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

Pre-1941: Kublichi, village, Ushachi raion, Vitebsk oblast’, Belorussian SSR; 1941–1944: Kublitschi, Rayon Uschatschi, Rear Area, Army Group Center (rückwärtiges Heeresgebiet Mitte); post-1991: Kublichy, Ushachy raen, Vitsebsk voblasts’, Republic of Belarus

Kublichi is located 45 kilometers (28 miles) southwest of Polotsk. Before September 1939, it lay close to the border with Poland. In 1926, it had 546 Jews, according to the population census. The Jewish population of the Ushachi raion (without Ushachi) consisted of 306 people, the bulk of whom lived in Kublichi. Extrapolating from the rate of population decline in the raion in the period 1926–1939, the Jewish population of Kublichi was probably somewhere between 230 and 300 in 1939.

German forces of Army Group Center captured Kublichi on July 3, 1941. There was no organized evacuation. According to survivors, the authorities (among them some Jews) abandoned Kublichi by car after the local unit of the Red Army had left the village. Only a few Jews, mainly men and party or Komsomol members, tried to flee before the Germans entered the village, but almost nobody succeeded.

There was an “interregnum” in Kublichi between the departure of the Soviets and the arrival of the German army. During this period, peasants rushed into Kublichi to rob the abandoned shops and warehouses. According to the survivor Vera Gilman, the peasants tried to prevent the Jews from joining in the plunder. They cried: “Yids, you’ve got riches enough, soon the end will come for you too.”¹

The occupiers appointed local authorities and ordered Jews to register. The registration of Jews was conducted in the square before the Kommandantur and was accompanied by a selection of those fit for work (starting at age 13). There were various kinds of forced labor in Kublichi. Jews were subjected to different forms of abuse; some were killed. For example, according to Gilman, a Jew named Shneiderman appeared at work one day without the yellow patch on his clothing. The Nazis told him to undress and carved a six-pointed star on his back with a knife; when he tried to resist, they killed him (by setting their dogs on him). The Nazis also killed other Jews in Kublichi.

In the fall, most probably in September 1941, the Jews were resettled to Lepelskaia Street; this was the first “ghetto” in Kublichi. The witnesses differ on whether the street was fenced in with barbed wire. The ghetto was not guarded, but there was a high mortality rate among the ghetto inmates.

In the winter of 1941–1942, there was a resettlement of Kublichi Jews to Ushachi. It is unclear from the witness accounts when this resettlement took place. According to the Soviet Extraordinary State Commission (ChGK), the Jews of Kublichi were brought to Ushachi together with the Jews of Usaia and Bobynichi in December 1941. Gilman dates this event on December 10, 1941. Nonetheless, both Kublichi survivors Vera Gilman and Nikolai (Kolia) Gilman attest that when they arrived in the ghetto of Ushachi, it was empty, because all the Jews of Ushachi had been killed. This could only mean that the Kublichi Jews arrived in Ushachi in January 1942. So a more probable date for the resettlement is January 1942, maybe even January 12, when the Jews of Ushachi were shot.

Before the resettlement to Ushachi, some Jewish “specialists” were separated and spared in Kublichi for a while. The eyewitnesses, both Jewish and non-Jewish, give varying information on the names and even on the number of those who were spared. Vera Gilman claims that 15 families of specialists (such as carpenters, tailors, and shoemakers) were singled out and placed in a separate house as early as November 1941; at the same time, the rest of the Jews were resettled into the building of the former maternity hospital. The building was guarded by the local police. Some people from the “maternity hospital” were used for labor too. Gilman attests that there was some cleavage between the specialists (who lived under somewhat better conditions than the rest of the Kublichi Jews) and the maternity hospital dwellers. When the latter came to the specialists asking for some bread for their children, the specialists refused, saying: “You will be killed in any case, and we are permitted to live.”

So, according to Gilman, on the day of the resettlement from Kublichi to Ushachi, at 6:00 a.m., the residents of the maternity hospital in Kublichi were driven out of the building and ordered to leave all their warm coats, valenki (warm felt boots), and good clothing behind. Half undressed, they were taken on horse sleds and brought to the Ushachi ghetto. Some people died of exposure on the way. After the deportation of the Jews from Kublichi, a local shop sold Jewish belongings to the Belorussian population.

The new arrivals were settled in the houses of the former Ushachi ghetto; they found the ghetto abandoned by its former inmates. The ghetto was guarded. According to the survivors, the resettled people found graffiti in Yiddish in one of the houses: “They are bringing us to be shot. If somebody survives, let him avenge us” (Undz firt men shisn. Ver vet zikh rateven un bleibn lebn, nemt nekome far undz). Old people put on their talles (prayer shawls) and prayed.

Some days later, the Jews of Kublichi were killed too. On the morning of the day when the Nazis began to drive the Kublichi Jews out of the Ushachi ghetto, somebody set the ghetto on fire. Some of the Kublichi Jews were killed on the spot, and the rest were brought to the same pits on Doletskaia Street where the Ushachi Jews had been killed, and they were shot there. It is unclear when and how the specialist Jews from Kublichi were killed.

The ChGK estimated the total number of Jews killed in Ushachi at 925. This number is almost certainly too high, taking into account that there were only 893 Jews living in Ushachi and its raion in 1939.