Ghetto during World War II. Holocaust in Russia. Ghettos and their types. General plan of the ghetto

BOOK OF TIMES AND EVENTS

PART ELEVEN

Creation of a ghetto in the occupied territories of the USSR. Life in the ghetto. Their liquidation

ESSAY FIFTY-TWO

Creation of ghettos and work camps in the occupied territories. Lvov. Vitebsk. Minsk

1

Tatiana Schneider, work camp in Ukraine:

“We lived in old dirty sheds, slept on bare ground or on humus left from cattle and pigs. We cleared and repaired the road from Zvenigorodka to Lysyanka. gravel, they dragged a skating rink instead of horses ... "

Grigory Basovsky, Zvenigorod district:

“They placed us in a pigsty, slept on bare ground. We worked on the construction of a road and in a stone quarry from dawn to dusk. They fed us once a day - they gave some kind of gruel and one hundred grams of millet bread. After returning from work, we were driven around the pigsty and beaten with rubber sticks ... then they selected those who were weakened and shot ... "

Clara Kanovskaya, Mogilev-Podolsky:

“I was lucky - I ended up in an agricultural artel ... Again the police beat me, again back-breaking work, barefoot in the snow, the only dress made of burlap; the orphan hoped for a miracle - to live to be released. You can imagine how I had to work so that the owner of the farm would say to the policeman: "Don't hit her. She has a clean pigsty, like in a church ... "

2

The highest body of civil administration in the occupied lands was the Ministry for the Occupied Territories in the East, headed by A. Rozenberg. Established two Reichskommissariats - "Ostland" with a center in Riga and "Ukraine" with a center in the city of Rivne, which were divided into smaller administrative units. The composition of the Reichskommissariat "Ostland" included Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia and the western regions of Belarus; the Reichskommissariat "Ukraine" included part of Belarus and the territory of Ukraine west of the Dnieper. Eastern Galicia with the city of Lvov, they were annexed to the General Government created on the territory of Poland, and the Bialystok region, parts of the Brest and Grodno regions were ceded to East Prussia.

The front line remained under the authority of the military administration - Eastern Belarus, regions of Ukraine east of the Dnieper and all territories of the RSFSR captured by German troops. After the occupation of the next town or village, the German commandant's office conducted a census of the local population. Jews were subject to registration from the age of fourteen, in some places from ten or even six; after registration, they issued an identity card, on its cover they marked it large, sometimes in red - "JUDE", "J", "F" or "ZhID".

Jews had no right to change their place of residence, walk on sidewalks, slaughter cattle according to Jewish laws, use public transport, telephone, post and telegraph, visit parks, theaters and cinemas, playgrounds, libraries and museums; "a special order did not allow Jews to greet non-Jews." Before moving to the ghetto, the Jewish population received bread in general stores; in Lvov they were given "at first 120 grams per person per day, and then 70 grams ... The Jews had to wait aside until the turn of the "Aryans" passed, and if there was still bread left in the shop, they were given it. More than once it happened that they were kicked out of the store empty-handed, spat on and beaten." Vilnius: "Jews lined up for bread together with the non-Jewish population from five o'clock in the morning, and everywhere they poked fingers, Lithuanian police bullied them. Jews were driven out of the line with a stick and a fist."

The Jewish population was required to wear "clearly distinguishable identification marks" on their clothes: "Appearance on the street without a distinguishing mark is punishable by death." These signs were different depending on the imagination of the local administration - colored six-pointed stars, sewn on the back and on the chest, white six-pointed stars, clearly visible from afar, yellow circles on the chest and shoulders with the letter "J" ("Jude"), white or yellow stripes on the chest, back and left knee, black or white armbands - but the punishment for not following the order remained unchanged. (In Vitebsk, Jews were forced to wear yellow stripes on the right shoulder, front and back; the local population called these signs "Order of Lenin - Order of Stalin".)

The wearing of badges was compulsory for teenagers as well; in some places it even extended to children of three or five years of age - now any Jew could be identified on the street, even if he did not have a characteristic appearance. "Mothers cried, attaching these signs to their children's clothes ... Then it made a huge impression and was considered a terrible humiliation - we still did not know what horrors awaited us ... "Then they began to demand that stripes of different colors be attached to clothes to distinguish men and women, employed at work, from members of their families; White stripes also appeared indicating the number of the house in which this inhabitant of the ghetto lived. “One was beaten because the patch was larger than indicated, others were beaten because the patch was smaller ... It was impossible to pass through the city - the policemen were all around, like mad dogs, chasing with sticks and mercilessly beat anyone.”

Thirteen-year-old Daniil Klovsky from Grodno remembered for the rest of his life the day when he first went out into the street with a distinctive sign: “I walked with my head bowed, cowering. There was a feeling that I had become smaller. There was a constant state of fear, a readiness to bear any offense. .. I still remember the words spoken by someone to my father in a malevolent tone: “Well? Here is your "ebullient, mighty" ... "

“I couldn’t put on the sign for a long time. I felt sick, as if two frogs were sitting on me…” – “I was never ashamed to walk with the Star of David. The Nazis never managed to make me ashamed of being Jews…” – “Let shame on those who put them on us ... "

3

From the first days of the occupation, the mass extermination of the Jewish population began. In the zone of military administration - in villages, towns and small towns - one or two punitive actions were enough for this, in larger cities the liquidation sometimes took two or three months. To do this, temporary ghettos were set up, intermediate gathering places, in which Jews were resettled before imminent destruction - by the end of 1941, these ghettos and their inhabitants almost everywhere ceased to exist. In December of that year, Goebbels wrote anxiously in his diary: “If we kill all the Jews, destroy the prisoners of war and let a large part of the population of large cities starve to death, and next year also reduce the rural population, who will produce everything we need? .. "

After the German defeat near Moscow, the war took on a protracted character; the Germans needed manpower for laying roads in the rear and for other purposes, and they also needed specialists to work at military enterprises. From the Baltic States they reported to Berlin: "The complete extermination of the Jews - at least at the present time - is impossible, since most of the crafts of Lithuania and Latvia are in the hands of Jews, and some artisans - glaziers, plumbers, stove-makers, shoemakers - are represented exclusively by Jews. Jewish artisans are now needed for the restoration of destroyed cities and for the needs of the army."

