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

Pre-1941: Belynichi, town and raion center, Mogilev oblast’, Belorussian SSR; 1941–1944: Belynitschi, Rayon center, Rear Area, Army Group Center (rückwärtiges Heeresgebiet Mitte); post-1991: Bialynichy, raen center, Mahiliou voblasts’, Republic of Belarus

Belynichi is located 45 kilometers (28 miles) west-northwest of Mogilev. According to the 1939 census, there were 781 Jews living in Belynichi, comprising 24.8 percent of the total population.¹

German armed forces occupied the town on July 9, 1941, about three weeks after the German invasion of the Soviet Union on June 22. In this interim period, some Jews were able to evacuate to the east, and men of eligible age were called up to the Red Army. [End Page 1645]

During the course of the occupation, which lasted from July 9, 1941, until June 29, 1944, a German military administration (Ortskommandantur) was in control of the town. The Ortskommandantur set up a town administration and a police force recruited from local residents. Shortly after the occupation began, the town administration, on the orders of the Ortskommandantur, organized the registration and marking of the Jewish population. Jews were also required to perform heavy physical labor.

In September 1941, a detachment of Einsatzkommando 8 (headed by Dr. Otto Bradfisch) arrived in Belynichi from Mogilev and conducted the first Aktion. On the pretext of sending Jews out to work on a bridge construction project, the German punitive squad rounded up more than 150 Jewish men. They escorted them about 5 kilometers (3.1 miles) out of town and then shot them, burying the bodies in two pits.²

After the Aktion in the fall of 1941, all the remaining Jews of Belynichi, together with Jewish families from some neighboring villages in the Rayon, were resettled into a camp or ghetto “Kvartal-Lager” established in a specific quarter of the town. The ghetto was strictly guarded; the Jews were not permitted to leave the ghetto, and non-Jews were also forbidden to enter.³ This resettlement was most probably conducted under the supervision of Ortskommandantur II/936, which was based in Belynichi in mid-October 1941.⁴

On December 12, 1941, the Germans liquidated the ghetto. At 9:00 a.m., a detachment of the German Security Police and SD based in Mogilev (Einsatzkommando 8), assisted by the local Belorussian police, gathered the remaining Jews of the ghetto, about 600 people, into a large column. The Jews were told that they were being resettled to Esmony, a village about 12 kilometers (7.5 miles) to the northwest of Belynichi. The Germans and their collaborators escorted the Jews along the road into the Mkhi woods to a site about 2 kilometers (1.2 miles) outside the town, where two large pits measuring 40 meters by 30 meters (131 feet by 98 feet) and 3 meters (10 feet) deep had been prepared in advance. Here the Jews, mainly women, children, and the elderly, were forced to undress down to their underwear and lie facedown in the ditches; after one row was complete, the Germans shot the Jews; and then the next row had to get ready. After this horrendous deed was finished, the Germans transported the clothing and shoes of the murdered Jews back to Belynichi, and from there the most valuable items were sent to Mogilev in automobiles; the remaining less valuable items were distributed by the Germans among their collaborators.⁵

Between April and June 1942, a detachment of Einsatzkommando 8 shot several hundred more Jews in villages near Belynichi (presumably those who had not been brought into the Belynichi ghetto in the fall of 1941).