DUBROVNO
Pre-1941: Dubrovno, town and raion center, Vitebsk oblast’, Belorussian SSR; 1941–1944: Dubrowno, Rayon center, Rear Area, Army Group Center (rückwärtiges Heeresgebiet Mitte); post-1991: Dubrouna, raen center, Vitsebsk voblasts’, Republic of Belarus
Dubrovno is located 75 kilometers (47 miles) south-southeast of Vitebsk. In 1939, 2,119 Jews lived in the town, making up 21.4 percent of the population. Another town in the raion with a considerable Jewish population was Liady (897 Jews, or 39.2 percent of the total population in 1939; see Liady). The rest of the Jewish population of the Dubrovno raion (without the town of Dubrovno) constituted 222 people, the bulk of whom lived in the small towns of Baevo and Rossasno (see Rossasno). After World War II, the town of Osintorf (18 kilometers [11 miles] north of Dubrovno) was switched from Orsha raion to Dubrovno raion. The number of Jews in Osintorf is not clear; most probably, they numbered between 10 and 30.
The “Dneprovskaia textile mill” was not evacuated by the authorities (Dubrovno lies rather far from the railway); only some sections of it were blown up. This means that there was no large-scale evacuation of the population from the town (in other towns such as Orsha or Vitebsk, the evacuation of industrial plants helped thousands of Jews to escape the Nazis).
Dubrovno was captured by the German forces (17th Panzer Division of the XLVII Army Corps of the 2nd Panzer Group) on July 16,1 after which it was in the rear area of the 2nd Army (Infantry). From August 1941, Dubrovno was under the authority of Rear Area, Army Group Center. This area was the realm of the 286th Security Division; the Secret Field Police (GFP) Group 723, subordinated to this division, was quartered here. The Soviet Extraordinary State Commission (ChGK) report mentions an Ortskommandantur in Dubrovno under Kommandant Major Hänschin.
The Germans put together an indigenous local administration in Dubrovno and its Rayon, including a local police force. The mayor of Dubrovno was Skvarchevskii, the former head of a peat factory. The head of the indigenous police in the volost’ was Kulikovskii. The mayor of Osintorf was I. Trublin.
The town of Osintorf served as the base for forming one of the Russian “armies,” which was to fight on the German side to fulfill police functions: the Russian National People’s Army (Russkaia Natsional’naia Narodnaia Armiia, RNNA). In 1941, under the aegis of the headquarters of Army Group Center, the “Trial Battalion Graukopf” was formed, mainly from Soviet prisoners of war (POWs). The members of the battalion wore Soviet uniforms and had Soviet weapons but carried German insignia. In the spring of 1942, the Battalion Graukopf was transformed into the RNNA. The local population called its servicemen narodniki.2
Information on the Holocaust in Dubrovno is scanty. A ghetto in Dubrovno was established in the fall of 1941. According to the ChGK, it was located in the area called “the camp ‘zhilkoop’” (which may be interpreted as an abbreviation of “dwelling cooperative”). Eyewitnesses, both those who gave testimonies to the ChGK and those from Gennadii Vinnitsa’s collection, mention physical abuse of the Jewish inmates. A non-Jewish witness says: “I went to the Kommandantur to receive an Ausweis (identity card) and saw politsais [End Page 1668] [men of the indigenous police] there, who put 10 Jews on the ground and beat them with sticks.”3 In December 1941, the inmates of the ghetto were shot by a German “punitive squad”; the local commandant was also present at the execution site. According to the ChGK, the execution site was an area beyond the Dneprovskaia textile mill, where a mass grave had been prepared beforehand; according to Vinnitsa, it was a sand quarry close to the Jewish cemetery. Witnesses attest that the Nazis employed sadistic methods of killing.
Both the ChGK and Vinnitsa indicate that the Nazis spared artisans and their families from this Aktion. The artisans and their families were killed in February 1942.
The ChGK estimates the number of Jews killed in December 1941 at 1,500 and the number killed in February 1942 at 300. In other individual and group shootings that took place in Dubrovno, the Nazis killed an additional 185 Jews. The total number of Jewish victims in Dubrovno was 1,985. At the same time, the list of victims compiled by the ChGK contains only 330 names of Jews.
The Jews of the town of Osintorf were killed in March 1942. The witnesses who were interrogated by the ChGK in 1945 estimate the number of those killed at 20. The witness Shmuglevskii, who, according to his words, “was under custody” together with these doomed Jews, said that among them there were seven women and five children under 16. The list of victims compiled by the ChGK refers to 10 Jews killed. Of them, the families Ginsburg and Simkin were killed in October 1941 in Osintorf, and the Khanins, in February 1942 in Dubrovno. It is not clear whether the witnesses of the ChGK included these 10 or only some of them (the Ginsburgs and Simkins) among those 20 people on whom they gave information.4
In the village of Barsuki, 11 kilometers (7 miles) east-southeast of Dubrovno, two Jewish women married to non-Jews were killed.
SOURCES
In the book by historian Gennadii Vinnitsa, Gorech’ i bol’ (Orsha, 1998), pages 16 to 31 deal with the Holocaust in the Dubrovno raion.
The documents of the ChGK for the Dubrovno raion can be found in GARF (7021-84-6), as can those for Osintorf (7021-84-10).
NOTES
1. Heinz Guderian, Erinnerungen eines Soldaten (Heidelberg, 1951), pp. 154–157.
2. A.M. Litvin, “Antysavetskiia vaenna-palitseiskiia farmiravanni na terytoryi Belarusi w hady Vyalikai Aichyinai vainy 1941–1944 hh.” (Ph.D. diss., Minsk, 2000), pp. 69–70.
3. Vinnitsa, Gorech’ i bol’, p. 18.
4. GARF, 7021-84-6 and 7021-84-10.
