CHERIKOV
Pre-1941: Cherikov, town and raion center, Mogilev oblast’, Belorussian SSR; 1941–1943: Tscherikow, Rayon center, Rear Area, Army Group Center (rückwärtiges Heeresgebiet Mitte); post-1991: Cherykau, raen center, Mahiliou voblasts’, Republic of Belarus
Cherikov is located 77 kilometers (48 miles) southeast of Mogilev. According to the 1939 census, 949 Jews were living in Cherikov, comprising 14.8 percent of the total population. In addition, there were 132 Jews living in the villages of the Cherikov raion.1
German armed forces occupied the town on July 17, 1941, about four weeks after the German invasion of the Soviet Union on June 22. The town was taken only after bitter fighting, which resulted in considerable destruction.2 In the interim period, part of the Jewish population was able to evacuate to the east. Men of eligible age were called up to the Red Army.
During the entire German occupation, which lasted until October 1, 1943, a German military administration (Ortskommandantur) was in control of the town. The Ortskommandantur established a Rayon administration and a police force recruited from local residents. In October 1941, Ortskommandantur 846 was based in Cherikov.3
Shortly after the start of the occupation, the local authorities, on the instructions of the Ortskommandantur, organized the registration and marking of the Jewish population. Jews were also required to perform forced labor. The wearing of the Jewish Star of David was strictly enforced.
In August 1941, the first Aktion was carried out in the town. A detachment of Sonderkommando 7b shot a group of Jews.4 On October 29, 1941, the Ortskommandant in Cherikov ordered the shooting of Salmon Plotkin for repeatedly defying the order to wear the Jewish star and for allegedly having contacts with the partisans.5
Very little information is available about living conditions for the Jews in Cherikov under the German occupation. Two secondary sources use the term “ghetto” in connection with the town, and according to Marat Botvinnik, it appears that some Jews from the surrounding villages and settlements were brought into Cherikov at some time before the mass shooting of the Jews.6 It is likely that some form of open ghetto was established in Cherikov, with Jews prohibited from leaving the limits of the town.
Available accounts indicate that before killing the Jewish population of Cherikov in late October or early November 1941, German security forces, assisted by the local police, rounded up the Jews near the town hall, informing them that they would be resettled to another locality. The Jews were then escorted on foot to a site about 1 kilometer (0.6 mile) north of the town near the mill, where a ditch had been prepared.7 Two Germans shot the Jews in the ditch in small groups. Six local Belorussians were ordered to fill in the ditch afterwards. One of these men recalled: “The Jews cried, screamed, and the Germans beat them with whips, dragged them to the ditch by force, tore children away from their parents, and threw them into the ditch. It was so horrible that I still don’t understand how I kept from going mad.”8
According to the Soviet Extraordinary State Commission report, the mass shooting took place on November 7, 1941.9 It was conducted by a detachment of Einsatzkommando 9 as part of an antipartisan sweep conducted by units of Security Division 221. Einsatzgruppe B reported later in December that 786 Jews of both sexes had been shot in Cherikov and Klimovichi.10 Estimates of the number of Jewish victims in Cherikov range from 238 up to 500, but since at least 500 Jews were murdered in Klimovichi, the actual number in Cherikov was probably towards the lower end of this range.11
In 1943, members of the Soviet partisan detachment known as “Thirteen,” which contained a number of Jews, conducted anti-German operations near Cherikov. Following a police ambush, the Jewish partisan Girsh Izrailitin exploded a grenade rather than be captured, which resulted in the deaths of 16 local police collaborators, including the head of the Cherikov police.12
SOURCES
Information about the persecution and murder of the Jewish population in Cherikov can be found in the following publication: Pamiats’: Belarus’ (Minsk: Respublikanskaia Kniha, 1995), p. 481.
Documentation on the Holocaust in Cherikov can be found in the following archives: BA-BL (R 58/218); BA-MA (RH 26-221/19); GAMO; GARF (7021-88-49 and 8114-1-955); NARB; USHMM (RG-22.002M, reel 8); and YVA.
NOTES
1. Mordechai Altshuler, ed., Distribution of the Jewish Population of the USSR 1939 (Jerusalem: Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 1998), pp. 39, 71.
2. See Konstantin Simonow, Kriegstagebücher (East Berlin, 1979), 1:15–52, 147.
3. BA-MA, RH 26-221/14b.
4. See the report of Einsatzgruppe B on police activity from August 24–30, 1941. Bundesbeauftragter für die Unterlagen des Staatssicherheitsdienstes der ehemaligen DDR, Zentralarchiv, ZUV 9, Bd. XXXI, p. 47.
5. GARF, 7021-88-49, p. 9, Ortskommandantur Tscherikow, Bekanntmachung, October 29, 1941, signed Ortskommandant Saup. See also BA-MA, RH 26-221/19.
6. David Meltser and Vladimir Levin, eds., The Black Book with Red Pages (Tragedy and Heroism of Belorussian Jews) (Cockeysville, MD: VIA Press, 2005), p. 266; and Marat Botvinnik, Pamiatniki genotsida evreev Belarusi (Minsk: Belaruskaia Navuka, 2000), p. 306.
7. Meltser and Levin, The Black Book with Red Pages, p. 266; Joshua Rubenstein and Ilya Altman, eds., The Unknown Black Book: The Holocaust in the German-Occupied Soviet Territories (Bloomington: Indiana University Press in association with the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, 2007), pp. 275–276; Botvinnik, Pamiatniki genotsida evreev Belarusi, p. 306; and GARF, 7021-88-49.
8. Meltser and Levin, The Black Book with Red Pages, p. 266.
9. GARF, 7021-88-49, pp. 1 and reverse side, 6, and 7 with reverse side.
10. BA-BL, R 58/218, Ereignismeldung UdSSR no. 148, December 19, 1941, p. 9.
11. Pamiats’: Belarus’, p. 481, gives the lower figure of 238. In 1969 an obelisk was erected at the site of the mass shooting. GARF, 8114-1-955, pp. 9 and reverse, gives the higher figure of 500. Other estimates fall between these figures. The ChGK for Klimovichi estimates at least 800 Jews killed there in early November 1941; see NARB, 861-1-9.
12. Meltser and Levin, The Black Book with Red Pages, p. 231.
