BOROVUKHA 1-IA (PERVAIA, THE FIRST)
Pre-1939: Borovukha 1-ia (Pervaia, the First), military settlement, Polotsk raion, Vitebsk oblast’, Belorussian SSR; 1941–1944: Borowucha, Rayon Polozk, Rear Area, Army Group Center (rückwärtiges Heeresgebiet Mitte); post-1991: Baravukha 1-ia (Pervaia), Palotsk raen, Vitsebsk voblasts’, Republic of Belarus [End Page 1653]
Borovukha 1-ia is located 15 kilometers (9.3 miles) northwest of Polotsk. German forces of Army Group Center occupied the settlement in mid-July 1941. During the occupation, a German garrison was billeted in the former “military settlement” of Borovukha 1-ia. The German military authorities appointed Andrei Markin as mayor (Bürgermeister) of the settlement, and soon after their arrival, they ordered the Jews who lived there to wear white Stars of David on their clothes. In October 1941, the Germans surrounded Borovukha, combed the settlement and its vicinity, and assembled all the Jews they had found, 115 in total, in a military barracks there, beating them during the roundup. Two days later, 50 of them—men, unmarried women, and old people—were taken in trucks to a field and shot there.1 The rest of the Jews were placed in a house surrounded with barbed wire. The inmates of this makeshift “ghetto” did not receive any food. Some Jews occasionally left the house (it is unclear whether it was with or without the permission of the Germans) and exchanged various items for food.
On January 13, 1942, a punitive squad appeared in the town. It took all of the 65 Jews, among them 40 children aged less than 16, and also women and old men, from the house, under the pretext that they would be sent to perform forced labor, and killed them in the area of a former tank training ground. Witnesses say that some of them, when they were driven to the tank training ground, were barefoot and without warm clothes. Mayor Markin and the German commandant, Leutnant Kremer, allegedly took an active part in the annihilation of Borovukha’s Jews.2
SOURCES
Documentation on the murder of the Jews in Borovukha can be found in the following archives: GARF (7021-92-221); TsGAMORF (239-2187-100, p. 57); USHMM (RG-06.025*04, Bobruisk Trial, doc. no. 808, p. 174); and YVA.
NOTES
1. GARF, 7021-92-221, p. 5, ChGK report for the Polotsk raion, April 15, 1945; see also USHMM, RG-06.025*04, Bobruisk Trial of Bruno Jushkus, doc. no. 808, p. 174, testimony of Pavel Danilovich, Shunevich.
2. Ibid. TsGAMORF, 239-2187-100, p. 57, ChGK report for Borovukha I, July 7, 1944, states that all the Jews from the Jewish kolkhoz Sovetskaia Belorussiia were gathered in one house and then shot with all family members at the firing range (poligon): 140 to 150 people. This probably refers to the same incident, although the number of victims may be too high.
