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

Pre-1941: Mozyr’, city and raion center, Poles’e oblast’, Belorussian SSR; 1941–1944: Mosyr, Rayon and Gebiet center, Generalkommissariat Shitomir; post-1991: Mazyr, raen center, Homel’ voblasts’, Republic of Belarus

Mozyr’ is located 133 kilometers (82.6 miles) southwest of Gomel’. In 1939, 6,307 (36 percent) of the city’s 17,477 inhabitants were Jewish.

German armed forces first entered Mozyr’ on August 22, 1941. A wave of killings and abuse began immediately. In early September 1941, forces of the 2nd SS-Cavalry Regiment shot more than 150 people as “looters.” Most of the victims were Jews.

The city administration established a Jewish Council ( Judenrat) of 12 members under Eisha Izrailevich Koifman and his deputy Iosif Iankelevich Berdichevskii. On October 20, 1941, Mozyr’ became the seat of Gebiet Mosyr, within Generalkommissariat Shitomir, with Wolfgang Przyrembel as Gebietskommissar. In January 1942, Leutnant der Gendarmerie Wilhelm Kellermann became Gendarmerie-Gebietsführer in Mozyr’.¹ Ivan Podbereznyi was the chief of the local police, assisted by Titov, Kholodnyi, Tokarskii, Suprun, Telepun, Krupskii, and others, in all about 35 men. Podbereznyi had previously been a Communist Party member and chief of the Soviet secret police (NKVD) in the El’sk raion.²

At some time in the fall of 1941, the German authorities established a ghetto in Mozyr’ on Romashov Rov Street, where there were primarily one-story wooden buildings.³ The Germans placed 15 to 20 Jews in each of the run-down houses, without sufficient food or medicine. A number of Jews died from disease or malnutrition during the ghetto’s short existence.

The Jewish Council was assigned the tasks of accommodating the ghetto inmates, maintaining internal order, and interacting with the German authorities. The council members were in fact hostages of the Nazis, however, because the majority of the ghetto inmates were not fit for work, and the ghetto in Mozyr’ had very little economic significance.

By decree of the town authority, Berdichevskii drew up a list of ghetto inhabitants, which included 273 names. The majority of them were women, elderly people, and children, ranging in age from a few months to 90 years old.⁴

Jews from Skrigalov, Kopatkevichi, Prudok, and Glinishche were resettled into the Mozyr’ ghetto. A little later, 38 more Jews arrived from the Kamen’ sel’sovet. Another 111 Jews came from El’sk, Petrikov, Narovlia, Sloboda, Meleshkovichi, Mikhalok, Iur’evichi, Ogorodniki, Zapol’e, Prudok, and Red’ki. With all the new arrivals, there were 433 Jews living in the Mozyr’ ghetto as of January 1, 1942, according to Berdichevskii’s list.⁵

At the end of 1941, a group of Jewish carpenters and their families decided to take their own lives. According to R.A. Sherman, they gathered at 19 Pushkin Street, next to where they had lived before the war. They cast lots, and it fell to Khaia Gofshtein to set the fire. Around 40 people perished in the blaze.⁶

The Germans liquidated the ghetto in January 1942. On January 6, the ghetto inhabitants were transferred to the Mozyr’ prison. They were allowed to take only a small supply of food and personal items. Their remaining property was to be left at home, and the doors were to be left unlocked. On the morning of January 7, the women, old people, and children were separated from the men and taken about 1 kilometer [End Page 1547] (0.6 mile) from Mozyr’ towards the village of Bobr, to a hill beneath which lay a large gully. They were escorted by German Gendarmes, soldiers of a Czechoslovak battalion, and Belorussian policemen. The infirm, sick, and exhausted were carried on four carts. In the meantime, about 200 men were shot in the prison yard. They were led out in groups, placed against the wall, and shot by policemen under the command of the Germans. Then the Jewish cobblers from the prison workshop were ordered to transport the men’s corpses on sleds to a ditch on the edge of town.