A dispute immediately broke out between the leaders of the SS, who insisted on the speedy extermination of the Jews, and the civil administration, which wanted to use them in numerous jobs and complained that the "excessive" destruction of the Jewish population was hitting the local economy: "It is simply impossible without Jewish artisans to get by… Today it is difficult to get rid of them completely, because in a day or two enterprises will stop, and we don’t want this…” – “Ninety percent of the artisans of Galicia are Jews… The immediate removal of these workers is contrary to the interests of the military economy…” – “I strongly demand to stop liquidation of the Jews who are used as a skilled workforce in military enterprises and who so far cannot be replaced by local residents ... "

This determined the fate of the Jewish population in the zone of civil administration: some were gathered in a certain place for a short time and destroyed "without prejudice to the economic situation"‚ while others were temporarily kept alive. For this reason, ghettos and work camps were created - from small ones that existed for a short time, and then all Jews were killed after the work was done, to large ghettos and camps for the long-term use of specialists and labor. "In April 1942, thirteen Jewish specialists remained in Shpol (a cooper, several tailors and blacksmiths), who were kept out of necessity, at the request of the population. In 1943 they were shot ... "

Gorodok Korets, Ukraine: "The winter of 1941-1942 became the most terrible for us. There was a layer of ice on the walls in the apartments, people did not wash their faces for months, they were eaten by lice ... Every night, dozens of unfortunate people died from unbearable cold and hunger. The dead lay in sheds, on the porch. Gradually they were taken to the cemetery and buried in the same grave ... No matter how terrible it was to die, the living envied the dead, for whom their torment ended ... "

The work camps were constantly replenished to replace those who were shot, frostbite, died from exhaustion, disease, overwork for twelve to fourteen hours a day. The local Jewish population was driven into the ghetto, where they lived in humiliation and died in despair; surviving and caught Jews from the surrounding towns and towns were also brought there. "There were husbands here who lost their wives, there were wives without husbands, there were husbands and wives who parted during the massacre, and now met in the ghetto and asked each other what happened to their children. There were lonely boys and girls who lost their parents, there were babies who were found in the forests under the bushes and brought to the ghetto ... "

Researchers have calculated that more than 800 ghettos and work camps were created in the occupied territories of the USSR with a different number of prisoners and with different periods of existence. Half of them fell on Ukraine, where during the years of occupation it turned out largest number Jews unable or unwilling to evacuate.

4

From the "Instructions for the Resolution of the Jewish Question" by Reich Minister A. Rosenberg: "The first main goal ... should be the strictest separation of Jews from the rest of the population ... All rights to freedom should be taken away from Jews and placed in a ghetto ..."

German troops entered Lvov on the ninth day of hostilities; Together with them, the Ukrainian battalion "Nachtigal" ("Nightingale"), formed before the start of the war, appeared in the city. "A raid on the Jews began. Local fascists, accompanied by SS men, dragged them out of their apartments and took them to Lviv prisons and barracks. At the entrance to the assembly point, they tore off their clothes, took away valuables and money ..." - "Jews were lined up and forced to beat each other friend. When it seemed to the SS that the blows were too weak, they pulled the intended victim out of the ranks and showed how to beat to death ... "

Soon the commandant's office demanded that the Jews of Lvov pay an indemnity as soon as possible - 20 million rubles for the restoration of areas destroyed during the hostilities. Many hostages were arrested, respected Jews of the city, who were threatened with execution for non-payment; the indemnity was paid with difficulty, selling furniture, clothes, wedding rings and Sabbath candlesticks at bargain prices - but the hostages never returned home.

In the first weeks of the occupation, monuments were removed from the old Jewish cemeteries and used for paving roads and sidewalks; many prayer houses were destroyed and burned in Lvov, including the "Golden Rose", the legendary Nakhmanovich synagogue of the late sixteenth century. Then all the Jews of Lvov and refugees from the surrounding areas were herded into the ghetto, which turned out to be the largest in the USSR. It numbered about 150,000 people, housed in incredible cramped quarters in houses, sheds, warehouses without water, electricity or sewerage.

A work camp was created on Yanovskaya Street in Lviv, which became famous for its cruel regime. It was fenced off with two rows of barbed wire with watchtowers, on which SS men and Ukrainian policemen were on duty; thousands of Jews were herded there and given 175 grams of bread per person per day, a bowl of liquid soup, a mug of ersatz coffee without sugar. For any offense, the prisoners of the Yanovsky camp received up to fifty blows with a whip on their naked bodies, after which they had to immediately return to duty - those who could not stand the execution were immediately destroyed. A road was paved on the territory of the camp, paved with fragments of tombstones from the Jewish cemetery and sharp, unhewn stones. Hungry, exhausted prisoners were forced to run over these stones to test their suitability for work; many did not have enough strength to run to the end of the road - such people were "rejected" and killed. Dozens of people died every day from typhus; instead of the dead, hanged and shot, they brought in new workers from the Lvov ghetto.

In 1942, during punitive actions, Lvov Jews were killed in the vicinity of the city and taken to the Belzec death camp in Poland, where they were exterminated in gas chambers. The territory of the ghetto in Lviv was constantly shrinking; about 60,000 people died in the August action, and in December the ghetto was turned into a working "Judenlager". He was surrounded by a solid fence, on which announcements were placed: "Special zone! Do not approach!", "Typhus behind the fence!", "Danger! Death behind the fence!"

In Bialystok, part of the city territory was fenced with barbed wire and at least 50,000 Jews were herded there. In the two ghettos of Grodno, there were about 20,000 residents of the city, to which were added Jews from the surrounding cities and towns. "The ghetto is hunger, it is humiliating oppression, it is executions, gallows, massacres. People were at the mercy of complete arbitrariness ... There was an announcement on the gates of the ghetto that it was impossible to bring food. For the discovery of any, even the smallest amount of food - execution ..."

In Vitebsk, the Germans demanded that the Jewish population gather on the right bank of the Western Dvina, which divided the city into two parts. The bridge across the river was destroyed by the retreating Soviet troops; Jews were not allowed to cross the pontoon bridge - the owners of boats and rafts were transported to the other side for a fee. In the middle of the river, the Germans overturned boats with people and property for fun; children, the elderly, those who could not swim drowned - according to rough estimates, about 300 people died in the river. The Jews of Vitebsk were gathered in a ghetto in the middle of destroyed houses; people crowded into the building of the former club, arranged huts, "lived under a canopy, in kennels made of bricks and tin ... for intimidation, 27 Jews who did not show up for work were publicly shot in the streets."

The ghetto existed for a short time - the punitive detachment of the Einsatzgruppe "B" arrived in the city. In August-September, mostly men were shot; the rest were destroyed in October 1941 due to the "danger of an epidemic" - local policemen killed, and the Germans guarded the place of execution. More than 7,000 people died in the October action, the survivors were destroyed in November-December of the same year.

