The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos, 1933-1945

Pre-1939: Holszany (Yiddish: Olshan), village, Wilno województwo, Poland; 1939–1941: Gol’shany, Oshmiany raion, Vileika oblast’, Belorussian SSR; 1941–1944: Holschany, intially Rayon Aschmena, Gebiet Wilejka, Generalkommissariat Weissruthenien, then from April 1, 1942, Kreis Aschmena, Gebiet Wilna-Land, Generalkommissariat Litauen; post-1991: Hal’shany, Ashmiany raen, Hrodna voblasts’, Republic of Belarus

Holszany is located 70 kilometers (44 miles) southeast of Wilno. In 1921, there were about 800 Jews living in Holszany.¹

German soldiers on motorcycles occupied the village on June 26, 1941, four days after their invasion of the USSR. A group of Jews tried to flee with the retreating Soviet forces, but the internal Soviet border with the Belorussian SSR remained closed, and most had to turn back. As soon as the Germans arrived, local peasants from the surrounding villages came to Holszany and started to loot the Soviet shops. German troops passing through also robbed Jewish homes and vandalized the synagogue, beating up a rabbi from another town whom they caught there.²

In the summer of 1941, a German military administration was in charge of the region. In September 1941, authority was transferred to a German civil administration. Holszany was part of Rayon Aschmena, which initially was included in Gebiet Wilejka within Generalkommissariat Weissruthenien. From April 1, 1942, until the occupation ended in early June 1944, Holszany was part of Gebiet Wilna-Land, within Generalkommissariat Litauen.

Upon the Germans’ arrival, local non-Jews, mostly Polish, were recruited to form an auxiliary police force, initially headed by a brutal antisemite named Gan, which implemented the Germans’ anti-Jewish measures. One policeman, named Petrusevich, was subsequently shot by the Germans for raping young Jewish girls.³

As recalled by survivor Selma Dunn, the Jews were required to make yellow patches in the form of a Star of David, which she embroidered onto the front and back of her clothing.⁴ In addition, Jews were not permitted to use the sidewalks, and they were banned from having any relations with non-Jews. From the start, the local police drove Jewish men, women, and youths to perform forced labor, which included the humiliating job of removing the grass from between the cobblestones on the streets. Other tasks included road repairs, felling trees, harvesting potatoes, and clearing snow in winter.

The Germans also established a Jewish Council (Judenrat), headed by Rabbi Reuven Chadash, which registered the Jews and had to ensure that all the German demands and regulations were met. It also took over the task of assigning Jews to forced labor. To assist it in collecting items such as linen, clothing, and soap, which German officials in Oszmiana requested, the Judenrat recruited a unit of Jewish Police (Jüdischer Ordnungsdienst) from among the Jewish youths. If the Jews could not find the required items, they purchased them illegally from non-Jews, as the Germans threatened to kill a number of Jews if their demands were not met.⁵

At the end of the summer or in the fall of 1941, probably around September, the wójt (local administrator) in Holszany passed on to the Judenrat German orders for the Jews to move into a ghetto.⁶ Dunn recalls that the Jews were forced into the houses around the synagogue, from which non-Jews were evicted. The Jews were permitted to take with them only what they could carry in their hands. Her family shared a small house with another family. The ghetto was surrounded by a barbed-wire fence and was guarded by the local police.⁷

By the fall of 1941, a number of refugees from the massacres in Lithuania had arrived in Holszany, and some local Jews understood the likely fate that awaited them. For example, some Holszany Jews who had moved to Oszmiana were executed there in November 1941, on the orders of the head of the Gendarmerie, for not being properly registered.⁸ The repeated German demands quickly impoverished the Jews; eventually they could no longer celebrate the Sabbath with a [End Page 1056] special meal. The Jews, however, received some moral support from the local Polish Catholic priest, Chamski, who spoke out in his sermons against the murders of the Jews.⁹ In the winter of 1941–1942, the Jews were also required to surrender their fur items of clothing for the use of the German army. The Jews were able to sneak through the wire and barter their remaining possessions with local non-Jews for food, as some of the local policemen occasionally turned a blind eye.

On April 1, 1942, the Germans transferred a strip of territory including most of Rayon Aschmena from Generalkommissariat Weissruthenien to Gebiet Wilna-Land. At the same time, Lithuanians came in and took over the local administration and local police. Knowing the fate of the majority of the Jews in Lithuania, the Holszany Jews feared for their lives. It was probably around this time that Rabbi Reuven Chadash took a group of around 150 Jews to the ghetto in Wołożyn, which remained within Gebiet Wilejka in Generalkommissariat Weissruthenien, although the precise details of this transfer remain unknown. Unfortunately the Holszany Jews in Wołożyn were nearly all murdered in a brutal Aktion there on May 10, 1942.¹⁰

On May 13, 1942, the Gebietskommissar Wilna-Land, Horst Wulff, issued instructions concerning the ghettoization of the Jews, which stressed that if any Jews left the ghetto illegally, stern reprisals would be taken against those Jews who remained.¹¹ Despite the desire to escape, most Jews were concerned not to give the Germans any reason to liquidate the ghetto.

In the summer of 1942, around 200 young people from Holszany were sent to various forced labor camps, especially to the camp in Žiežmariai in Lithuania. Dunn was in the second transport to Žiežmariai, where she joined her sister, only about two weeks after the first transport left.¹² According to Nechama Schneider, also sent to Žiežmariai, the transfer took place in trucks, and she spent one night on her way in the Oszmiana synagogue, where Jews from other ghettos were probably added to the transport.¹³

At the end of August 1942, according to a German Labor Office census, there were 450 Jews remaining in the Holszany ghetto, of whom 210 (133 men and 77 women) were assigned to specific labor tasks. Among the various labor assignments, there were 31 Jews performing forestry work, 15 men employed at the sawmill, 25 working on an estate, 24 cleaning the streets, 20 craftsmen, and 6 Jewish policemen.¹⁴

The ghetto was liquidated in October 1942, when the remaining Jews in the Holszany ghetto were resettled to the Oszmiana ghetto, which now came under the administration of the Wilno ghetto, where the Judenrat was headed by Jacob Gens.¹⁵ When the Oszmiana ghetto was liquidated in late March and early April 1943, the Jews of Holszany shared the fate of all the Jews collected there. Those Jews deemed unfit for work were deported to Ponary and shot, while those able to work were moved to various labor camps in Lithuania.¹⁶

Of the roughly 800 Jews living in pre-war Holszany, only about 30 are known to have survived, mostly from among the youths sent to the Žiežmariai camp. After the village was liberated in 1944, several Jewish families returned, but by the 1950s they had moved to Poland and then from there to Israel or the United States.