The women, children, and elderly taken to the hill were ordered to undress, lay their clothes and things in piles, and then climb to the top in groups of three or four. Those who were too weak to climb on their own were dragged by the arm or prodded with bayonets. The people guessed that their execution was imminent; a horrible cry arose; and the women cried and begged for mercy. At the top of the hill, the victims were lined up in a row and shot. The bodies rolled down into the gully. The Aktion lasted two hours. Then the Germans and the local police went down and finished off the wounded. The bodies were piled in a stack, and the side of the hill facing the gully was blown up so that the earth rolled down to cover the mass grave. The layer of soil turned out not to be very thick, however, and dogs were able to dig up and carry off human remains. The indigenous police collected the Jews’ belongings. Two or three days later, the police once again sent the shoemakers from the prison to the ditch and made them take all the bodies (about 300 corpses in total) to a single site and bury them.⁷

A second group of Jews was taken to the Pripiat’ River, where, according to the witness testimony of Aleksandra Kozlovskaia, they made holes in the ice. The Germans then drove the doomed Jews towards the holes and forced them to jump beneath the ice. Those who resisted were shoved into the holes with rifle butts.⁸ In total, around 700 Jews were drowned in Mozyr’ during the occupation.

During the Aktion of January 9–10, 1942, the teacher Liza Lozinskaia succeeded in hiding. The next day she was discovered, brought to the market square, and tied to a telegraph pole. The Nazis hung a sign around her neck that read: “I sabotaged the implementation of German laws and orders.” Then the Germans proceeded to practice throwing knives and daggers at her.⁹

After the liquidation of the ghetto, a small group of craftsmen remained in the prison; they were shot by the German Gendarmerie in May or June 1942.¹⁰ The shooting was supervised by Rosenberg, the head of the town’s SD section; Oberleutnant Tizze and Oberwachtmeister Urlich, both of the Order Police; and the chief of the indigenous police, Podbereznyi, who assigned 10 local policemen to assist the German Gendarmerie.

In the winter of 1943, the newspaper Mozyrskie novosti, which was published with the Nazis’ permission, wrote that the town had been living without Jews for two years and could rightfully consider itself an example for the solving of the Jewish question in Belorussia.¹¹

Following the liberation of the city in January 1944, the Soviet authorities uncovered at least five mass grave sites in and around Mozyr’:

1. The Jewish cemetery in the Mozyr’ city limits has 18 graves of equal size lacking mounds, tablets, or any other markings indicating a burial site. There are 50 to 55 bodies of elderly people, women, and children in each grave, a total of 960 to 1,000 people.

2. The territory of the former Sipo-SD prison on Pushkin Street has five graves with 55 bodies in each, altogether 275 people.

3. The gully at the end of Romashov Rov Street contains four graves, three of which were approximately of similar size, with 95 to 100 bodies in each. The fourth grave, 400 square meters [478 square yards] in size, held 850 bodies. The total body count was 1,230 to 1,250.

4. The gully on the Mozyr’-Bobr road is the site of two graves containing the remains of more than 1,000 people.

5. At the end of Svidovka Street are two graves. More than 600 people were buried in the first; in the second, a grave of smaller dimensions, are seven bodies: an elderly man, four women, and two children.

In the course of the exhumations, it was ascertained that some of the people were buried alive, while others had their hands tied behind their backs with barbed wire. Several bodies bore marks of violence and torture.¹²

Mozyr’ was liberated on January 14, 1944. During the occupation, 4,700 of the city’s inhabitants perished, including more than 1,500 Jews.¹³ Kondrat Bogdanik turned over to the Soviet 61st Army’s counterintelligence section, SMERSH, partial lists of ghetto inhabitants (237 names) stolen by him in March 1942 from the Mozyr’ town authority. These documents provided the basis for investigation of Nazi crimes in Mozyr’. They were then given to the archive of the KGB in the Republic of Belorussia, where they were kept until after 2000.