M. Chagall‚ from an article about Vitebsk: "When I heard that trouble was at your gates, I imagined such a terrible picture: the enemy was creeping into my house, into my yard on Pokrovskaya Street ... It was not enough for him to have a city in my paintings ‚ which he cut up‚ - now he has come to burn my house ... In your heart, my city, my heart beats and sheds bloody tears.

5

A few days after the outbreak of hostilities, the leaders of the party and government of Belarus secretly left Minsk without even announcing the evacuation of the population. The Germans captured the capital of the republic on the seventh day of the war, and soon the SS command was already reporting to Berlin: “In Minsk, all layers of the Jewish intelligentsia (teachers, professors, lawyers, etc., except for medical workers) have been liquidated ... It has so far turned out to be staged pogroms against Jews impossible because of the passivity of Belarusians".

By the beginning of August, all Jews were herded into the ghetto, where there were at least 80,000 people - the Minsk ghetto was one of the largest in the USSR. Conducted raids, seized men, taken away without return, and soon the day of the first mass destruction came.

Anatoly Rubin, Minsk:

"The first action in the ghetto took place on November 7, 1941 ... People were driven out of their homes in the form in which they were caught; those caught in bed were driven out in linen, in nightgowns, barefoot. At the slightest hitch, they were immediately shot on the spot; those who could not to go, they finished off right away... The street was littered with corpses.There was a heart-rending cry of mothers who were tearing their children out of their hands to throw them into cars...

By evening, the "work" was basically finished. But the quarters were still cordoned off, as they continued to look for those who had hidden and, in addition, they robbed everything of value that they found. This robbery took place in stages. At first, the Germans and their close associates from the local policemen robbed, then the ordinary policemen took away everything that was of any value to them. Then the cordon was removed, and a crowd burst in there in a wave, which pounced on the property of the unfortunate, like hungry wolves on their victim ... They broke out and carried away from the house everything that could be broken and carried away - both doors and windows, and if the house was wooden, then it was simply taken apart by logs ... It is interesting that the local population found out a few days earlier through their relatives and policemen that an action would take place. By the beginning of it, they were already in the second echelon and circled like a black crow, waiting for the victim to be killed ...

Peasants from suburban villages were on duty in the quarters adjacent to the ghetto and were only waiting for the right moment to clean up what was left of the Germans and policemen ... In the first days after the action, they were not allowed to enter the ghetto. But for many, the passion for easy money was so great that, regardless of either the prohibition or the danger to life, they tried to run across to the forbidden side and enter one of the houses, and there, having stuffed bags with things, again ran across to their side. . But many of them were overtaken by a German bullet, and they remained lying in the middle of the street, squeezing the stolen goods in their death throes ...

The gradual destruction of the Minsk ghetto began. The victims were taken away and taken out of the city to the Tuchinka region, where huge ditches were dug beforehand ... People who lived in the villages nearby later said that the earth was still breathing for the first time after the execution - the wounded were moving. The accumulated blood in places beat from the ground like a spring. Even unbelieving people in these villages began to be baptized…”

In 1941, the death camps - Auschwitz, Majdanek, Treblinka and others - had not yet been put into operation, and therefore Jews from the Third Reich were sent to Riga, Kaunas, Minsk. The first batch from Hamburg was brought to the Minsk ghetto in November of that year, when the territory was liberated after the first action of mass extermination - trains with European Jews then came regularly, one after another. Most of those who arrived were immediately killed in Maly Trostyanets near Minsk, and only specialists and skilled workers were kept for a while, who lived in a "sonderghetto" separated by barbed wire from the rest of the Minsk ghetto. “I remember how they trudged in a column from the station ... Many retained the remnants of their former gloss - solid, although already fairly shabby clothes. They dragged leather suitcases stuffed with permitted kilograms along the ground, tied with a rope or belt. Their situation was even worse than ours, so how they, not knowing the Russian language and having no acquaintances among the locals, could not change their belongings for bread.

The German command reported: "German Jews show diligence in their work ... They believe that after the victorious end of the war they will again be returned to the Reich ... It is necessary to maintain their faith." From another German document on the transportation of Jews to Minsk from Cologne, Koenigsberg, Vienna, Terezin: the number of people in sixteen trains - 15,002, destroyed immediately upon arrival - 13,500.

Anatoly Rubin:

“In July 1942, when the work columns left for work, the longest massacre began in the ghetto, which lasted four days ... The Germans and policemen rummaged around with dogs in all apartments, attics and basements. All the places that seemed suspicious to them, where they could people blew up with grenades. Many were shot on the spot. Streams of blood flowed through the streets. Even the favorite dog of the head of the ghetto, Gottenbach ... got drunk on blood, went berserk, and he was forced to shoot her. In hospitals, all the patients were slaughtered. Orphanages were destroyed ... The ghetto immediately empty, people broke, the atmosphere became even more oppressive ... "

By the autumn of 1942, no more than 9,000 people remained in the Minsk ghetto.

6

Shmuel Kugel, Pleschenitsy township, Minsk region:

"In the morning, the police went around the Jewish houses and drove everyone out into the field. Those who walked slowly were driven with whips. In the field, artisans were selected - shoemakers, tailors, blacksmiths - and returned to the shtetl. My wife and I also got into this group, but all of our a family of eight souls - daughters and granddaughters - were put on carts and taken away. We could not even say goodbye, hug them for the last time ...

There was deathly silence in the place. The wife rushed about the empty rooms, as if thinking of finding one of her children. Books, maps, musical instruments - everything was in the old places, but there were no children. She began to tear her hair out, fell unconscious...

Three weeks passed... I was returning from work with four Jews. Near the shtetl we were warned: "Run into the forest. They are taking the remaining Jews." I wanted to run home to save my wife or die with her. The companions did not let me in and dragged me into the forest. The Germans fired at us, but missed. I could not keep up with the young ones, sat down on the edge of the forest and sat in the cold rain until dark. At night I made my way to my place. I hoped that my wife hid somewhere near the house and was waiting for me. But I didn't see anyone, and the hut was locked with someone else's lock, not ours...

It was raining‚ I had nothing warm. I found only a large bag, threw it over my head, took the wanderer's staff in my hands and, leaving my homeland and home, was the last of the shtetl Jews to go into the dark night..."

