historian and researcher who has contributed to the study of the Holocaust in the Soviet Union under German occupation in World War II. Romanovsky was a Soviet refusenik politically active since the 1970s. Private seminars on the history of the Jews were held in his Leningrad apartment in the 1980s. Research on the topic was difficult in the Soviet Union because of government restrictions. In the 1970s and 1980s Romanovsky interviewed over 100 witnesses to the Holocaust, including Jews, Russians, and Belarusians, recording and cataloguing their accounts of the Final Solution.

Tarnopol Ghetto Nazi German concentration camp in occupied Poland during World War II

The Tarnopol Ghetto was a Jewish World War II ghetto established in 1941 by the Schutzstaffel (SS) in the prewar Polish city of Tarnopol.

Słonim Ghetto Nazi ghetto in occupied Belarus

The Słonim Ghetto was a Nazi ghetto established in 1941 by the SS in Slonim, Western Belarus during World War II. Prior to 1939, the town (Słonim) was part of the Second Polish Republic. The town was captured in late June 1941 by the Wehrmacht in the early stages of Operation Barbarossa. Anti-Jewish measures were promptly put into place, and a barb-wire surrounded ghetto had been created by 12 July. The killings of Jews by mobile extermination squads began almost immediately. Mass killings took place in July and November. The survivors were used as slave labor. After each killing, significant looting by the Nazis occurred. A Judenrat was established to pay a large ransom; after paying out 2 million roubles of gold, its members were then executed. In March 1942, ghettos in the surrounding areas were merged into the Słonim ghetto.

