BYSTRZYCA
Pre-1939: Bystrzyca (Yiddish: Bistrits), village, Wilno województwo, Poland; 1939–1941: Bystritsa, Ostrovets raion, Vileika oblast’, Belorussian SSR; 1941–1944: Bystrzyca, initially Rayon Swir, Gebiet Wilejka, Generalkommissariat Weissruthenien, then from April 1, 1942, Kreis Swir, Gebiet Wilna-Land, Genera lkommissariat Litauen; post-1991: Bystrytsa, Astravets raen, Hrodna voblasts’, Republic of Belarus
Bystrzyca is located 38 kilometers (24 miles) east-northeast of Wilno. In 1919, the Jewish population of the village was 154 (23 families).
German armed forces occupied the village on June 24, 1941. In the summer of 1941, a German military commandant’s office (Ortskommandantur) governed Bystrzyca. In September 1941, authority was transferred to a German civil administration. Initially, Bystrzyca was part of Gebiet Wilejka in Generalkommissariat Weissruthenien.
In the summer and fall of 1941, the German authorities introduced a series of anti-Jewish measures in Bystrzyca: Jews were prohibited from leaving the limits of the village or from using the sidewalks; they were obliged to wear a yellow patch; and Jewish property, including agricultural land, was confiscated. The German authorities ordered the establishment of a Jewish Council (Judenrat).
According to survivor Saul Katz, who arrived in Bystrzyca during the summer of 1941, a ghetto was set up in the village within a few months, probably in the fall of 1941. The Jews lived in overcrowded conditions, with no running water. Each day a number of Jews were taken out of the ghetto to perform manual forced labor, mainly in agriculture, working land previously owned by Jews. The ghetto was only lightly guarded by a couple of local policemen, and the Jews managed to obtain some food by bartering their possessions with other local inhabitants. Katz received the impression that the Judenrat did its best to protect the Bystrzyca Jews but that it discriminated against newcomers. He left the ghetto during the winter of 1941–1942.1
Soon after the establishment of the ghetto, the German authorities imposed a fine of 50,000 rubles on the village’s Jews. Subsequently the Germans demanded the surrender of all valuables, boots, and furs. Over time they also took furniture, bed linens, and whatever jewelry remained. The local policemen assigned as overseers constantly beat the Jewish laborers and displayed great cruelty. Groups of young Jews were sent to labor camps in Ostrowiec, about 25 kilometers (15.5 miles) distant; in the Lithuanian town of Vievis, about 150 kilometers (93 miles) away; and in other locations. A few of these people escaped into the forests, but most of the others were murdered when the camps were liquidated.
On April 1, 1942, the region including Bystrzyca was officially transferred from Generalkommissariat Weissruthenien to Generalkommissariat Litauen and became part of Gebiet Wilna-Land, headed by Gebietskommissar Horst Wulff. Among the restrictions imposed officially on the Jews living [End Page 1047] in the ghettos in this region was a curfew from 7:00 p.m. to 7:00 a.m., compulsory labor, and a prohibition on any personal or economic contacts with non-Jews.2 According to the results of a census conducted by the Germans in May 1942, there were 194 Jews living in the Bystrzyca ghetto at that time.3
On October 27, 1942, the head of the Judenrat in Wilno, Jacob Gens, reported that the Germans had liquidated the ghettos in Bystrzyca and Kiemieliszki during the previous week. He regretted that no Jewish Police from the Vilna ghetto had been present, as “all the Jews were shot there without any distinction.”4 The list of victims prepared by the Soviet Extraordinary State Commission (ChGK) includes 153 names.5 The mass shooting probably was carried out by a detachment of German Security Police from Wilno, assisted by the local police.
Some Jews evaded the roundup and found refuge with local farmers; of these, eight are known to have survived until the Red Army liberated Bystrzyca in the summer of 1944.
SOURCES
Information on the fate of the Jewish community of Bystrzyca during the Holocaust can be found in the following publications: “Bystrzyca,” in Shmuel Spector and Bracha Freundlich, eds., Pinkas ha-kehilot. Encyclopaedia of Jewish Communities: Poland, vol. 8, Vilna, Bialystok, Nowogrodek (Jerusalem: Yad Vashem, 2005), pp. 175–176; Guy Miron, ed., The Yad Vashem Encyclopedia of the Ghettos during the Holocaust (Jerusalem: Yad Vashem, 2010), p. 98; and Irena Guzenberg et al., eds., The Ghettos of Oshmyany, Svir, Švenčionys Regions: Lists of Prisoners, 1942 (Vilnius: Valstybinis Vilniaus Gaono žydu muziejus, 2009), pp. 115–116, 414, 640.
Documentation regarding the murder of the Jews of Bystrzyca can be found in the following archives: GARF (7021-89-11); MA (D.1357); VHF (e.g., # 43006); and YVA.
NOTES
1. VHF, # 43006, testimony of Saul Katz.
2. Anordnung Betr.: Ghettoisierung der Juden, issued by Gebietskommissar Wilna-Land, May 13, 1942, reproduced in Guzenberg et al., The Ghettos of Oshmyany, Svir, Švenčionys Regions, p. 130.
3. Ibid., pp. 115, 640.
4. See Jacob Gens’s words at the meeting of the Judenrat in Wilno on October 27, 1942, MA, D.1357, published in I. Arad, ed., Unichtozhenie evreev SSSR v gody nemetskoi okkupatsii (1941–1944): Sbornik dokumentov i materialov (Jerusalem: Yad Vashem, 1991), p. 254.
5. GARF, 7021-89-11, pp. 10–13.