A. Rosenberg - born in Russian Empire‚ in the city of Revel‚ studied architecture at the universities of Riga and Moscow; since 1918 in Germany, the leading ideologist of the Nazi party, the theorist of "Eastern politics", the author of the book "The Myth of the Twentieth Century". Rosenberg blamed the Jews for all disasters from the fall of Rome to the events of the First World War; he proclaimed: "The dictatorship of men of a higher order over men of a lower order must be established."

Since 1941, Rosenberg has been the Reich Minister for the Eastern Territories; from his directives: "It should be ensured that harsh measures are introduced that would prohibit the mixing of blood between Jews and the rest of the population." Convicted by the international tribunal at Nuremberg, hanged in 1946.

***

From the report of the commandant of the city of Slonim, Belarus: "The action carried out on November 13, 1941, freed me from unnecessary mouths. About 7,000 Jews ... are brought to work. They work hard because of the constant fear of death ... I will force Jewish specialists to teach their craft to smart students so that later it would be possible to dispense with the Jews in these professions and liquidate them."

From the order of the Minsk district council (1941): "Based on the fact that the Novoselki collective farm does not have its own Belarusian blacksmith, the district council does not object to the Cherny Itska Jew being temporarily used as a blacksmith in the above-mentioned collective farm."

From the explanation of the commander of the SS to the magistrate of the city of Brest (1941): "In response to an oral inquiry, we inform you that persons of Jewish origin, regardless of religion (Roman Catholic, Greek Catholic, Orthodox), are considered Jews. All prescriptions relating to Jews apply to these persons".

***

On the birthday of his daughter, the commandant of the Yanovsky camp, G. Wilhaus, shot from the balcony at the prisoners of the camp in order to please the birthday girl; Otilia, his wife, had her own pistol, which she sometimes used. The deputy commandant of the Yanovsky camp, V. Rokita, killed a prisoner, and then lit a cigarette and said: "I am kind to you, but you make me angry. Look what you make me do."

SS officer F. Gebauer, nicknamed Strangler, killed Jews with his hands; he also ordered five prisoners to be placed in barrels of water - it was more than twenty degrees of frost outside, and they soon froze. Bitner liked to beat up young women. Khan set the dog on naked people. Bayer killed prisoners with a club. Former circus performer Fuchs shot at the prisoners, trying to hit a pre-selected part of the body. One-armed Mons beat them with a wooden prosthesis. SS Sergeant Heinen believed that "a bullet intended for someone should not remain in the barrel" - this could bring misfortune to the owner of the rifle, and therefore he often killed Jews who caught his eye.

One of the surviving prisoners called the Janowska camp "a university of violence." Many SS men practiced there; then they dispersed to other camps and transferred the methods of treatment of prisoners there.

***

Several dozen ghettos existed on the territory of the RSFSR, including those in Pskov, Velikiye Luki, Smolensk, Kaluga, and Orel. The number of prisoners in these ghettos ranged from tens to hundreds of people, and they existed for a short time. In Smolensk, workers were given 200 grams of bread a day, while the rest of the ghetto residents received nothing. To the question: "How can we feed our families?", the commandant of the city replied that such trifles did not interest him.

From the interrogation of the former head of the gendarmerie in Orsha (Belarus). Question: "How many months were the Jewish population kept in the ghetto?" Answer: Three months. Question: "What is their further fate?" Answer: "They were shot." Question: "What were they accused of?" Answer: "Nothing."

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Residential areas in territories controlled by the German Nazis and their allies, where Jews were forcibly moved in order to isolate them from the non-Jewish population. This isolation was part of the so-called "Final Solution to the Jewish Question" policy, under which some 6 million Jews were exterminated.

1. History
2 Purposes and order of creation
3 Description and classification
4 Resistance
5 Notes
6 See also
7 Links

Story

In antiquity, Jewish communities in the diaspora settled together on their own. However, in 1239, a decree was issued in Aragon ordering all Jews to live exclusively in a quarter specially designated for them. The term ghetto itself originates in 1516 in Venice (Italian: Ghetto di Venezia), where Venetian Jews were ordered to live on a plot of land isolated by canals in the Cannaregio area.

Later Jewish ghettos appeared in Germany, France, Switzerland and Italy. Russia as such did not have a Jewish ghetto, but a similar restriction appeared in the 18th century (the so-called “Pale of Jewish Settlement”).

Purposes and order of creation

By creating places for the forced isolation of Jews, the Nazis pursued the following goals:

Facilitating the impending liquidation of the Jews.
Prevention of potential resistance.
Getting free labor.
Acquiring the sympathy of the rest of the population.

The idea of concentrating Jews in the ghetto was put forward by Adolf Hitler in 1939. The first ghettos began to be created on the territory of German-occupied Poland. The concentration of Jews from small towns and villages to large cities began on September 21, 1939. The first ghetto was established in Piotrkow Trybunalski in October 1939, then in Puławy and Radomsko in December 1939, in Lodz on February 8, 1940, and in Jędrzejów in March 1940.

In total, about 1,150 ghettos were created in the lands occupied by the Nazis, which contained at least a million Jews.

A column of prisoners of the Minsk ghetto on the street. 1941

In the ghettos created in the Nazi-occupied territories of the USSR and countries of Eastern Europe forcibly, under the threat of death, all Jews were resettled, including Jews from Western Europe.

The largest ghettos were located in Poland. This is primarily the Warsaw ghetto (450 thousand people) and the Lodz ghetto (204 thousand people).

On the territory of the USSR, the largest ghettos were in Lvov (100 thousand people, existed from November 1941 to June 1943) and Minsk (about 80 thousand people, liquidated on October 21, 1943). A large ghetto was also created in Terezin (Czech Republic) and Budapest.

From the ghetto outside of Europe, the Shanghai ghetto is known, where the Japanese allies of Germany held the Jews of Shanghai and refugees from Europe.

Description and classification

All ghettos, according to historians, can be conditionally divided into two main types: "open" and "closed". Open ghettos, without the physical isolation of Jews in a separate guarded quarter, existed only until the destruction of the inhabitants or their relocation to "closed" ghettos or deportation to camps. In such a ghetto, Judenrats were necessarily created or elders were appointed (elected). The Jews who lived in "open" ghettos, although formally not isolated from the local non-Jewish population, were in fact limited in their rights to the same extent as the prisoners of "closed" ghettos.

