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

Pre-1941: Kholopenichi, town and raion center, Minsk oblast’, Belorussian SSR; 1941–1944: Cholopenitschi, Rayon center, Rear Area, Army Group Center (rückwärtiges Heeresgebiet Mitte); post-1991: Khalopenichy, Krupki raen, Minsk voblasts’, Republic of Belarus

Kholopenichi is located about 114 kilometers (71 miles) northeast of Minsk. In 1939, the Jewish population of the town was 500 people. In addition, another 388 Jews resided in the remainder of the Kholopenichi raion. Most of these Jews probably resided in the small village of Shamki (Schamki), about 6 kilometers (4 miles) to the northwest of Kholopenichi, which had been founded as a Jewish agricultural colony in the late nineteenth century and had a population of 310 Jews in 1925.

German forces of Army Group Center occupied the town on July 5, 1941. During the occupation, which lasted until the summer of 1944, a German commandant’s office (Ortskommandantur) was in control of the town. An auxiliary police force (Ordnungsdienst) was recruited from local inhabitants. In early October 1941, the 3rd Battalion of Infantry Regiment 354 was based in Kholopenichi and presumably ran the Ortskommandantur at that time.¹

Very little information is available about the living conditions of the Jews in Kholopenichi and Shamki during the summer of 1941. It is known that a number of refugees from other towns further to the west, including Minsk and Borisov, became trapped there by the German advance and were housed together with the local Jews. In nearby Zembin, the Jews were registered and moved into a ghetto by August 1941, on instructions from SS-Hauptsturmführer Werner Schönemann of Einsatzkommando 8, then based in Borisov. It is possible that a similar procedure was carried out in Kholopenichi, which also lay within Schönemann’s area of operations. On the basis of evidence given in the trial of David Egof, the head of the Belorussian police in Borisov in the fall of 1941, and other investigative sources, historian Christian Gerlach and also The Black Book with Red Pages refer to the existence of ghettos in both Kholopenichi and Shamki by September 1941.

In late September 1941, a German punitive detachment of more than 100 men armed with submachine guns arrived in Kholopenichi. The unit was composed of a detachment of Einsatzkommando 8 based in Borisov commanded by Schönemann, together with German soldiers of the 12th Company, Infantry Regiment 354,² and members of the local Belorussian police. On the pretext of resettling the Jewish population to another locality, the German soldiers went to all the Jewish houses and gathered the Jews on the premises of a social club. Those who were unable to walk were taken in carts. In total, around 800 people were collected there. Then under heavy guard, they all were escorted from the social club to the “Kamennyi log” (Stone Ravine) 1 kilometer (0.6 mile) outside of town, where they were shot. On that same day, also at the Kamennyi log, the punitive detachment shot a number of additional Jews who had been brought there from the village of Shamki. The German punitive detachment forced 36 local inhabitants, at gunpoint, to bury the corpses. The Soviet Extraordinary State Commission report estimates that altogether the German detachment shot 1,600 “innocent citizens” from Kholopenichi and Shamki.³ However, in light of the 1939 population figures and the likelihood that some Jews had managed to evacuate, the total number of victims was probably just over half this number.

According to the report of the Einsatzgruppen no. 124, dated October 25, 1941, a large Aktion was conducted in Cholopenitschi (Kholopenichi), in which 822 Jews were “liquidated.” The alleged reason for the complete liquidation of the Jews there was to prevent them from providing any possible support to the numerous partisans said to be operating in the area.⁴ [End Page 1680]