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

Pre-1941: Klimovichi, town and raion center, Mogilev oblast’, Belorussian SSR; 1941–1944: Klimowitschi, Rayon center, Rear Area, Army Group Center (rückwärtiges Heeresgebiet Mitte); post-1991: Klimavichy, raen center, Mahiliou voblasts’, Republic of Belarus

Klimovichi is situated 124 kilometers (77 miles) east-southeast of Mogilev. In 1939, according to the last pre-war census, 1,693 Jews lived in the town, making up 17.7 percent of the population. The Jewish population of the Klimovichi raion (without the town of Klimovichi) constituted 706 people, the bulk of whom lived in the town of Rodnia (16 kilometers [10 miles] southeast of Klimovichi) and in the villages of Lazovitsa (6 kilometers [4 miles] southeast of Klimovichi), Miloslavichi (25 kilometers [15.5 miles] northeast of Klimovichi), Khotovizh, and Karpachi (15 kilometers [9 miles] north of Klimovichi).

Klimovichi lies on a railway line. A more or less organized evacuation began on July 5, but it did not involve the whole population. For example, on July 14 all the Communist Party authorities (the raion committee, or raikom) with their families evacuated in 30 trucks;¹ there were some Jews among these party leaders. According to survivors, most of the Jews tried to leave the town independently in August 1941, many of them in horse-drawn carts. Some of the first refugees successfully escaped the Germans; those who left later and those who headed eastward, in the direction of Khotimsk and Roslavl’, did not. According to witnesses, many of those who attempted to evacuate were forced to return to their houses, which had been completely plundered by the local population in the meantime.

German forces belonging to the 2nd Panzer Group (commanded by Heinz Guderian) took Klimovichi in the course of the Roslavl’ operation. Roslavl’, an important railway junction northeast of Klimovichi, fell to the Germans on August 3, 1941, thereby cutting off the main route out of town to the east. On August 9, 1941, the 3rd Panzer Division of the XXIV Army Corps entered Klimovichi. The Germans had captured the entire raion by October 8–10. Klimovichi came under the authority of Rear Area, Army Group Center. The 221st Security Division controlled the area;² Feldkommandantur 549 exerted authority in Klimovichi.

The Germans put together a local administration in Klimovichi in which a man named Ustinovich served; he is described by witnesses as “the chief of the Russian Gestapo.” Appointed as Jewish elder was Froim Rodin, the former head of the town’s fire brigade. The military authorities ordered Jews to affix “Jewish stars” to their clothes (on the chest and on the back) and to houses owned by Jews. Jews had to perform various types of forced labor and were subjected to many other restrictions on their liberty. The man who supervised Jewish forced labor was Shcherbakov, a former Russian member of the Jewish kolkhoz in Mikhalin.³

In the first days of the occupation, the Germans took 10 or 12 prominent Jewish men and formed a “committee” headed by Shcherbakov, which had to collect gold and any other valuables in the possession of Jews. When these men failed to collect the full sum that the Germans demanded, the latter took them and Rodin as hostages and placed them in the local prison, in the building of a former bank. After having held the hostages in the prison for about 10 days, the Germans and the local police (politsais) shot all of them except one, a bricklayer.

According to one account, the “contribution” that led to these murders was the second one; it was preceded by a first “contribution,” which the Jews had collected in full. According to another account, in mid-October the Germans resettled the Jews of Klimovichi on one street, forming an “open ghetto.” ⁴

On November 6, 1941, the Belorussian police sent younger Jews to work near the alcohol plant. After that, the Germans and the politsais began to round up the rest of the Jews from their houses. The Jews were told to take warm clothes and [End Page 1682] valuables with them. They were then brought along the Timonovo Road to the area of a former airfield, 500 meters (547 yards) south or southwest of Klimovichi, and placed in unused garages near the town’s hospital. From this place, the Jews—who had been told to leave all their belongings in the garage—were taken in batches of 10 or 15 people and shot in a former fuel storage pit near the airfield. Men of the 221st Security Division organized the massacre, aided by a detachment of Einsatzkommando 9.⁵ The witnesses attest that the killers were not the SS in black but “Germans in green uniform.” Some of the killing was perpetrated by the politsais; some children were killed with shovels rather than by guns. According to other accounts, the perpetrators tossed Jewish children into the pit, which contained some water, and the children drowned.⁶ Many were buried alive.