The creation of "closed" ghettos was carried out with the obligatory relocation of all Jews to a protected place (quarter, street, separate room). A fence in the form of barbed wire or blank walls and fences was erected around the closed ghetto by the forces of the prisoners and at their expense. Entry and exit was carried out through checkpoints, which were guarded on both sides. Initially, the Germans issued permits to leave the ghetto, but from October 1941 any Jew found outside the ghetto was subject to the death penalty.

When moving to the ghetto, Jews were allowed to take only their personal belongings with them; other property was to be abandoned. The ghettos were terribly overpopulated, the inhabitants were starving, suffering from cold and disease. Attempts to bring food into the ghetto from the outside were punished up to and including execution.

Judenrats (German: Judenrat - “Jewish Council”), or Jewish committees, were created by the German occupation authorities as self-governing bodies of Jewish ghettos. The Judenrats, unlike other local collaborationist bodies, were often forced to form.

The powers of the Judenrat included ensuring economic life and order in the ghetto, collecting funds and other contributions, selecting candidates for work in labor camps, and also carrying out orders from the occupation authorities. The Jewish police were formally subordinate to the Judenrat.

Candidate historical sciences Evgeny Rosenblat divides Jewish collaborators into two large groups:

Supporters of the strategy of collective survival.
Persons who implemented the strategy of individual survival.

The first group identified itself with all the other inhabitants of the ghetto and tried, as far as possible, to achieve a system in which a number of categories of the Jewish population were given additional chances for survival - for example, guardianship of the Judenrats over large families, the poor, the elderly, the lonely and the disabled. Representatives of the second group opposed themselves to the rest of the Jews and used all means for personal survival, including those leading to a deterioration in the situation or death of the rest.

Members of the Judenrats had different attitudes towards the resistance and the actions of the armed underground in the ghetto. in some cases they established contact and cooperation with the underground and partisans, in others they sought to prevent resistance actions, fearing that the Germans would take revenge on all the inhabitants of the ghetto. There were also active accomplices of the Nazis. Some of them were killed by underground fighters and partisans.

The duration of the existence of various ghettos varied from a few days (Yanovichi, Kalinkovichi) to months (Borisov) and even years (Minsk, Vilnius).

Resistance

Main article: Jewish resistance during the Holocaust

The natural reaction to the plans of the Nazis was the resistance of the prisoners of the ghetto - collective and individual, spontaneous and planned.

Passive forms of resistance were any non-violent actions that contributed to the survival of the Jews. In particular, in order to counteract the plans of mass killing of Jews with the help of hunger and disease, food and medicine were illegally delivered to the ghetto, personal hygiene was maintained as much as possible, and medical services were created. Spiritual resistance played an important role. In the ghetto there were underground schools, professional courses, and cultural and religious events were held.

Among the active forms of resistance, there were preparations for the organization of escapes from the ghetto, the transfer of Jews to the safe territory of neutral countries and to partisan detachments, armed uprisings in the ghetto, sabotage and sabotage at German enterprises. The most famous and longest was the uprising in the Warsaw ghetto, which lasted a whole month. The Germans had to use tanks, artillery and aircraft against the rebels.

Notes

1 2 3 Kaganovich A. Questions and tasks of researching places of forced detention of Jews on the territory of Belarus in 1941-1944 // Comp. and ed. Ya. Z. Basin. Topical Issues of Holocaust Studies on the Territory of Belarus during the Nazi Occupation: Collection scientific works. - Minsk: Ark, 2005. - Issue. one.
The final solution of the Jewish question and the uprising in the ghetto. Holocaust History Museum (Shoah). Yad Vashem. Retrieved May 21, 2012. Archived from the original on July 11, 2012.
1 2 3 Ghetto. Encyclopedia of the Holocaust. American memorial museum Holocaust. Retrieved August 9, 2009. Archived from the original on August 20, 2011.
"The Final Solution to the Jewish Question". Review. American Holocaust Memorial Museum. Retrieved May 21, 2012. Archived from the original on July 11, 2012.
Oded Schremer et al. Contemporary Anti-Semitism and the Holocaust ( late XIX century - 1945). A course of lectures on the history of the Jewish people. Bar-Ilan University. Retrieved May 23, 2012. Archived from the original on July 11, 2012.
Shterenshis M. Jews: the history of the nation. - Herzliya: Isradon, 2008. - S. 295. - 560 p. - 5000 copies. - ISBN 978-5-94467-064-9.
1 2 3 4 Daily life in the ghetto. Yad Vashem. Retrieved July 19, 2014.
Ghetto - article from the Electronic Jewish Encyclopedia
Kazimierz Sobczak. Encyklopedia II wojny światowej. - Wydawn. Ministerstwa Obrony Narodowej, 1975. - P. 153. - 793 p.
Eric Lichtblau. The Holocaust Just Got More Shocking. The New York Times (March 1, 2013). Retrieved March 3, 2013. Archived from the original on March 13, 2013.
Ghetto. Introduction
1 2 Altman I. A. Chapter 3. The Nazi occupation regime on the territory of the USSR. § 1. "The New Order" // The Holocaust and Jewish Resistance in the Occupied Territory of the USSR / Ed. prof. A. G. Asmolova. - M.: Fund "Holocaust", 2002. - S. 44-54. - 320 s. - ISBN 5-83636-007-7.
German authorities to pay $1 billion to Holocaust victims Federation Council of Russia website
Ettinger Sh. Part six. The latest period. Chapter six. The coming of the Nazis to power in Germany and the genocide of European Jewry during the Second World War // History of the Jewish people. - Jerusalem: Aliya Library, 2001. - S. 547. - 687 p. - 3000 copies. - ISBN 5-93273-050-1.
1 2 3 Rosenblat E.S. Judenrats in Belarus: the problem of Jewish collaboration // Comp. Basin Ya. Z. The lessons of the Holocaust: history and modernity: Collection of scientific papers. - Minsk: Ark, 2009. - Issue. 1. - ISBN 978-985-6756-81-1.
Tasks and powers of the Judenrats. The History of Anti-Semitism and the Holocaust. Open University of Israel. Retrieved September 8, 2010. Archived from the original on August 20, 2011.
Ioffe E. G. Topical issues of studying the Holocaust on the territory of Soviet Belarus during the Second World War // Comp. Basin Ya.Z. Topical issues of studying the Holocaust on the territory of Belarus during the Nazi occupation: Collection of scientific papers. - Minsk: Ark, 2006. - Issue. 2.
Altman I. A. Chapter 6. Resistance. § 1. Unarmed resistance // Holocaust and Jewish resistance in the occupied territory of the USSR / Ed. prof. A. G. Asmolova. - M.: Fund "Holocaust", 2002. - S. 216-225. - 320 s. - ISBN 5-83636-007-7.
Levin D. Fighting Back: Lithuanian Jewry's Armed Resistance to the Nazis, 1941-1945. - New York: Holmes & Meier, 1985. - P. 99-100. - 326 p. - ISBN 978-0-8419-1389 -nine.
Resistance, Jewish. Encyclopedia of Catastrophe. Yad Vashem. Retrieved 4 March 2012. Archived from the original on 14 May 2012.
Jewish resistance and Jewish uprisings. Yad Vashem. Retrieved 4 March 2012. Archived from the original on 14 May 2012.
Anti-Nazi resistance - article from the Electronic Jewish Encyclopedia

