TOMASZÓWKA
Pre-1939: Tomaszówka, town, województwo poleskie, Poland; 1939–1941: Tomashovka, Brest oblast’, Belorussian SSR; 1941–1944: Tomaschowka, Rayon Domatschewo, Gebiet Brest Litowsk (Land), Generalkommissariat Wolhynien und Podolien; post-1991: Tamashouka, Beras’tse voblasts’, Republic of Belarus
Tomaszówka is located about 50 kilometers (31 miles) to the south of Brześć, just on the eastern side of the Bug River. There were probably a few hundred Jews living in Tomaszówka just prior to the German invasion.
German troops occupied Tomaszówka on June 22, 1941. Soon a local police force was established, initially consisting of just a few policemen, but by 1943 there were 22 policemen serving there, commanded by Gregori Tabala.1 In the fall of 1941, a German civil administration was established. Tomaszówka was in Rayon Domatschewo within Gebiet Brest Litowsk (Land). The agricultural leader (Bezirkslandwirt) responsible for Rayon Domatschewo was Werner Dressler. From the summer of 1942, a German police cavalry squadron was based in the town, primarily to conduct operations against partisans.
Local inhabitant Kiril Karvat has described the ghetto: “[F]rom the very first days of the occupation, the whole Jewish population living in Tomaszówka was herded by the Germans into a camp, which was called a ghetto. The Jewish ghetto was in the western part of the settlement…. The Germans put up a barbed wire fence around it. German police and soldiers patrolled the fence the whole time.”2 “I can’t say exactly how many houses were in the ghetto…. Very strict restrictions were introduced; the local people were forbidden to go into the ghetto; if caught they might be shot.”3
The Jewish survivor Nachum Knopmacher from Włodawa, who was in the ghetto from the fall of 1941 until the summer of 1942, described his work for the Organisation Todt (OT), including bridge and housing construction. Jews worked outside the ghetto during the day and had to return in the evening. In the fall of 1941, he saw how the German civil official in charge, Hecht, murdered a Jew named Tuwia in a cruel manner, setting his dog onto the man when he was helpless to resist.4
In the early summer of 1942, some 400 Viennese Jews were brought into the ghetto from the Włodawa ghetto in the Generalgouvernement for forced labor.5 According to Knopmacher, in April 1942, all the Jews of the ghetto were assembled, and Hecht selected some 80 women, children, and old people, who were then taken out of town and shot nearby. Knopmacher mentions also that some 50 Jewish workers (mostly those from Vienna) were shot at the discretion of Krystop, a Reich German in charge of bridge construction.6
Kiril Karvat also describes a shooting Aktion at the end of April 1942, although in his opinion the victims probably came from the Domaczów ghetto. He saw three or four German trucks arriving from the direction of Tomaszówka. The trucks turned into a field in which a long antitank ditch had been dug by Soviet soldiers. The people dismounted from the trucks, guarded by Germans and policemen. The victims, men, women, and children, were made to undress and forced to get into the ditch in groups of about 20 people. The policemen and the German soldiers shot the Jews with submachine guns.7
According to a German report for June 1942, about 1,000 Jews (men and women) were engaged in construction work for the OT on the bridge in Tomaszówka, having partly been removed from the ghetto there and placed in a separate labor camp.8
The available sources differ as to the date of the ghetto’s liquidation. The Soviet Extraordinary State Commission (ChGK) places it in July 1942, in antitank ditches just off the road from Tomaszówka to Brześć. However, there may be some confusion between the ghetto liquidation and the shooting of Jews working on road construction in the area. Some 500 Jews were taken from the Domaczów ghetto in May 1942 for work on the Brześć-Kowel highway. Apparently those who were exhausted and weakened were shot shortly afterwards.9
Most eyewitness accounts, however, confirm the dating given in a contemporary German report. The Gendarmerie-Gebietsführer in Brześć stated that “on September 19 and 20, 1942, about 2,900 Jews were shot in Domaczów and Tomaszówka by a special command of the SD in connection [End Page 1482] with the cavalry squadron stationed in Domaczów, the Gendarmerie, and the Schutzmannschaft. The ‘Jewish Aktion’ took place without any disturbances.”10 One member of the cavalry squadron based in Tomaszówka reportedly committed suicide shortly after the liquidation of the Jews there.11
A Jewish survivor from Domaczów stated that the Aktion in Tomaszówka took place on the day after the liquidation of the Domaczów ghetto. A driver for the Gendarmerie in Brześć dated the ghetto liquidations in Tomaszówka and Domaczów both in September, adding that in Tomaszówka the Jews were killed in an antitank ditch.12
Most significantly, the key local witness, Kiril Karvat, confirmed in the 1990s that “in September 1942, together with my friend … we saw the Jews from the Tomaszówka ghetto being escorted by Gestapo soldiers and policemen…. A very big group of Jews from Tomaszówka were shot on that day. The massacre took place in the same field and ditch as the shooting of April 1942.”13
One German witness who served in the cavalry squadron based in Tomaszówka from August 1942, Karl Vehrenberg, stated that “Jewish artisans and families, about 30 people in all, were accommodated in several houses on the outskirts of Tomaszówka, surrounded by barbed wire. They did all the work that the squadron needed doing.” If his recollection is correct, this was either a remnant left after the main Aktion or those left after the bulk had been transferred to a labor camp closer to their work site. Another squadron member, Erwin Hentschke, recalls that members of the squadron served as perimeter guards during the Tomaszówka ghetto liquidation.14
It is not possible to determine precisely how many Jews were confined within the Tomaszówka ghetto or how many were killed. Personal accounts of the liquidation of the Tomaszowka ghetto estimate that somewhere between 1,500 and 2,000 Jews were killed during this Aktion.15 This would imply that additional Jews must have been brought in from elsewhere, apart from the 400 or so Jews from Vienna who were sent across the Bug in April 1942. There is evidence to suggest that some Jews were transferred from Domaczów to Tomaszówka to work on road and bridge construction there.16
Given that several hundred Jews from the Tomaszówka ghetto probably died or were killed during the course of the summer, the figure of 2,900 killed in Domaczów and Tomaszówka on September 19–20, 1942, seems fairly reliable. Estimates for the numbers killed in Domaczów vary quite considerably.17 From the conflicting sources, however, it seems that there were probably about 1,800 Jews in Tomaszowka,18 including any in nearby labor camps, just prior to the Aktion.
