GRODZIANKA
Pre-1941: Grodzianka, town, Osipo vichi raion, Mogilev oblast’, Belorussian SSR; 1941–1944: Grodsjanka, Rear Area, Army Group Center (rückwärtiges Heeresgebiet Mitte); post-1991: Hradzianka, Asipovichy raen, Mahiliou voblasts’, Republic of Belarus
Grodzianka is located 55 kilometers (34 miles) northwest of Bobruisk. According to the 1939 census, there were 150 Jews living in Grodzianka, out of a total population of 1,247.
German forces of Army Group Center occupied the village on July 1, 1941, about 10 days after the German invasion of the USSR on June 22. In this intervening period, a small part of the Jewish population was able to evacuate to the east, and men of eligible age were inducted into the Red Army. Following the occupation of the village, the German military commandant appointed a village elder (starosta) named Mukin, the former director of the post office, and organized a Belorussian police force (Ordnungsdienst) consisting of local residents.
In the summer and fall of 1941, a series of anti-Jewish measures were implemented in Grodzianka. Jews were registered and forced to wear patches in the shape of the Star of David; they had to perform heavy labor without pay; and they were prohibited from leaving the limits of the village.
On August 15, 1941, German security forces conducted a first Aktion in the village. In its course, a few dozen Jews (probably mainly Jewish men) were rounded up and taken to the Christian cemetery. Apparently this site was chosen as a special humiliation for some of the Jews who still observed their religion. Threatening them with automatic weapons, the Germans forced the Jews to dig a long trench in the cemetery. Then the Germans made them lie down in groups in the trench, where they shot them in the back of the head. For several days afterwards, the ground continued to move on top of the mass grave.1
In the summer or fall of 1941, the Germans ordered the Jews of Grodzianka, together with Jews from the surrounding small villages, to move into a small ghetto. After the Jews were rounded up and resettled into the ghetto, some local inhabitants stole the property that was left behind in the vacated houses, arguing that the Jews would not need these items anymore. The ghetto was located near the railway not far from the post office in the former Vinokur house: a long structure made of wood, which was reminiscent of a barracks. The house was surrounded by a fence and guarded by the local police. Because the available accommodation was insufficient, some Jews had to sleep on the floor or even outside. The German authorities did not provide the Jews with food. The Jews, including some children, had to sneak out of the ghetto at great risk to beg or barter for food from their non-Jewish neighbors. Some people helped them, but others chased them away immediately. It was only through such support in the village that the Jews could stay alive in the ghetto.2
The area around Grodzianka became a center of Soviet partisan resistance during the winter of 1941–1942. Some Jews from the village managed to escape from the ghetto and served with the Soviet partisans. Parents of young children also tried to smuggle them to safety by hiding them with non-Jews in the surrounding countryside. The Germans threatened to kill anyone caught hiding Jews, however, and many people were reluctant to give them shelter. In Grodzianka, the Germans and local police could shoot a Jew with impunity if they were in a bad mood or as a reprisal for the latest partisan attack.3
The ghetto in Grodzianka was liquidated on March 4, 1942, when 86 of the 92 Jews then present in the ghetto were shot. The shooting was carried out on the instructions of the commander of Kampfgruppe Dietrich, Police Captain Karl Dietrich. This Kampfgruppe had been formed in Mogilev in late February 1942 to combat partisans; it consisted of four companies of Ukrainian police, with German SS and police officials playing leadership roles in these companies. In response to several partisan attacks against the German outposts in the area between Klichev and Cherven’, Kampfgruppe Dietrich was combing the region from east to west in early March 1942, when it encountered the small ghetto in Grodzianka. The shooting itself was conducted by Ukrainian police of the 2nd Company, commanded by Police Lieutenant Willi Schulz. The Ukrainians escorted the Jews, mostly women, the elderly, and children, under close guard to a large pit that had been dug on the morning of the Aktion on the edge of the forest. The Ukrainians shot the Jews in the pit, using rifles and pistols. After a time, the scene at the mass grave became increasingly chaotic, with the Ukrainians shooting almost randomly at the Jews who had been herded into the pit, with the result that many of the victims may only have been wounded when the pit was covered with earth.4
In the documents of the Soviet Extraordinary State Commission (ChGK), the names of 93 murdered Jews are listed.5
For the shooting of Jews in Grodzianka, as well as for other crimes, Willi Schulz was sentenced in 1967 to six years and six months in prison.
SOURCES
Publications containing relevant information about the murder of the Jews of Grodzianka include: Justiz und NS-Verbrechen (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 1979), vols. 22 (Lfd. Nr. 604) and 25 (Lfd. Nr. 644); and My ne mozhem molchat’: Shkol’niki i studenty o Kholokoste, Vypusk 4: Sbornik, comp. D.V. Prokudin, ed. I.A. Al’tman (Mos-cow: Tsentr i Fond “Kholokost,” 2008), p. 31. The testimony of Ol’ga Lukashenko (Lanevskaia) can be accessed at www.mishpoha.org/library/04/0415.shtml.
Documentation regarding the extermination of the Jews of Grodzianka can be found in the following archives: BA-L; GARF (7021-82-5); NARB; and YVA.
NOTES
1. Testimony of Ol’ga Lukashenko (Lanevskaia), available at www.mishpoha.org/library/04/0415.shtml.
2. Ibid.; this source seems to imply that the ghetto was established before the August 1941 Aktion. See also, however, V. Zaitseva and V. Novik, “Iz istorii Kholokosta v Osipovichskom raione,” in Al’tman, My ne mozhem molchat’, p. 31.
3. Testimony of Ol’ga Lukashenko.
4. See the verdict of Landgericht Detmold (2 Ks 1/65), December 22, 1965, against Karl Dietrich, in Justiz und NS-Verbrechen, vol. 22, Lfd. Nr. 604; and the verdict of Landgericht Detmold (2 Ks 2/66), February 16, 1967, against Willi Schulz, in idem, vol. 25, Lfd. Nr. 644.
5. GARF, 7021-82-5, pp. 170–173.