Links

Ghetto during World War II, Yad Vashem
Ghettos 1939-1945. New Research and Perspectives on Definition, Daily Life, and Survival. Symposium Presentations. USHMM, 2005. PDF document, 175 pages (eng.)
Ghettos for Jews in Eastern Europe. The New York Times (March 1, 2013). - Map, source: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Retrieved March 3, 2013. Archived from the original on March 13, 2013.

The largest ghetto in Europe during the Holocaust
Axis powers	Budapest (63 thousand)
Nazi-occupied European countries	Warsaw (450 thousand) Lodz (204 thousand) Terezin (140 thousand) Czestochowa (40 thousand) Radom (35 thousand) Lublin (34 thousand) Bendzin (30 thousand) Sosnowiec (30 thousand)
Nazi-occupied territories of the USSR	Lviv (100 thousand) Minsk (80 thousand) Bialystok (50 thousand) Grodno (42 thousand) Odessa (40 thousand) Vilnius (40 thousand) Berdichev (38 thousand) Kaunas (30 thousand) Riga ( 30 thousand)
Review article: The catastrophe of European Jewry. Related Topics: The Final Solution to the Jewish Question Judenfrei Transnistria

Ghetto during World War II Information About

To explain what a ghetto is, one must turn to history. In Europe and the Muslim world, Jews were treated with great prejudice. Since the XIII century, they were obliged to live in the places designated for this, but for the first time the name "ghetto" for such zones appeared in Venice in 1516, and has survived to this day.

Ghetto - what is it?

From that moment until the twentieth century, the meaning of the word ghetto was as follows: a fenced-off part of the city in which Jews are obliged to live. In the twentieth century, the meaning expanded to allow for the possibility of a separate residence of any ethnic, religious or cultural group. The main feature of any ghetto is poverty, the laws of life in such a separate place may conflict with the laws of the state in whose territory it is located.

Ghetto during World War II

Initially, the era that allowed for a Jewish ghetto ended in Europe with the onset of the Napoleonic conquests. In each conquered state, the emperor asserted civil rights and freedoms that made the idea of racial segregation impossible. But this concept was revived by Hitler. In the Third Reich, ghettos began to appear in 1939 in Poland. The concept of "death camp, ghetto" did not appear immediately; initially, these allocated zones in cities remained places for separate residence of Jews. But these urban ghettos were the first step in the preparation of massacres, as they allowed:

to concentrate in one place all to be destroyed;
to simplify the organization of massacres;
avoid the possibility of escapes or resistance;
exploit the inhabitants of the ghetto as labor force.

In total, during the Second World War, there were more than a thousand ghettos, in which about one million Jews lived. The largest of them were Warsaw and Lodz, together there were more than half of all isolated Jews. Not only the inhabitants of the city and adjacent territories became prisoners of the ghetto, but prisoners who appeared as the Nazis seized new areas were brought there.

Modern ghettos

With the defeat of Hitler, the ghettos did not disappear from the face of the planet. The United States is characterized by such a concept as a colored, often African-American, ghetto. The shape of modern isolated urban areas began to take shape in the 70s and 80s of the last century, when white Americans began to move from cities to suburbs to avoid living next to African Americans. The purchase of country houses for the majority of the Negro population was not available and they remained in the cities, forming entire ethnic areas.

Scholars disagree about what a ghetto means in modern world according to what laws it is formed. There are two main theories.

Colored (mostly Negro) ghettos are the product of deliberate racial segregation designed to separate national minorities and the white population according to the level of available opportunities and place of residence. Proponents of this theory believe that the ethnic majority of the country has the tools to circumvent the 1968 law "On the Prohibition of Discrimination in Housing."
Some researchers answer the question of what a ghetto means in terms of social rather than racial division. They say that after 1968, the black middle class, who had the opportunity to live in respectable areas, moved out, and the lower class were isolated from both all whites and more affluent blacks. The Oscar Lewis theory says that after a long stay below the poverty line, the chances of social and economic success are significantly reduced. Therefore, the situation in the ghetto only worsens with time.

Ghetto types

Modern ghettos are subdivided only according to their ethnic composition. The following types of ghettos existed during World War II:

open ghetto area characterized by the isolation of the Jews from the rest of the population. Judenrat (Jewish Council) or other Jewish self-government bodies operated on its territory, residents were required to register and not change their place of residence. There were also labor obligations. Formally, the inhabitants of such a ghetto did not have a ban on communication with the non-Jewish population.
closed ghetto- a protected residential area, fenced off from the rest of the city. Exit outside this ghetto was limited and carried out only through the checkpoint, in the future, residents were forbidden to leave their place of residence. The Jewish population was moved to such an area after it had already been sentenced to extermination.
Ghetto behind desks. Even before the outbreak of World War II, in 1935, an initiative appeared in Polish educational institutions to create dedicated zones in classrooms and auditoriums for representatives of national minorities. Since 1937, this measure has become mandatory.

Ghetto Rules

Life in the World War II era ghetto proceeded according to the following rules:

a ban on buying and selling something;
inability to use public transport, cultural and leisure institutions, religious buildings and structures;
wearing identifying bandages (lat);
ban on movement on major streets.

Books about the ghetto

Many books have been devoted to such processes as the creation of the ghetto and life in it. Here are some of them:

"Sell Your Mother" by Ephraim Sevela. The story of a boy who emigrated to Germany from the Kaunas ghetto, whose mother was killed by the Nazis.
"Give me your children!" Steve Sam-Sandberg. A story about what a ghetto is through the story of the head of its Judenrat.
"Born in the Ghetto" Ariela Sef. The story of a Jewish girl who miraculously escaped from the Kaunas ghetto.

