SMORGONIE
Pre-1939: Smorgonie (Yiddish: Smorgon), town, Wilno województwo, Poland; 1939–1941: Smorgon’, Vileika oblast’, Belorussian SSR; 1941–1944: Smorgonie, initially Rayon center, Gebiet Wilejka, Generalkommissariat Weissruthenien, then from April 1, 1942, Kreis Aschmena, Gebiet Wilna-Land, Generalkommissariat Litauen; post-1991: Smarhon’, raen center, Hrodna voblasts’, Republic of Belarus
Smorgonie is located 72 kilometers (45 miles) east-southeast of Wilno. In 1931, there were some 4,000 Jews living in the town.
In 1939, the Soviet Union occupied Smorgonie. Under Soviet rule, a few wealthier Jews were exiled to Siberia. With the outbreak of war in June 1941, many Jewish males were conscripted into the Red Army.1
The Germans occupied Smorgonie on June 26, 1941. At the time of its capture, local Poles took the opportunity to rob and beat Jews with impunity. When the German civil administration was set up in Generalkommissariat Weissruthenien on September 1, Smorgonie was incorporated into Gebiet Wilejka. In September, the German authorities established two ghettos in the town. One was located in the synagogue courtyard, the other in the Karke.2 The Jews in the Karke ghetto (which remained open) were taken daily to build a railroad line.3
The main ghetto consisted of an area of about eight blocks, with the synagogue courtyard at its center; a wooden fence topped by barbed wire surrounded it. The Jews there were gathered and counted every morning, then sent to work cutting grass, cleaning the town, and so forth. Polish local police, led by Koszukowski, supervised them; they frequently harassed and beat the Jews. Jewish women were also made to cook, clean, and sew for soldiers quartered in barracks in Smorgonie on their way to the front. Some of the more lax German officers would let the women barter with the peasants for food. It was also possible to sneak out of the ghetto to barter with local non-Jews, although this was forbidden and therefore dangerous. Those who could obtain food would go to the synagogue to share it with others who could not. In January 1942, Belorussians replaced the Polish policemen.4
A Jewish Council (Judenrat) was also established in the main ghetto. It consisted of Rabbi Yitskhok Markus (the chief rabbi of Smorgonie), Rabbi Slodzinski, Meyer Goldberg, Abrasha Tsirulnik, Noyekh Yavitsh, Mordekhai Mirski, Perl, Sarakhan, and Tshertok. All were chosen because of their important roles in the pre-war community. The main task of the Judenrat was to fulfill a series of demands for money and property from the Gebietskommissariat in Wilejka between the fall of 1941 and March 1942.5 There was an underground organization in Smorgonie beginning early in 1942; it established contact with the underground in Kurzeniec, the center of a local network that was allied with a group of Soviet partisans in the nearby forests.
In April 1942, Smorgonie and other nearby towns were transferred to the Wilna-Land Gebietskommissariat in Generalkommissariat Litauen, under the jurisdiction of Gebietskommissar Horst Wulff.6
The ghetto was liquidated piecemeal through a series of deportations to various forced labor camps. The deportations focused on moving those who were fit for forced labor to locations where they could be of use. In the summer of 1942, the Karke ghetto was liquidated and its population moved into the main ghetto, which was enlarged to make room. The deportations began in August. First, 60 or 70 young Jews were deported to a forced labor camp in Varena and others to one in Olkieniki (Valkininkai). Shortly thereafter, 170 Jews were sent to the forced labor camp in Žiežmariai and 120 to Rudziszki (Rūdiškės).7 By this time, the majority of the young and able-bodied Jews of both genders had been deported. In September or October, most of the remaining Jews were sent to Oszmiana and a few others to Soly. About 150 remained in the ghetto, which was transformed into a small forced labor camp.8 In March 1943, the 74 Jews remaining in the camp were transferred to the Wilno ghetto. In early April, they were taken from there to Ponary, where they were killed.9
The Red Army liberated Smorgonie on July 6, 1944. The town was almost completely destroyed, and Jewish gravestones had been used to pave the sidewalks. Only about 60 Jews managed to survive the German occupation in the camps, in the forests, or in hiding. These Jews all left the town within a few years after liberation.10
SOURCES
Smorgonie’s small size made it necessary to rely almost entirely on survivor testimony for this article. Several survivor testimonies appear in the yizkor book: Abba Gordin and Hanoch Levin, eds., Smorgon, mehoz Vilna: Sefer ‘edut vezikaron (Tel Aviv: Irgun yots’e Smorgon be-Yisrael, 1965). The author of this entry also conducted an interview with Tania Rosmaryn, a native of Smorgonie who was interned in the ghetto there and was able to provide several important details. Herman Kruk’s ghetto diary contains scattered references to Smorgonie: Mordecai W. Bernstein, ed., Togbukh fun Vilner Geto (New York: YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, 1961). It is now available in an excellent English translation by Barbara Harshav: Herman Kruk, The Last Days of the Jerusalem of Lithuania: Chronicles from the Vilna Ghetto and the Camps, 1939–1944 (New Haven, CT: YIVO, 2002), which includes material from manuscripts not consulted in earlier editions. Most important, Kruk recorded the testimonies of other Jews about the camps and ghettos outside of Wilno, including the testimony of Rabbi Yankev Shneidman on Smorgonie.
