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

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

Krupki is located 118 kilometers (73.3 miles) northeast of Minsk.

In 1939, there were 870 Jews out of 3,455 inhabitants (25.2 percent) in Krupki. German forces occupied the town on June 26, 1941. Only a few of Krupki’s Jews managed to flee either by road or by rail at the start of the invasion; the majority found themselves trapped under German occupation, together with some refugees from western Belorussia.

The Germans organized a police force consisting of local inhabitants, which was led by Timofei Svitkovskii, a former officer in the Red Army. A man named Baranovskii became head of the Rayon, and successively, Karon’, Pavkovets, and Evtishevskii served as town mayor. The commander of the local punitive detachment was Ivanov. The military commandant was a German officer named Gebel (or Goebel). Belorussians Ivan Dranitsa, Vladimir Khvashchevskii, Mikhail Titovets, Vasilii Koran’, Daria Urgulevskaia, Dmitrii Molosai, Fedor Kondratenko, Vasilii Balbas, Vasilii Asipovets, and Ul’ian Keyzo served in the local police.¹

In July 1941, the Germans organized one of the first ghettos on occupied Belorussian soil in Krupki. The Jews were forbidden to leave the ghetto without written permission from the mayor. All Jews were obliged to wear distinguishing marks on their clothing and had to perform forced labor. No detailed information is available on whether the ghetto was guarded or on the existence of a fence enclosing it. However, about 1,000 Jews lived within the ghetto. It appears that the Germans did not make long-term plans for the ghetto and its inhabitants; instead, they used it only as a place to collect and hold Jews temporarily until their extermination. There was also a prison in Krupki for people suspected of concealing Jews or those viewed as disloyal or hostile to German rule.²

The Germans conducted a series of initial killing Aktions against the Jews in Krupki between July and mid-September 1941. The largest Aktion took place at the cemetery, half a kilometer (about a third of a mile) outside Krupki. The Germans murdered more than 100 people, including the elderly, women, and children.³

On September 16, 1941, the German occupying authorities separated the Jewish men from their families and other ghetto inmates, and they threatened to kill them if their relatives failed to produce a ransom in the form of fur clothing.

The Germans conducted the main liquidation Aktion against the ghetto on September 18, 1941. At 7:00 a.m., the Germans gathered all the Jews on the market square near the town council building and declared that they would be sent to Germany for work. The Jews were ordered to take with them only their money and other valuables. They were also told to keep their doors unlocked and to hand the keys to the mayor. All the Jews were checked according to a list. Then the German forces escorted them along Sovetskaia Street in the direction of the village of Lebedevo, leading them off to the swampy bank of the Strazhnitsa River on the other side of the Minsk-Moscow highway. Along the way, many Jews began to suspect their fate once the column passed the railway line and continued on towards the swamp. During the march, everyone was prohibited from stopping or talking; those who disobeyed were beaten with sticks.⁴

The column stopped near Panskoe village, at the First of May kolkhoz in the Shatski sel’sovet, where before the war there had been a quarry and now two large pits had been prepared.⁵ The Jews were ordered to sit down on the ground 50 meters (164 feet) from the pits. The guards ordered some of the prisoners to carry a few wide planks, which were then thrown across the trenches. Then 10 people were chosen, including a woman with two children. The mother carried her baby, 10 or 11 months old, in her arms, while the other child held her hand. The prisoners were escorted to the trench and were ordered to strip down to their underclothing. The Germans put the clothes on trucks and wrenched the children away from their mothers. The Germans ordered the Jews, now undressed, to walk across the planks. Panic began to envelop the crowd, and heartrending screams were heard. [End Page 1692] Doomed to die, the Jews turned around and were shot in the head by the guards. A volley of rounds was fired, and 9 Jews fell into the trench. An old man who remained standing was shot again to finish him off. Another officer grabbed a child by his legs and smashed him head first into the ground, then let him fall “like a chick” into the trench.⁶

The Aktion in Krupki was carried out by a section of Einsatzkommando 8 based in Borisov under the command of Werner Schönemann, assisted by the locally based unit of the Wehrmacht. Obergefreiter Richard Heidenreich of the 12th Company, 354th Regiment, made a note in his “diary” about the Aktion in Krupki. The evening before, the senior lieutenant selected 15 men with “strong nerves.” Once they had been informed of their task, they marched to the nearest swamp. The victims were ordered to get into the ditch, and the shooting detail stood over the victims. As Heidenreich describes it: “10 shots were heard and 10 Jews fell down. It continued like this until we had killed them all. Only a few people kept a stiff upper lip. Children clung to their mothers, and women to their husbands. I won’t forget this image for a very long time.”⁷ A large part of the Belorussian police was also present at the Aktion. Commander of the police Svitkovskii, military commandant Gebel, commander of the punitive detachment Ivanov, commander of the Rayon Baranovskii, and policeman Broneslav Zakrevskii all actively participated in the Aktion. According to Maria Shpunt, at first the killing site was surrounded by several hundred guards, but later, once many Jews had been killed, some policemen were permitted to go to the mess hall for dinner.⁸

According to the report of Einsatzgruppe B dated October 25, 1941, 912 Jews were murdered in Krupki that day.⁹ After the shooting, local Belorussians were ordered to bury the corpses. According to Anton Krukovskii (born 1883), the bodies of the dead were placed in rows in two pits: one 60 meters long and 3 meters wide (197 by 9.8 feet), the other 15 meters by 3 meters (49 by 9.8 feet) and just over 1 meter (3.3 feet) deep. The corpses were packed almost to the top of the pits. When the Germans came to bury the people, they killed a man, a woman, and a little boy who were still alive. After covering the pits, the Belorussians were allowed to go home. Individual Jews caught subsequently were also shot.¹⁰

In March 1942, men of Einsatzkommando 8 also shot the Jews in two villages, one north and one south of Krupki. In each case, 15 Jews were shot.¹¹ In 1943, the Germans, with the help of Soviet prisoners of war (POWs), exhumed the mass grave and burned the corpses. Afterwards, the Soviet POWs were murdered.

Some Jews survived the Aktion. Among them were Sofia Shalaumova (born 1920), Maria Shpunt, and her younger son. After counting all those who had been killed, the Germans ordered men from the surrounding villages to cover the mass grave. The work was not finished, however, because some Belorussians noticed that the trench was “breathing” and that they needed to wait. After hearing the shots, Sofia, for example, fell into the trench at the proper time without being wounded. Among the peasants who were burying the bodies, she recognized her acquaintance Nikolai Bogdanov and asked him not to cover her with earth. He did as she asked.¹²

Maria Shpunt tried to persuade the Germans to let her live by claiming that she was not Jewish. While she pleaded for her life, 11 people from her group were killed, and Maria, with her baby, was placed on a pile of breathing bodies as the German soldiers went to get a new group of Jews. The woman took advantage of this pause, crawled out of the pit, and ran into the brush; though the Germans shot at her, she got away unscathed.¹³