The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos, 1933-1945

Pre-1941: Ianovichi, town, Surazh raion, Vitebsk oblast’, Belorussian SSR; 1941–1944: Janowitschi, Rayon Surasch, Rear Area, Army Group Center (rückwärtiges Heeresgebiet Mitte); post-1991: Ianavichy, Vitsebsk raen, Vitsebsk voblasts’, Republic of Belarus

Ianovichi is located about 36 kilometers (22.5 miles) east-northeast of Vitebsk and 13 kilometers (8 miles) south of Surazh. Ianovichi had a more significant Jewish population than the raion center, Surazh. In 1939, according to the last pre-war census, Ianovichi had 709 Jewish residents (34.8 percent of the total population). In the town of Surazh, there were 461 Jews in 1939 (15.4 percent of the population). The rural Jewish population of the Surazh raion (excluding the towns of Surazh and Ianovichi) was fewer than 100 people.

Ianovichi was captured by the Germans most likely on July 12, 1941, the same day as Surazh. According to the witnesses, an avalanche of refugees passed through Ianovichi from Vitebsk on July 9; not many Jews from Ianovichi joined this wave. The survivors blame local physician Dr. Yefim Lifshits, who had studied in Germany and who dissuaded local Jews from evacuating, claiming that the Germans were a “cultured people” and would not harm the Jews.

The mayor of the Ianovichi volost’ under the German occupation was Vasilii F. Vysotskii. The Germans established a Jewish Council in Ianovichi; its head was Dr. Lifshits, and his deputy was Labkovskii, the pharmacist.

Jews had to perform forced labor, mainly improving roads and constructing a military airfield. The Jews who had been members of the pre-war kolkhoz “International” continued their agricultural work. At the beginning of August, the Jews were registered, on the orders of the local German commandant, Daum.

In the neighboring town of Surazh, it appears that no ghetto was formed. The murder of the Jews of Surazh was one of the first Aktions in the region in which the Germans annihilated all the Jews in one location. Einsatzkommando 9 carried out the murder of the Jews of Surazh on August 15, in conjunction with an antipartisan operation.¹ The record of the exhumation carried out by the Soviet Extraordinary State Commission (ChGK) estimated that 674 persons were killed; some of the victims were not local Jews but Jewish refugees from Vitebsk who failed to leave Surazh before the Germans arrived.²

Sometime in the middle of August, Einsatzkommando 9 also sent a detachment to Ianovichi. This unit carried out the first mass shooting of Jews in the town; an eyewitness states that it was the same group that acted in Surazh: Schneider’s detachment. On August 15 (according to other sources, August 17 or even 19), 1941, the detachment selected 149 Jews, mostly young and healthy men, with shovels, for some “forced labor.” At the same time, the local police surrounded the town, cordoning off the exits. The SS took the men to a square in the town’s center and ordered them to sit down on the ground, to look ahead and not to turn their heads. After all the men were assembled in the square, they were brought to Valki village, 1.5 to 2 kilometers (about 1 mile) southeast of the town, and shot there. The Einsatzkommando described those killed as “NKVD spies and political functionaries.”³

Only after this first shooting was a ghetto established in Ianovichi. All non-Jews were resettled from an area adjacent to the Vitebsk road (Unishevskogo Street), and Jews were settled in this area. The ghetto was divided into two parts by the Tadulino road, and non-Jews were permitted to use this road. Jews and non-Jews were prohibited from communicating with one another. The ghetto was not provided with food, but there were some vegetable plots within its area, which helped the inmates sustain themselves. Some youngsters ventured through the barbed wire surrounding the ghetto and exchanged items for bread. Every time the Germans discovered that the barbed-wire fence was damaged, they beat Lifshits.

The ghetto was liquidated on September 10, 1941. On this day, Einsatzkommando 9 appeared once more in Ianovichi, assembled the rest of the ghetto population—women, children, and old people—brought them in trucks to the village of Zaitsevo, around 5 kilometers (about 3 miles) east-northeast of Ianovichi, and shot them there in an antitank ditch. The SS did not even attempt to conceal this Aktion. According to eyewitnesses (peasants of the Zaitsevo village), the first batch of victims that was brought to the execution site from the ghetto consisted of young girls; the Einsatzkommando men raped them and then shot them. Only after this was the rest of the ghetto population brought to the site, some in trucks, others on foot.⁴ The Einsatzgruppe reported that 1,025 Jews of Ianovichi “underwent special treatment” because of the danger of an epidemic.⁵ [End Page 1679]

The Jewish survivors from Ianovichi who were interviewed after the war refer to their wartime non-Jewish neighbors with great bitterness. For example, witness B.E. says that with the coming of the Germans, the attitude of the local population towards the Jews changed drastically: “The locals could come to a Jew and take away whatever they wanted, even a cow…. [Belo-]Russian boys turned their backs on the Jewish boys straight away, even those with whom [we] had studied at school. They broke off all communication [with Jews] openly/demonstratively … some pointed their finger at us: ‘Jew-mug’ [zhidovskaia morda]; they might also beat you with a stick.”⁶ The non-Jewish witnesses from Ianovichi who were interviewed at the same time express no less acrimony towards their former Jewish neighbors, attesting that they were cowards. All this indicates that relations between Jews and non-Jews during the German occupation were poor. On the other hand, the same B.E. describes a peasant who came to the Tadulino road and threw a parcel of food over the ghetto fence.