Some of those sent by the Germans to perform labor in the morning managed to survive. The politsais let them go home at 3:00 p.m. Many succeeded in fleeing from Klimovichi. According to some witnesses, it was German soldiers at the alcohol plant who warned the young Jews that their relatives were all being killed at this time.⁷

After the large-scale murder Aktion on November 6, the Germans sold items previously belonging to the Jews in a shop. The Germans kept the specialist workers alive, and together with the politsais they caught many of the Jews who had fled from Klimovichi on the day of the murder and put them into the prison. Witnesses estimate that together with the specialists there were about 80 Jews in the prison (and perhaps also in an adjacent house). After some days, these Jews were also sent to perform forced labor tasks.

Sometime in December (or on November 27–28) 1941, the SS came to Klimovichi and shot those Jews who had fled from the Aktion on November 6. The Jews were taken directly from their working place, led to “Chalk Hill,” the location of a former lime plant, and shot there. Again, some young Jews managed to flee.⁸ According to the survivor Leitus, in the first days of December, the Nazis transferred Jews from the nearby villages of Golovchin, Krugloe, and Pelshichi to Klimovichi, held them several days in a makeshift ghetto, and on December 12, killed them.⁹ It is unclear whether she is describing the same murder Aktion or another one.

The specialists were killed later, maybe in 1943, in the Vydrenka Forest, 2 kilometers (1.2 miles) outside the town.

The Soviet Extraordinary State Commission (ChGK) estimated the number of Jews killed in Klimovichi at 900; the same number was inscribed on the monument erected at the site of the large massacre by the victims’ relatives in the late 1950s. The relatives reburied those who had been killed at Vydrenka and Chalk Hill at the same place, the site of the large massacre. Most probably, about 700 of these victims were killed on November 6, 1941: Einsatzgruppe B reported that as part of an antipartisan sweep conducted by units of Security Division 221, a detachment of Einsatzkommando 9 shot 786 Jews of both sexes in Klimovichi and Cherikov.¹⁰

In April 1943, some SS men appeared in Klimovichi. With the support of the Belorussian police and the “chief of the Russian Gestapo” Ustinovich, they carried out the extermination of children of mixed origins (those with non-Jewish mothers and Jewish fathers). They assembled seven non-Jewish women married to Jews and put them in the local prison. Then they took away all their children, and on April 12 (or 13), 1943, in the night they killed them at the same prison, according to one witness, “without any of the children making a sound” (most probably, the children were poisoned). The children were buried at Vydrenka Hill. The same squad also carried out the murder of Gypsy women and of Belorussian women ill with certain diseases.¹¹

According to witnesses, Jewish and non-Jewish relations were quite good in Klimovichi both before and under the German occupation. Of those Jews who were in Klimovichi when the Germans entered the town, 15 managed to survive the German occupation—many of them because non-Jews hid them. Raya Shkolnikova was even hidden by a Belorussian policeman. Non-Jews provided Jews with food. At the same time, many Belorussians and Russians volunteered to serve in the police and collaborated with the Gestapo, participating in the denunciation of Jews. Many Jews were denounced by their former non-Jewish neighbors.

Elsewhere in the raion, in Miloslavichi, the Nazis shot no fewer than 115 Jews.¹² In Khotovizh, 40 Jewish and 7 Gypsy families were killed near the Jewish cemetery.¹³ At the kolkhoz “Bliung” (literally meaning “flourishing” in Yiddish; 7 kilometers [4.4 miles] north of Klimovichi), at least 8 Jews were killed, and in Kuleshovka (20 kilometers [12.4 miles] north of Klimovichi), 6 Jews. In the village of Khodun (18 kilometers [11.2 miles] north of Klimovichi), a Jewish woman married to a Belorussian was killed. In Rodnia on December 17 (another version: on the night of December 8–9), 1941, about 50 or 60 Jews were taken from their homes and shot in a depression near the Jewish cemetery.¹⁴ In Dubrovitsa (19 kilometers [11.8 miles] west of Klimovichi), 4 Jews were killed, and in nearby Popekhinka (17 kilometers [10.6 miles] west-southwest of Klimovichi), 1. In Pisliatino (25 kilometers [15.5. miles] east of Klimovichi), 5 Jews were killed. In the sel’sovet Semenovka (15 kilometers [9.3 miles] southeast of Klimovichi), 2 Jews were killed.