GORODETS
[End Page 1675] Pre-1941: Gorodets, village, Rogachev raion, Gomel’ oblast’, Belorussian SSR; 1941–1944: Gorodez, Rear Area, Army Group Center (rückwärtiges Heeresgebiet Mitte); post-1991: Haradzets, Rahachou raen, Homel’ voblasts’, Republic of Belarus
Gorodets is located about 85 kilometers (53 miles) north-northwest of Gomel’. In 1926, the Jewish population of Gorodets was 607, comprising 69 percent of the total.
German forces occupied the village on July 9, 1941. Many Jews managed to flee east into the Soviet interior. According to the Encyclopedia of Jewish Life before and during the Holocaust, in September 1941, the Jews in Gorodets, composed of 200 local Jews and 400 refugees from Bobruisk and other settlements, were concentrated within a large building where they were confined for a month under conditions of overcrowding, starvation, and abuse. In October the Jews were brought to the Brogtsev camp, and then on November 6, most of them were executed nearby. Those that escaped this Aktion were murdered in February 1942.
One Soviet source also indicates that the German occupying authorities established a ghetto in Gorodets in September 1941, which existed for about one month before it was liquidated in October.1
SOURCES
Publications mentioning the fate of the Jews of Gorodets during the Holocaust include the following: 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. 445; and Vladimir Adamushko et al., eds., Handbuch der Haftstätten für die Zivilbevölkerung auf dem besetzten Territorium von Belarus 1941–1944 (Minsk: State Committee for Archives and Documentary Collections of the Republic of Belarus, 2001), p. 108; and Leonid Smilovitsky, “Ghettos in the Gomel Region: Commonalities and Unique Features, 1941–42,” available at www.jewishgen.org/Belarus/newsletter/GomelGhettos.htm.
Documentation relating to the ghetto in Gorodets can be found in the following archive: GAGOMO (1345-1-15).
NOTES
1. GAGOMO, 1345-1-15, p. 55.
