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

Pre-1941: Lel’chitsy, town and raion center, Poles’e oblast’, Belorussian SSR; 1941–1944: Leltschizy, Rayon and Gebiet center, Generalkommissariat Shitomir; post-2001: Lel’chytsy, raen center, Homel’ voblasts’, Republic of Belarus

Lel’chitsy is located 70 kilometers (44 miles) west-southwest of Mozyr’. In 1939, there were 746 Jews in Lel’chitsy (29.2 percent).

Soon after the inception of hostilities on June 22, 1941, large numbers of refugees appeared in Lel’chitsy, primarily from Turov. There was no organized evacuation of the population. Men eligible for the draft were mobilized for military service in the Red Army. The remaining women, old people, and children were unable to leave Lel’chitsy in time. The only way to leave Lel’chitsy was to take the road towards Mozyr’ or to get to the railway station in El’sk, but many people had no means of transportation. Older people thought they would not be bothered if they stayed behind to look after their property. The Jews remembered the Germans from 1918 and thought they would leave the civilian population untouched. Less than one third of the Jews of Lel’chitsy managed to evacuate.

Lel’chitsy was occupied by German troops on August 23, 1941. The front line quickly moved eastward. In the town, a mayor was appointed, a military commandant’s office (Ortskommandantur) was established, and a police force was recruited from among Belorussians and Russians. The police headquarters was located in the raion Communist Party [End Page 1539] executive committee (raiispolkom) offices on Zelenyi Lane. The police helped the Germans to uncover former Soviet activists and party workers and conducted a registration of the Jewish population.¹

In Lel’chitsy, the Jews initially continued to live in their own homes until early September 1941, fearing for their lives. Relations between the Belorussians and the Jews became guarded, and the first instances of rape and theft on the part of the peasants were noted.

The first Aktion was the work of a German punitive detachment that arrived in Lel’chitsy from the direction of Ovruch on September 5 (or September 7), 1941. The soldiers wore helmets and green uniforms. They immediately began to round up the Jews and herd them into the courtyard of the former People’s Commissariat of Internal Affairs (NKVD) building in the town center, on the Mozyr’ highway. The majority of Lel’chitsy’s Jews managed to run away and hide. The Germans caught mainly Jewish refugees from Turov. In the afternoon, the Germans made the Jews line up in a column (about 300 people) and drove them to the northeast, along the Mozyr’ highway to the “Zael’e” settlement. There, 500 meters (547 yards) from the last houses of the settlement was a large crater from an aerial bomb. Many men, women, elderly, and children had belongings with them—holdalls on their shoulders or bags in their hands. Mothers carried the smallest children. Armed German escorts urged them forward. Along the way, the Jews sobbed loudly and begged to be let go. The victims were not undressed before they were killed. At the site of the Aktion, there were approximately 20 German soldiers, and more patrolled the perimeter to prevent escapes. People were led to the edge of the pit in groups. Then the perpetrators opened fire, and the dead fell into the pit. The corpses remained unburied for a long time.²

Fedora Lipitskaia recalled that in September 1941 she heard shots and people’s cries. From the window she saw a crowd of Jews being escorted by Germans. Lipitskaia recognized Jewish acquaintances with whom she had worked in a sewing artel. Her friend Etka cried out, “Fedora, farewell!” The column disappeared behind the hill, and soon shots rang out. An elderly Jew ran into her yard, begging her to hide him. He said that “some German superior,” before the murder, gave a speech in which he said that the Jews were being shot on Hitler’s orders. Three days later, this elderly man left Lipitskaia’s house.³

The second Aktion took place in late September 1941 when the punitive detachment returned. The German soldiers, helped by the police, hunted for Jews all day. The 400 Jews they caught, mainly women and children, were herded into several Jewish houses in the center of Lel’chitsy, near the Ortskommandantur. The Nazis selected about 15 skilled workers (tailors and cobblers) with their families (more than 60 people) and let them stay in the houses. The other Jews were herded to the Zagor’e area, and those unable to walk were transported in carts. At Zagor’e, a pit had been prepared. According to Andrei Zhurovich, the pogrom lasted two days; 15 Jews were spared to bury the dead. After the job was done, they were killed.⁴

The third Aktion was carried out in the early spring of 1942. According to Oberwachtmeister der Gendarmerie Max Lessner, on the orders of the head of the Lel’chitsy Gendarmerie, a small detachment of Gendarmes arrived to round up all the Jews. They arrested about 70 Jews and locked them in one of the houses, where they were kept for two weeks.⁵

The Jews under arrest, together with their families, were locked in the Girsh home on the corner of Zelenaia Street. There were so many people in the house that there was nowhere to lie down. Elizaveta Kolesnik, who lived nearby, was asked by the prisoners to bring swaddling clothes, as a young Jewish woman was giving birth. For four days, no one was given any food. The younger Jews were forced to go to Zagor’e to dig a new pit with little steps cut into it. They complained that the ground was frozen, and it was hard to work.

When the excavations were completed, the police brought four carts, each drawn by two horses. A new selection was undertaken. Out of 70 people, the Germans set aside 12 tailors and cobblers, and the remaining Jews were put in the carts. Four policemen and eight Gendarmes beat and shouted at their victims as they set off. The women and children sobbed and held their heads in their hands, as they all understood where they were being taken. Among the police escorts were two local residents: Efim Dashkevich (shot by the Germans) and Nikolai Kholiava (escaped with the Germans). They shot the victims in the back of the head, using pistols and submachine guns, with single shots. The pit was not filled in until springtime, when the police requisitioned local residents for the task.⁶

The fourth Aktion took place in the summer of 1942. In July, an SD detachment came to Lel’chitsy from Zhitomir and shot more than 40 Soviet citizens, including the last Jews, “for ties with partisans.”⁷

The Germans and police searched incessantly for surviving Jews, killing them wherever they found them. In July 1943, in the village of Buinovich, the Nazis found the five children of a man named Finster, who was married to a Belorussian. They shot three of them, and they grabbed the seven-month-old twins Ania and Fedia by their feet and smashed their heads against a tree. The Germans did not allow the children to be buried, and their corpses were pulled apart by dogs.⁸

Some of the residents of Lel’chitsy, despite the threat of death, gave aid to the Jews. Riva Lel’chuk was saved by the Belotskii family: Mariia, her mother Agaf’ia, and her step father Ivan. The Belotskiis hid these Jews from the end of 1941 until November 1942, when they left to join the Soviet partisans.⁹

Soviet troops liberated Lel’chitsy on January 21, 1944. The Soviet Extraordinary State Commission (ChGK) established that during the occupation in Lel’chitsy and the Lel’chitsy raion, 2,148 people died at the hands of the Nazis, including around 750 Jews, some of whom were refugees from Turov.¹⁰

In September 1970, in connection with an inquiry by the organs of justice of the Polish People’s Republic, a commission came to Lel’chitsy on the instructions of the Office of the Public Prosecutor of the USSR. With the participation of witnesses, the commission inspected the site where in 1941–1942 mass shootings of Soviet Jewish citizens had occurred.¹¹ [End Page 1540]