BATSEVICHI
[End Page 1644] Pre-1941: Batsevichi, town, Klichev raion, Mogilev oblast’, Belorussian SSR; 1941–1944: Bazewitschi, Rear Area, Army Group Center (rückwärtiges Heeresgebiet Mitte); post-1991: Batsevichy, Klichav raen, Mahiliou voblasts’, Republic of Belarus
Batsevichi is located about 35 kilometers (22 miles) due north of Bobruisk.
German forces of Army Group Center captured the area around Klichev in early July 1941. According to the testimony of Issak Moiseyevich Gershovich, the German military authorities established a ghetto in the town of Batsevichi by early September 1941. The Jews in the ghetto were served by a Jewish doctor and his wife, who was a midwife. The ghetto consisted of a few small cottages, in each of which lived about 25 to 30 people crammed together. One night in December 1941, German forces arrived in Batsevichi and shot all the Jews. Since the 1939 Soviet census recorded only 192 Jews living in the Klichev raion outside Klichev, it is likely that fewer than 100 Jews were murdered in Batsevichi.
In late February 1942, a detachment of Einsatzkommando 8 (Einsatzgruppe B) conducted a reprisal Aktion in Batsevichi, following an attack on German police forces nearby. During the Aktion, 47 inhabitants of Batsevichi, including men, women, and children, were murdered.1
SOURCES
The ghetto in Batsevichi is mentioned in David Meltser and Vladimir Levin, eds., The Black Book with Red Pages (Tragedy and Heroism of Belorussian Jews) (Cockeysville, MD: VIA Press, 2005), p. 428.
NOTES
1. DDR-Justiz und NS-Verbrechen (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2002), Bd. II, Lfd. Nr. 1044, p. 288.