Series about the ghetto

Ghettos and concentration camps also inspired the creation of series:

"Ghetto". A story about an African American family who moved to a white neighborhood.
"Shield and Sword". two part film, the protagonist which is a Russian intelligence agent working in Nazi Germany

The Jewish Ghetto of Krakow was one of the five main ghettos established by the Nazi German authorities in the General Government during the German occupation of Poland during World War II. The purpose of the ghetto system was to separate the “fit for work” from those who were subsequently subject to extermination. Before the war, Krakow was a cultural center, where about 60-80 thousand Jews lived.
The persecution of the Jewish population of Krakow began shortly after the entry of Nazi troops into the city on September 1, 1939 during the German invasion of Poland. From September, Jews were required to take part in forced labor. In November 1939, all Jews from the age of 12 were required to wear identifying armbands. Synagogues throughout Krakow were ordered to close, and all Jewish relics and valuables were taken away by the Nazi authorities.

In May 1940, the German occupation authorities announced that Krakow would become the "purest" city of the General Government (the occupied, but not annexed, part of Poland). An extensive deportation of Jews from Krakow was ordered. Of the 68,000 Jewish population, only 15,000 workers and members of their families were allowed to stay. Everyone else was ordered to leave the city and settle in the suburban countryside.

The Krakow ghetto was formally founded on March 3, 1941 in the Podgórze region, and not in the Jewish region of Kazimierz. Polish families evicted from Podgorzha found shelter in former Jewish settlements outside the newly formed ghetto. Meanwhile, 15,000 Jews were placed in an area where 3,000 people used to live. The area occupied 30 streets, 320 residential buildings and 3,167 rooms. As a result, four Jewish families lived in one apartment, and many less fortunate Jews lived right on the street.
The ghetto was surrounded by walls separating it from other parts of the city. All windows and doors facing the "Aryan" side were bricked up by order. It was possible to enter the ghetto only through 4 guarded entrances. The walls were made of panels that looked like tombstones, it looked like an ominous omen. Small fragments of the walls have survived to this day.

Young followers of the Zionist youth movement, who took part in the production of the underground newspaper HeHaluc HaLohem ("Fighting Pioneer"), joined other Zionists in the local branch of the "Jewish Fighting Organization" (Polish: Żydowska Organizacja Bojowa) and organized resistance in the ghetto, helping the underground Regional army. The group took part in various resistance actions, including blowing up the Cyganeria cafe, a place where Nazi officers gathered. Unlike the Warsaw ghetto, their struggle did not lead to a general uprising before its liquidation.

After May 30, 1942, the Nazis began the systematic deportation of Jews from the ghettos to nearby concentration camps. In the months that followed, thousands of Jews were deported in Operation Krakau, led by SS-Oberführer Julian Scherner. First, the Jews were collected at Zgoda Square and then sent to the railway station in Prokosim. In the first deportation, 7 thousand people were transported, in the second on June 5, 1942, 4 thousand Jews were transported to the Belzec concentration camp. On March 13-14, 1943, the Nazis, under the command of SS-Untersturmführer Amon Goeth, carried out the "final liquidation of the ghetto." 8,000 Jews considered fit for work were transported to the Plaszow concentration camp. 2,000 Jews who were considered unfit for work were killed right on the streets of the ghetto. All the rest were sent to Auschwitz.

In the territories occupied by the Germans, now part of the Russian Federation, there were 41 ghettos in which the Jewish population was methodically exterminated.

There were Jewish ghettos in Kaluga, Orel, Smolensk, Tver, Bryansk, Pskov and many other places.

As a rule, the ghetto was guarded by local policemen, who, with the full approval of the local population who seized Jewish property, carried out massacres of Jews.

Ghettos on the territory of the Russian Federation were relatively few in number. In German-occupied Kaluga, 155 Jews remained, of which 64 were men and 91 were women. November 8, 1941 by order No. 8 of the Kaluga City Council "On the organization of the rights of Jews" on the banks of the river. Oka in the Cooperative village of Kaluga, a Jewish ghetto was created. 155 Jews were evicted there from city apartments. Every day, under police escort, more than 100 Jews, including children and the elderly, worked on cleaning corpses, cleaning public toilets and garbage pits, clearing streets and rubble (Kaluga Encyclopedia: Collection of materials. Issue 3. - Kaluga. 1977. p. 61 ).

In the occupied territory of Russia, the largest ghetto was formed in Smolensk. The complete isolation of the ghetto was ensured by the Russian police recruited from the local population.

On July 15, 1942, the Smolensk ghetto was liquidated. This action was led by Deputy Burgomaster G.Ya. Gandzyuk. 1200 people (according to other sources 2000) were killed in various ways - shot, beaten to death, gassed.

Children were put into cars separately from their parents and taken away, applying gases to them. Adults were taken to the village of Magalenshchina in the Smolensk region, where pits had been dug beforehand. People were pushed into them alive, and there they were shot. Policeman Timofey Tishchenko was the most active. He took the prisoners of the ghetto to execution, took off their clothes and distributed them among his workers. For clothes taken from the dead, he received vodka and food. A month later the newspaper New way"posted the material about him" Exemplary guardian of order "(Kovalev B.N. "The Nazi occupation regime and collaborationism in Russia (1941-1944) / Novgorod State University named after Yaroslav the Wise. - Veliky Novgorod, 2001).

Usually, it did not come to the creation of a ghetto - the massacres of Jews began from the first days of the occupation, as a rule, by the hands of the local population.

So, in Rostov-on-Don, Krasnodar, Yeysk, Pyatigorsk, Voronezh, in the Leningrad region. and in many other places, thousands of Jews were brutally tortured during the first days of the occupation.

Of particular note are the murders of Jews in the villages and cities of the North Caucasus, where, as part of the evacuation of the population from besieged Leningrad, many Leningrad enterprises were taken out, educational establishments, among the evacuees there were many Jews ...

The collected information suggests that in the vicinity of the village of Kalnibolotskaya there is a burial place of 48 Jews, and on the outskirts of the village of Novopokrovskaya, 28 people rest in an unmarked grave. The largest burial place of executed Jews turned out to be a burial ground near the town of Belaya Glina, where about three thousand Jews were buried in a "mass grave".

Jews helped exterminate local traitors. For example, archival documents they tell how the Kalnibolot ataman Georgy Rykov issued an order, according to which all elders had to deliver Jews to the administration of the Kalnibolot region. The chief of police, Gerasim Prokopenko, helped the ataman. The result of their "work" was the execution of 48 Jewish refugees.