Smorgonie is scarcely mentioned in the secondary literature, probably because of its small size, the lack of secondary sources, and the fact that it does not fit squarely into works on the Holocaust in either Belarus or Lithuania. However, the Smorgonie ghetto and the resistance are mentioned in Shalom Cholawsky, ‘Al naharot ha-Nyemen veha-Dnyeper: Yehude Byelorusyah ha-ma ʿaravit be-milhemet ha-ʿolam ha sheniyah (Tel Aviv: Moreshet, Bet ʿedut ʿash. Mordekhai Anilevits’ ve-Sifriyat Po ʿalim, 1982)—available in English as Shalom Cholawsky, The Jews of Bielorussia during World War II (Amsterdam: Harwood, 1998). The information on Smorgonie in Marat Botvinnik’s Pamiatniki genotsida evreev Belarusi (Minsk: Belarusskaia Navuka, 2000) is partly based on unreliable sources.
An account by Fishl Kustin is in YVA (O-33/5278) and has been published in Leonid Smilovitskii, Katastrofa evreev v Belorussii 1941–1944 gg. (Tel Aviv: Biblioteka Matveia Chernogo, 2000). There is also a detailed account in the archives of the Jewish Historical Institute in Warsaw (AŻIH, 301/2276).
NOTES
1. Elke Baranovski, “Vos ikh hob ibergelebt,” in Gordin and Levin, Smorgon, mehoz Vilna, p. 425.
2. Smilovitskii, Katastrofa evreev v Belorussii, p. 227; Kruk, The Last Days, p. 629; Baranovski, “Vos ikh hob ibergelebt,” pp. 426–427; Tova Dunski, “Ketaʿei ʿedut,” in Gordin and Levin, Smorgon, mehoz Vilna, p. 449. Also in Gordin and Levin, see Sh. Greys, “ʿedut,” p. 453; and Rivke Markus, “In geto un in lagern,” pp. 401–402.
3. Greys, “ʿedut,” p. 453.
4. Markus, “In geto un in lagern,” pp. 402–403; Kruk, The Last Days, p. 627; interview with Tania Rosmaryn, February 26, 2004, Washington, DC; AŻIH, 301/2276, p. 9.
5. Kruk, The Last Days, p. 491.
6. Announcement of Generalkommissar Adrian von Renteln, in B. Baranauskas and K. Ruksenas, Documents Accuse (Vilnius: Gintaras, 1970), p. 103; Kruk, The Last Days, p. 629.
7. Maryashe Yentes, “Khurbm Smorgon,” in Gordon and Levin, Smorgon, mehoz Vilna, pp. 379–382; Kruk, The Last Days, p. 629.
8. Yentes, “Khurbm Smorgon,” p. 386; Markus, “In geto un in lagern,” p. 406; Kruk, The Last Days, pp. 387, 670.
9. Kruk, The Last Days, p. 533; Yentes, “Khurbm Smorgon,” p. 391.
10. AŻIH, 301/2276, p. 17.