After the ghetto liquidation, the Germans and policemen brought the clothes and underwear of those who had been shot back to Tomaszówka by truck and sold them to the inhabitants in exchange for local produce.19
SOURCES
Fragmentary information on the Tomaszówka ghetto can be found in the following archives: AUKG-BRBBO; BA-BL; BA-L; GABO; NA (WCU, trial of Andrzej Sawoniuk); and WASt.
NOTES
1. GABO, 201-1-3, p. 58, Verzeichnis der Schutzmänner der Schutzmannschaft in Tomaschowka, Rayon Domatschewo, August 8, 1943.
2. BA-L (ZStL), II 204 AR-Z 472/67, K. P. Karvat (Karwat), June 17, 1968.
3. NA, WCU, K.P. Karvat, February 18, 1997.
4. BA-L, II 202 AR-Z 472/67 (Hecht investigation), Bd. I, pp. 31–38, Nachum Knopmacher, June 15, 1965.
5. Ibid. Knopmacher dates this transfer in March 1942, but it is unlikely to have been before May, as the transport of 998 Jews to Włodawa from Vienna did not leave the city until April 27, 1942; see Florian Freund and Hans Safrian, “Die Verfolgung der österreichischen Juden 1938–1945: Vertreibung und Deportation,” in Emmerich Talos et al., eds., NS-Herrschaft in Österreich: Ein Handbuch (Vienna: öbv & hpt, 2001), pp. 767–794, here p. 793.
6. BA-L, II 202 AR-Z 472/67, Bd. I, pp. 31–38, Nachum Knopmacher, June 15, 1965.
7. NA, WCU, K.P. Karvat, February 18, 1997.
8. BA-BL, R 94/7, report of Brest Gebietskommissar, section Arbeitsamt, for June 1942.
9. GABO, 514-1-195, pp. 4–7.
10. BA-BL, R 94/7, Gendarmerie-Gebietsführer Brest report, October 6, 1942.
11. WASt, Verlustmeldungen, Polizei Reiterabteilung.
12. AUKGBRBBO, Criminal File 2905, case no. 69 (Nikolai K. Lialko), p. 40, Boris S. Grunstein, September 27, 1944; and file no. 466 (Ivan E. Chikun), vol. 2, pp. 89–93, Ivan S. Khvisyuchik, March 16, 1983. See also the statement on March 24, 1970, of Erwin Glass, a former cavalry squadron member, who recalls that his comrades told him that the Jews of Tomaszówka were killed at the same time as those of Domaczów—BA-L, II 202 AR-Z 472/67, Bd. I, pp. 180–182.
13. NA, WCU, K.P. Karvat on February 18, 1997.
14. See BA-L, 204 AR-Z 369/63 (Hahn investigation), Bd. V, pp. 178–198; ZStL, II 202 AR-Z 472/67, Bd. I, pp. 165–167, statement of Erwin Hentschke on March 16, 1970.
15. See the ChGK reports for the Domachevo raion and accompanying witness statements, in GABO, 514-1-195.
16. NA, WCU, statement of Baruch Greenstein, October 9, 1996. Greenstein’s testimony, however, was problematic and not used during the trial of Andrzej Sawoniuk in London in 1999.
17. German witnesses, who were keen to minimize the scale of the Aktion, mention only some 500 Jews in Domaczów at the time of the ghetto liquidation. The ChGK report, however, gives the figure of 2,700 Jews killed in Domaczów; see BA-L, 204 AR-Z 369/63, Bd. I, pp. 194–196; and ChGK report, GABO, 514-1-195.
18. NA, WCU, officer’s information, K.P. Karvat, February 10, 1995. Karvat in this interview gave the figure of 1,800 Jews killed in Tomaszówka.
19. BA-L, II 204 AR-Z 472/67, K.P. Karvat, June 17, 1968.
