EZERISHCHE (YEZERISHCHE)
[End Page 1669] Pre-1941: Ezerishche, town and center, Mekhovoe raion, Vitebsk oblast’, Belorussian SSR; 1941–1944: Jeseritsche, Rayon Mechowoje, Rear Area, Army Group Center (rückwärtiges Heeresgebiet Mitte); post-1991: Eziaryshcha, Haradok raen, Vitsebsk voblasts’, Republic of Belarus
Ezerishche is located 75 kilometers (47 miles) north of Gorodok. The Mekhovoe raion had 235 Jews in 1939, most of whom lived in Ezerishche (estimates range from 60 to 175). The next-largest contingent lived in Mezha (perhaps as many as 86 people). German armed forces of the XXIII Corps of the 9th Army captured Ezerishche on July 17, 1941.
Sometime in October 1941, the Jews were resettled into the building of a former inn: a long, one-story building near the railway station. The building was surrounded by barbed wire and guarded. According to other witnesses, the “ghetto” included two buildings, one wooden, the second made of bricks, and was not surrounded by barbed wire.1 The discrepancy in the witness accounts may be ascribed to the deterioration of the Ezerishche Jews’ situation in the late fall of 1941 and the winter of 1941–1942.
In February 1942 (or perhaps in early December 1941),2 all the Jews were escorted from the “ghetto” across the railway to a marsh to the northwest of the village and were shot there near pits that had been dug previously. The shooting was carried out one family at a time; before the killing, the victims were ordered to undress. The killing was somewhat haphazard, and many victims, merely wounded, were buried alive.
The number of Jews killed in Ezerishche is unknown. One of the Soviet Extraordinary State Commission (ChGK) records gives an estimate of 200 victims, which is probably an exaggeration; other ChGK records and witnesses state that 150 or 175 were killed; some local witnesses reported 60 dead, which seems to be too low an estimate. According to all the witnesses, a number of professionals (such as pediatrician Frida Bentsman, two other physicians, two pharmacists, and the school principal Khait) were all killed on that day.
Elsewhere in the Mekhovoe raion, a number of Jews, possibly as many as 86,3 were killed in Mezha (36 kilometers [22 miles] northeast of Gorodok) in February 1942; in Bychikha (about halfway between Gorodok and Ezerishche, along the railway), no fewer than 6 Jews were killed near the railway station; there were also other places in the area where Jews were killed.
SOURCES
Information can be found in Gennadii Vinnitsa’s Gorech’ i bol’ (Orsha, 1998), p. 32.
Documentation on the Ezerishche ghetto can be found in the following archives: GARF (7021-84-9); and YVA (O-3/4608).
NOTES
1. Vinnitsa, Gorech’ i bol’, p. 32.
2. GARF, 7021-84-9, ChGK report, dates the massacre as February 1942. Vinnitsa, Gorechi’ i bol’, also gives this date. However, the ChGK report, undated, deposited at the archive of the Gorodok Museum of Local History (Gorodokskii Kraevedcheskii Muzei), indicates early December 1941, as do the witnesses interviewed in 1985 (YVA, O-3/4608).
3. Eighty-six “peaceful citizens” were shot by the Germans in Mezha during the occupation, according to the estimate of the ChGK. The main shooting took place in February 1942; it is unclear whether all the 86 people counted by the ChGK were killed on that day or whether some of them (who therefore may not have been Jewish) were killed later. See GARF, 7021-84-9, pp. 2–4.
