DARAGANOVO
Pre-1939: Daraganovo, village, Starye Dorogi raion, Mogilev oblast’, Belorussian SSR; 1941–1944: Daraganowo, Rear Area, Army Group Center (rückwärtiges Heeresgebiet Mitte); post-1991: Darahanava, Asipovichy raen, Mahiliou voblasts’, Republic of Belarus
Daraganovo is located 50 kilometers (31 miles) west of Bobruisk. In 1926, there were 60 Jewish families living in Daraganovo. By mid-1941, migration had slightly reduced the Jewish population of the village.
German armed forces captured Daraganovo in early July 1941, two weeks after Germany’s invasion of the Soviet Union. During this intervening period, some Jews managed to evacuate to the east, while men eligible for military service were called up to active duty in the Red Army. About 100 Jews remained in the village at the start of the occupation.
During the entire occupation period, from July 1941 to June 1944, the village was governed by a German military commandant’s office (Ortskommandantur). The German military administration created a village authority and a police force (Ordnungsdienst), recruited from local inhabitants.
Soon after the occupation, the Ortskommandantur ordered the village authority to make arrangements for the registration and marking of the Jews, as well as for their use in various types of forced labor.
On September 6, 1941, German security forces conducted the first Aktion in the village, in the course of which 11 people were accused of being Soviet activists and shot. The remaining Jews were forced into a ghetto, for which several houses on the edge of the village, on Pesochnaia Street, were allocated. The Germans liquidated the ghetto in May 1942, shooting 73 Jews in a forest north of the village. A detachment of Einsatzkommando 8, stationed in Bobruisk, carried out the shooting, in which the Ordnungsdienst also took an active part. On January 25, 1943, the children of mixed marriages were seized and shot in the village. In 1976, a monument was erected at the site of the mass grave.1
SOURCES
The following published sources contain some information on the annihilation of the Jews of Daraganovo: Marat Botvinnik, Pamiatniki genotsida evreev Belarusi (Minsk: Belaruskaia Navuka, 2000), p. 303; V. Zaitsev and V. Novik, “Iz istorii Kholokosta v Osipo vichskom raione,” in D.V. Prokudin, comp., and Il’ia Al’tman, ed., My ne mozhem molchat’. Shkol’niki i studenty o Kholokoste. Vyp. 4: Sbornik (Mos-cow: Tsentr i Fond “Kholokost,” 2008); and Shmuel Spector and Geoffrey Wigoder, eds., The Encyclopedia of Jewish Life before and during the Holocaust (Jerusalem: Yad Vashem; New York: New York University Press, 2001), p. 292.
Documentation on the persecution and murder of the Jews of Daraganovo can be found in the following archives: GAMO; and GARF (7021-82-8).
NOTES
1. According to the list of names, the number of victims was 85 (GARF, 7021-82-8, pp. 65–66).
