BYKHOV (aka STARYI BYKHOV)
Pre-1941: Bykhov, town and raion center, Mogilev oblast’, Belorussian SSR; 1941–1944: Bychow, Rear Area, Army Group Center (rückwärtiges Heeresgebiet Mitte); post-1991: Bykhau, raen center, Mahiliou voblasts’, Republic of Belarus
Bykhov is located 45 kilometers (28 miles) south of Mogilev. According to the 1939 census, 2,295 Jews (20.8 percent of the population) lived in Bykhov. An additional 408 Jews lived in the villages of the raion, making a combined Jewish population of 2,703.
German mobile forces of Army Group Center occupied the town in the first half of July 1941. In the period before the Germans’ arrival, part of the Jewish population was able to evacuate to the east, and men of eligible age joined the Red Army. However, the rapid German advance trapped some Jewish refugees in Bykhov who were fleeing from locations farther west. Probably between 2,500 and 3,000 Jews were in Bykhov at the start of the German occupation. During the fighting, the town burned for three days, damaging or destroying many Jewish homes.
During the entire period of occupation from July 1941 until June 1944, a German military administration (Ortskommandantur) governed Bykhov.1 According to Soviet sources, the Ortskommandant in the fall of 1941 was Oberleutnant Martus.2 Shortly after the occupation began, the German administration ordered the registration and marking of the Jews. The German authorities instructed the Jews to sew yellow stars onto their clothing; however, because the fire in the town had destroyed most of the available yellow fabric, Jews who had no yellow material made their stars out of white fabric instead.3 The Germans also obliged the Jews to perform various forms of heavy labor.
On August 29, 1941, forces of Reserve Police Battalion 322, belonging to Police Regiment Center (Mitte) shot 84 Jews in Bykhov.4 On September 5, 1941, the Germans conducted another Aktion in Bykhov. They rounded up about 250 Jews capable of work and took them out of the town, seemingly for road construction, but instead they shot them all.5 They conducted the shooting in the Gan’kov ditch, located on the southern outskirts of the town. People in Bykhov could hear the victims’ screams.6
[End Page 1656] At some time in the fall of 1941, most likely in September, just after the murder of the 250 people, the Germans made a list of all the remaining Jews and collected them in the Sapega Castle. Some local inhabitants describe this incarceration as a “ghetto,”7 although the Germans also imprisoned some non-Jews (“Soviet Party activists”) there together with the Jews. Local Belorussian police (politsais) guarded the area around the castle.8
According to one witness, his future wife went to the ghetto several times to take food to a Jewish friend, Khava Markhasina, who had been imprisoned. “The Jews were living in ghastly conditions, and people were tortured, too. She remembered that when she went up to the second floor, the wall next to the railings … was drenched in blood. The last time she went, a policeman warned her not to come back any more, because it could end badly for her.”9 Even the dark-haired Belorussians were frightened, fearing the Germans might kill them simply because they looked like Jews. There was also a rumor that some local non-Jews had managed to “buy” a child from the ghetto and pass her off as their own.10
Soviet sources state that the Germans held the Jews in the castle without any food or water for about a week. Then German security forces escorted them on trucks to an antitank ditch located near Voronino, 6 kilometers (3.7 miles) east of the town, where they carried out a mass shooting.11 One Jew, Moishe (Mikhail) Kats, reportedly jumped from one of the trucks at full speed and escaped into the forest. He was 25 at the time. They fired a submachine gun round at him but did not pursue him. He managed to stay alive, walking to Sumy in the Ukraine, where he spent the rest of the occupation.12 At the antitank ditch, the Germans forced the victims to undress and pile their shoes and clothes neatly at one side, before shooting them in groups. Descriptions of the Aktion, together with forensic evidence, indicate that some victims, especially children, were probably thrown into the pit and buried alive. At this time (in the fall of 1941), a number of allegedly Communist non-Jews were also killed.13 A few Jews who evaded the mass shootings and subsequent searches hid with non-Jews, and some subsequently fought with Soviet partisan detachments.
