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

Pre-1939: Krewo (Yiddish: Kreve), village, Wilno województwo, Poland; 1939–1941: Krevo, Oshmiany raion, then Smorgon’ raion, Vileika oblast’, Belorussian SSR; 1941–1944: Krewo, initially Rayon Smorgonie, Gebiet Wilejka, Generalkommissariat Weissruthenien, then from April 1, 1942, Kreis Aschmene, Gebiet Wilna-Land, Generalkommissariat Litauen; post-1991: Kreva, Smargon’ raen, Hrodna voblasts’, Republic of Belarus

Krewo is located 101 kilometers (63 miles) west-northwest of Minsk. On the eve of World War II, there were about 150 Jewish families living in the village.

In August 1939, several young Jewish men were mobilized into the Polish army just before the German invasion. On September 17, 1939, the Red Army occupied Krewo, which by the end of the year had been incorporated into the Soviet Union. The Soviet authorities nationalized all large businesses and closed down smaller enterprises. All workers were employed in cooperatives or worked for the state. There were shortages of goods, and people had to line up for basic necessities.¹

German forces occupied the village on June 25, 1941. Initially a German military administration was in control of the area. Soon after the Germans’ arrival, all Jews were assembled and ordered to select a Jewish Council (Judenrat). The Germans introduced a number of anti-Jewish measures: all Jews had to wear yellow badges on their chests and backs; Jews were prohibited from using the sidewalks and visiting the market; and they were forbidden to leave the village or to have any dealings with the non-Jewish population.²

On July 25, 1941, German security forces conducted the first Aktion in Krewo. Eight people accused of being Soviet activists were arrested and shot.³

The Germans also imposed forced labor on all Jewish adults of working age and on boys over the age of 12. The men worked cutting wood and building roads. Women did laundry and cleaned German homes and offices. On the way to work, Jews were beaten mercilessly by local policemen. A number of Jews worked daily at a German airfield run by the Luftwaffe, outside of town.

In September 1941, authority was transferred to a German civil administration. Krewo was initially incorporated into Gebiet Wilejka in Generalkommissariat Weissruthenien. Then from April 1, 1942, until the end of the Nazi occupation in 1944, Krewo was part of Gebiet Wilna-Land in Generalkommissariat Litauen.

By October 1941, the Jews of Krewo had been resettled into a ghetto in a run-down part of town on Bogdanover Street, from the area of the castle up to the market.⁴ Farmers from the surrounding area plundered those houses that the [End Page 1078] Jews vacated. According to one survivor, the ghetto remained unfenced,⁵ but Jews were only permitted to leave for work, provided they had work passes. Local policemen counted the Jews as they left and returned to the ghetto in work columns each day.⁶ There was severe overcrowding in the ghetto, and a number of Jews had to live in cold and uncomfortable conditions in the synagogue. Shortages of food and the unsanitary living arrangements resulted in the spread of infectious disease. However, the Judenrat tried to share the burdens as best it could; for example, refugees from other towns, who had been robbed of all their possessions by the local police, were assigned to eat with a different family every evening.⁷

Those employed outside the ghetto risked their lives by bartering possessions with local farmers for food and smuggling it into the ghetto. The German authorities periodically imposed “contributions” of money and goods on the Judenrat. In January 1942, the Germans rounded up a group of male Jews and escorted them out of town; they were never heard from again. In 1942, there were also assignments of Jews to forced labor camps, especially of young Jews to the forced labor camp in Žiežmariai run by the Organisation Todt, which involved the construction of a road between Kaunas and Wilno.⁸

According to German reports from the late summer of 1942, there were 447 Jews living in the Krewo ghetto, of whom 143 (102 men and 41 women) were deployed for work at various workplaces. Sixty-eight men and 26 women worked for the Wehrmacht (probably a Luftwaffe detachment), 10 men worked cleaning streets, and 8 men worked as artisans. The list also includes 3 men as ghetto guards and 3 working for the Judenrat (probably its members). Others include a female nurse and a female hairdresser, 2 men in the town bakery, and 2 men and 2 women in the dairy.⁹

In early October 1942, just after the High Holidays, the remaining Jews in the Krewo ghetto were transferred to the Oszmiana ghetto. Some of the Jews transferred to Oszmiana were subsequently murdered by a Lithuanian killing squad on October 24, 1942, in an Aktion directed against the elderly and the sick. When the Oszmiana ghetto was liquidated in March 1943, some Jews were sent to the Wilno ghetto, others were sent to the Ponary killing site to be shot, and a number were permitted to join relatives in labor camps in Lithuania, including the camp at Žiežmariai.¹⁰ A few Jews managed to escape from the Krewo and Oszmiana ghettos and join the partisans. Most of the known survivors, however, passed through the Žiežmariai camp.