The genocide of the Jewish population was total in all the occupied regions of Russia. In the "Lokot Republic", created by the Russian Nazis on the territory of the occupied Bryansk region. the entire Jewish population of those places was exterminated without exception.

Chuev writes in his book Cursed Soldiers: Prudnikov, the head of the police of the Suzemsky district, was "involved" in shooting Jews. Anti-Semitic sentiments were fueled to a certain extent by the press organ of the Lokotsky district of self-government, the newspaper Voice of the People (pp. 116 - 117).

We take the monograph of the best domestic Holocaust specialist Ilya Altman "Victims of Hatred" and look at what happened in Suzemka:

"In Suzemka, a Jewish woman was first forced to pronounce those words that she could not pronounce without an accent, then stripped naked and shot." In total, 223 people were killed here (p. 263).

That is, it is clear that it was not the Germans who did this, but the local bastard - the unfortunate woman was forced to speak not in German “without an accent”. At Altman we find one more locality, which was part of the "republic":

"The last mass shooting of Jews recorded in the documents in the Bryansk region was carried out in August 1942 - 39 Jews died in the village of Navlya" (ibid.).

During the extermination of Jews in Russia, it seems, for the first time, mobile gas chambers built on the chassis of trucks were used. People were stuffed into the body, and then gas was released ... This method of murder was recorded in Yeysk. The crew of the gas-vane gas chamber consisted of a German chief and Russian policemen. Details of the massacres of Jews in Yeysk are in L. Ginzburg's book "The Abyss".

In total, about 400,000 Soviet Jews were destroyed on the territory of the Russian Federation during the years of occupation. Up to 3 million Jews were exterminated on the territory of the USSR. This is 60% of the Jewish population of the USSR. In the occupied territories of the USSR, the scope of the genocide of the Jewish people reached unprecedented proportions even for other countries occupied by the Nazis - In the occupied territories of the USSR, up to 97% of Jews were brutally tortured.

Testimony of Adam Sniper:

Rostov-on-Don was occupied twice. The first occupation was very short - November 21-29, 1941, after which the city was liberated until the end of July 1942. Then it was occupied again for six months - until mid-February 43. On the eve of the first surrender of the city, most of the population was evacuated, but after a fairly quick liberation, many ( including Jews) returned to the city. It was they who fell under the second wave of occupation.

Several tens of thousands of them within a short time in August 42 were brought and destroyed in Zmievskaya Balka. The actions were carried out by the Germans at first rather negligently: many Jews managed to escape along the road to Zmievka, some even straight from the pit. The naivety and gullibility of people knows no bounds - many of these returned to their homes in the hope of helping their neighbors.

I know from eyewitness accounts (I have many relatives from Rostov) how former neighbors, who by this time had already tried on their apartments, handed over to the Germans back many of these "fugitives". The search and partial execution of Jews in Zmievskaya Balka were carried out by Rostov-on-Don policemen. On the first day of the action, the Germans could not cope with the flow, the Rostov policemen helped - 15 thousand were destroyed on the first day alone. Children were not shot, but poisoned, spraying poison into their faces from a hairdresser's spray gun - according to rumors, the innovation of a Rostov craftsman.

And one kind woman, who lived next door to my grandfathers family, surrendered her Jewish husband, who had escaped destruction, which did not prevent her from living alone until old age, to keep a Jewish surname for herself, despite the fact that the whole street and surroundings knew her history, and even the most inveterate anti-Semites avoided communicating with her.

The Jews did not have a chance to survive and escape - those who miraculously managed to avoid execution pits and gas chambers and tried to escape - became victims of massacres by local residents, incl. and partisan.

Here is what the leader of the Mogilev underground Kazimir Matte said in his report in April 1943:

“In the first months of the occupation, the Germans physically destroyed all the Jews. This fact gave rise to many different arguments. The most reactionary part of the population, relatively small, fully justified this atrocity and assisted them in this.

The main philistine part did not agree with such a cruel reprisal, but argued that the Jews themselves are to blame for the fact that everyone hates them, but it would be enough to restrict them economically and politically, and to shoot only some who held responsible positions.

The general conclusion of the population turned out to be this: no matter how the German paid off with everyone the way he did with the Jews. This made many think about it, introduced distrust towards the Germans ...

Considering the mood of the population, it was impossible to openly and directly defend the Jews in agitation work, since this, of course, could cause a negative attitude towards our leaflets even from our Soviet-minded people or people close to us.

I had to touch upon this issue indirectly, pointing to the brutal hatred of fascism for other nations and the desire to destroy these nations, to the fascists setting one nation against another, to the fact that under the slogan of fighting Jews and communists they want to destroy our Motherland, etc. " (RGASPI, f. 625, op. 1, d. 25, l. 401-418).

Such an attitude towards the Jews was by no means characteristic only of the "philistine part of the population" - it was also adhered to by high-ranking Soviet leaders.

Chief of the Central Staff partisan movement In the fall of 1942, the First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Belarus, P.K. Ponomarenko, sent a radiogram to the commanders of partisan formations, forbidding them to accept Jews who had fled from the ghetto into the detachments, allegedly because German spies might be among them. For those commanders who did not accept Jews before, P.K. Ponomarenko's radiogram became not only a directive, but also an official "indulgence". For the sake of objectivity, it must be said that among the partisan commanders there were also sober-minded, decent people who ignored this instruction and still continued to accept Jews into the detachments.

Hero Soviet Union Lieutenant Colonel of State Security Kirill Orlovsky, who commanded the partisan detachment named after Beria in Belarus, in September 1943 told the employees of the Institute of History of the Belarusian Communist Party: “I organized the detachment named after Kirov exclusively from Jews who had fled from the Nazi execution. I knew that I was facing incredible difficulties, but I was not afraid of these difficulties, I went for it only because all the partisan detachments and partisan units of the Baranovichi and Pinsk regions surrounding us refused these people.

There were cases of killing them. For example, the anti-Semitic partisans of the Tsygankov detachment killed 11 Jews, the peasants of the village of Radzhalovichi in the Pinsk region killed 17 Jews, the partisans of the detachment of them. Shchors killed 7 Jews. When I first arrived at these people, I found them unarmed, barefoot and hungry. They told me: "We want to take revenge on Hitler, but we do not have the opportunity" ... These people, wanting to take revenge on the German monsters for the shed people's blood, under my leadership for 2.5 months conducted at least 15 military operations, daily destroyed the telegraph and telephone communication of the enemy, they killed the Nazis, policemen and traitors to our homeland "(RGASPI, f. 625, op. 1, d. 22, l. 1186-1187).