Soviet estimates put the number of people murdered by the Germans in Bykhov in 1941 to be in excess of 4,000.14 However, in view of the pre-war Jewish population of only 2,703 for the entire raion, it seems unlikely that the number of Jewish victims exceeded this (allowing for a number of Jewish evacuees who were probably more or less replaced by the refugees who became trapped in Bykhov).15 Other evidence seems to indicate that many of the Jews of the surrounding villages were shot close to their homes (rather than being brought in to Bykhov). For example, in the village of Gomarnia, 14 people were shot “as Jews,” 71 in the Mokria sel’sovet, and several Jewish families in the village of Seliba.16
In late 1943, the Germans attempted to cover up their crimes by exhuming the corpses from the mass graves around Bykhov and burning them. They used Soviet prisoners of war from the camp at Pribor to conduct this work, then shot them once the task was complete.17
SOURCES
The testimonies of several witnesses from Bykhov have been published in Ida M. Shenderovich and Aleksandr Litin, eds., Gibel’ mestechek Mogilevshchiny: Kholokost v Mogilevskoi oblasti v vospominaniiakh i dokumentakh (Mogilev: MGU im. A.A. Kuleshova, 2005), pp. 34–44.
Documents on the persecution and elimination of the Jews of Bykhov can be found in the following archives: BA-MA; GAMO (306-1-9 and 10); GARF (7021-88-35; and 7021-148); NARB (861-1-8 and 9); USHMM (RG-22.002M, reel 8; RG-48.004M, reels 1 and 2; and RG-53.002M, reel 7); VHAP; and YVA.
NOTES
1. In October 1941, Ortskommandantur II 340 was based in Bykhov, as was Feldkommandantur 194, and III. Battalion of Police Regiment Mitte; see BA-MA, RH 26-221/14b.
2. GAMO, 306-1-10, pp. 66–67.
3. Reminiscences of Anatolii G. Zhdan (born in 1925) in Shenderovich and Litin, Gibel’ mestechek Mogilevshchiny, pp. 39–40.
4. VHAP, K1/1003386, 392, HSSPF Russland Mitte an RFSS, Kdo.-Stab RFSS und Chef Orpo, August 29–30, 1941.
5. See the diary of O. Berger, a staff drill sergeant (Stabsfeldwebel) in the 2nd Battalion of the 3rd Security Regiment, in GARF, 7021-148.
6. GARF, 7021-88-35, p. 11; NARB, 861-1-9, pp. 234, 236; and reminiscences of Anatolii G. Zhdan (born in 1925), in Shenderovich and Litin, Gibel’ mestechek Mogilevshchiny, pp. 39–40.
7. See, for example, the reminiscences of David S. Lakhtyrev and Dora M. Gekht, in Shenderovich and Litin, Gibel’ mestechek Mogilevshchiny, pp. 38, 42.
8. Reminiscences of Anatolii G. Zhdan (born in 1925), in ibid., pp. 39–40.
9. Reminiscences of Georgii D. Menshagin (born in 1924), in ibid., pp. 40–41.
10. Ibid., pp. 34–44.
11. NARB, 861-1-9, pp. 234, 236.
12. Reminiscences of Mila A. Rudakova (born in 1924), in Shenderovich and Litin, Gibel’ mestechek Mogilevshchiny, pp. 42–44.
13. Ibid., pp. 34–44.
14. NARB, 861-1-9, ChGK report for the Bykhov raion indicates that in fall 1941 Ortskommandant Martus imprisoned 4,679 persons (including some non-Jews) in the castle, who were shot shortly afterwards.
15. GARF, 7021-88-35, pp. 1, 11, 17.
16. Shenderovich and Litin, Gibel’ mestechek Mogilevshchiny, p. 35.
17. Ibid., pp. 35–37.