References

  1. ↑ Dawidowicz, Lucy (1986). The War Against the Jews. Bantam. pp. 403, 485. ISBN   9781453203064 – via Google Books.
  2. ↑ Gross, Jan Tomasz (2003) [2002]. Revolution from Abroad. Princeton. p. 396. ISBN   0-691-09603-1 – via Google Books.
  3. ↑ George Sanford (2005). Katyn and the Soviet Massacre of 1940: Truth, Justice and Memory (Google Books). pp. 20–24. ISBN   9780415338738.
  4. 1 2 3 4 5 ARC (26 June 2006). "Minsk Ghetto". Hilberg 2003, Gilbert 1986, Ehrenburg 1981, Arad 1987, Gutman 1990, Klee 1991, et al. Aktion Reinhard Camps. Archived from the original on 3 September 2011 – via Internet Archive.
  5. ↑ Leonid Rein (2013). The Kings And The Pawns: Collaboration in Byelorussia during World War II. Berghahn Books. p. 85. ISBN   978-1782380481.
  6. ↑ Hilberg, Raul (2003). The Destruction of the European Jews. Yale University Press. pp. 1313–1316. ISBN   0300095929.
  7. ↑ Donald L. Niewyk, Francis R. Nicosia (2000). The Columbia Guide to the Holocaust. The Minsk Ghetto. Columbia University Press. pp. 205, 156–165, 205–208. ISBN   0231505906.CS1 maint: uses authors parameter (link)
  8. 1 2 3 Dr. Leonid Smilovitsky (September 2005). Fran Bock (ed.). "Ghettos in the Gomel Region: Commonalities and Unique Features, 1941-42". Letter from Ilya Goberman in Kiriat Yam (Israel), September 17, 2000. Belarus SIG, Online Newsletter No. 11/2005. Note 16: Archive of the author; Note 17: M. Dean, Collaboration in the Holocaust.
  9. ↑ Daniel Romanovsky. Zvi Gitelman (ed.). "Soviet Jews under the Nazi Occupation (Data on North-Eastern Byelorussia and Northern Russia)" (PDF). History, Politics and Memory: The Holocaust and Its Contemporary Consequences in the Former USSR. The National Council for Soviet and East European Research. p. 25 (30 / 39 in PDF).
  10. ↑ "Gosudarstvenny arkhiv Rossiiskoy Federatsii (GARF): F. 8114, Op. 1, D. 965, L. 99" Государственный архив Российской Федерации (ГАРФ): Ф. 8114. Оп. 1. Д. 965. Л. 99 [State Archive of the Russian Federation](PDF). 110, 119 / 448 in PDF – via direct download, 3.55 MB from Iz istorii evreiskoi kultury. Геннадий Винница (Нагария), »Нацистская политика изоляции евреев и создание системы гетто на территории Восточной Белоруссии«
  11. ↑ Jewish Virtual Library. "Operational Situation Report no. 140". Activities of Einsatzgruppe A. The Chief of the Security Police and the Security Service, Berlin, December 1, 1941; OSR #140.
  12. ↑ Snyder, Timothy (2011) [2010]. Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin. Vintage, Basic Books. pp. 226–227. ISBN   978-0465002399.
  13. ↑ Moorhouse, Roger (2014). The Devils' Alliance: Hitler's Pact with Stalin, 1939-1941. Basic Books. pp. 28, 176. ISBN   978-0465054923.
  14. 1 2 3 4 Per Anders Rudling (2013). John-Paul Himka; Joanna Beata Michlic (eds.). Invisible Genocide. The Holocaust in Belarus. Bringing the Dark Past to Light. University of Nebraska Press. pp. 60–62. ISBN   978-0803246478.
  15. ↑ Longerich, Peter (2010). Holocaust: The Nazi Persecution and Murder of the Jews. Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press. p. 198. ISBN   978-0-19-280436-5.
  16. ↑ Martin Dean (2003). "The Ghetto 'Liquidations'". Collaboration in the Holocaust: Crimes of the Local Police in Belorussia and Ukraine, 1941–44. Palgrave Macmillan. pp. 18, 22, 78, 93. ISBN   1403963711 – via Goggle Books.
  17. ↑ Rudling (2013). Invisible Genocide. p. 61. ISBN   978-0803246478.
  18. ↑ Gilbert, Martin (1986). The Holocaust: the Jewish tragedy. Fontana/Collins. p. 296. ISBN   9780002163057. OCLC   15223149.
  19. ↑ Yad Vashem (2017). "Names and Numbers of Righteous Among the Nations - per Country & Ethnic Origin, as of January 1, 2017". The World Holocaust Remembrance Center.
  20. ↑ Yad Vashem. "Righteous Among the Nations Honored by Yad Vashem by 1 January 2017. Country: Belarus" (PDF). The World Holocaust Remembrance Centre. Righteous among the nations Department – via direct download.See:Yad Vashem (2011). "Rescue Story". Valentin and Yelena Tikhanovich, Bronislava Bobrovich, as well as Boris Matyukov recognized as Righteous Among the Nations on July 14, 2011, for rescuing Sonya Glazkova Gildengersh in Minsk (USSR).
  21. 1 2 Martin Dean (2005). Jonathan Petropoulos; John Roth (eds.). Gray Zones: Ambiguity and Compromise in the Holocaust and its Aftermath. Life and Death in the Ghettos. Berghahn Books. p. 209. ISBN   9781845453022.
  22. ↑ Rudling (2013). The Invisible Genocide. [in:] Bringing the Dark Past to Light. pp. 74, 78. ISBN   978-0803246478. Between 1941 and 1945, Belarusians in the various German collaborationist formations numbered between 50,000 and 70,000 men.
  23. ↑
  24. ↑ Interview
  25. ↑ The Kings And The Pawns: Collaboration in Byelorussia during World War II, Leonid Rein, Berghahn Books, 15 October 2013, pages 264-265, 285
  26. ↑ Leonid Rein (2013). The Kings And The Pawns. pp. 264–265, 285. ISBN   9781782380481.CS1 maint: uses authors parameter (link)
  27. ↑ Barbara Epstein (2008). The Minsk Ghetto 1941-1943: Jewish Resistance and Soviet Internationalism. University of California Press. p. 295. ISBN   9780520931336. Notes.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.