LIOZNO
Pre-1941: Liozno, town and raion center, Vitebsk oblast’, Belorussian SSR; 1941–1944: Liosno, Rayon center, Rear Area, Army Group Center (rückwärtiges Heeresgebiet Mitte); post-1991: Liozna, raen center, Vitsebsk voblasts’, Republic of Belarus
Liozno is located 45 kilometers (28 miles) east-southeast of Vitebsk. In 1939, according to the last pre-war census, 711 Jews lived in the town, making up 17.3 percent of the population. The Jewish population of the Liozno raion (without the town of Liozno) constituted 691 people, the bulk of whom lived in the villages of Kolyshki, Babinovichi, and Dobromysli. Based on the Jewish population of these towns in 1930 (951 in Kolyshki, 262 in Babinovichi, and 204 in Dobromysli), there were probably around 420 Jews in Kolyshki, 115 in Babinovichi, and 85 in Dobromysli at the start of the war.
Liozno was captured by German units of the V Army Corps, 9th Infantry Army, on July 16, 1941; Dobromysli was the site of heavy fighting, and it was captured on July 19.
The Liosno Rayon became part of Rear Area, Army Group Center. An Ortskommandantur was established in Liozno, with Hildebrant as the commandant.1 The chief of the local police in Liozno was Chepik, later Piskunov. Another officer of the local police, Konstantin Turkov, played an instrumental role in the murder of the Jews in Rayon Liosno, as did his subordinates Liarskii, Savitskii, Karavaev, Popov, Seleznev, and others. Some Soviet Extraordinary State Commission (ChGK) witnesses describe Turkov as a sadist who boasted of killing 500 people with his own hands. The starosta (village elder) of Kolyshki was Roman Korotkii; a survivor characterizes [End Page 1699] him as a man with a measure of conscience who had some compassion for the Jews.
On December 5, 1941, the Soviet counteroffensive from Moscow began. In January 1942, the Soviet 4th Shock Army (under the command of Col o nel General A. Eremenko) struck a blow at the junction of German Army Groups Center and North, one of the weakest points of the German front, aiming to recapture Vitebsk. After a number of successful advances, in the first days of February, units of the 4th Shock Army broke through to the approaches of Vitebsk and stopped 5 kilometers (3.1 miles) outside the city. A corridor (the socalled Surazh gate) emerged between Usviaty and Velizh, on the Belorussian-Russian border. On February 6, the Soviet 358th Infantry Division reached Ponizov’e (Russia), close to Liozno and Ianovichi. In February, a Soviet reconnaissance unit appeared in Kolyshki.2 Some days later, in the course of their counteroffensive, the Germans regained Kolyshki and drove back the advanced Soviet units 30 kilometers (18.6 miles) away from Vitebsk.
Liozno is situated on the highway between Vitebsk and Smolensk; thus many Jewish refugees from Vitebsk, Minsk, Bobruisk, and Orsha were there when the Germans captured it. The refugees swelled the town’s Jewish population. During the fighting, some of the town’s dwellings were burned. The occupiers ordered Jews to wear armbands bearing a Star of David and resettled them into a ghetto. The ghetto consisted of 30 to 40 houses along one street; the survivor B. Chernyakov estimates its population at 600. In winter the situation in the ghetto deteriorated considerably. Chernyakov writes:
The police burst into ghetto houses in the winter at any time of the day or night. They broke the windows, beat the Jews with sticks and whips, and chased them out into the freezing cold. Not a single pane remained in one of the houses where there had formerly been a cobbler’s shop, even though 40 people lived in that house in −40° Centigrade [−40° Fahrenheit] weather. Infested with lice, the people slept on rotten, wormy straw. A typhoid [sic., typhus] epidemic began. Several people died every day.
According to the same eyewitness, in the fall of 1941 the Germans arrested, abused, and shot six aged Jewish men.3 In addition, sometime during the winter, Vulf Grinshtein, a Jew married to a non-Jew, was killed. The politsai (local policeman) Yevgenii Lyarskii came to Grinshtein’s wife and demanded “gold and a gold watch.” When she refused, Lyarskii threatened to kill her or her husband. Some days later, Lyarskii came into Grinshtein’s house with several other policemen and once more demanded gold. When the Grinshteins refused, the policemen beat up Grinshtein and shot him.4
At the end of February 1942, at the request of the local Ortskommandantur, the ghetto in Liozno was liquidated. Some days before (various accounts date it on February 23, 24, or 27), a six-man German squad from Einsatzkommando 9, accompanied by a detachment of the Liozno auxiliary police headed by Turkov, appeared in the town. In the night, the town was surrounded by the police, some of whom assembled the ghetto Jews in a big barn on Komsomolskaia Street. During the night, 20 people froze to death in the barn. On February 24 (or 25 or 28), the police started moving the people from the barn to the Adamenki Ravine (2 or 3 kilometers [about 1.5 miles] northwest of Liozno) and shooting them there. The Jews of Liozno were killed together with the Jews of the surrounding villages. The killing was conducted mainly by the local police. Before the killing, the police ordered the Jews to undress. According to a situation report of Einsatzgruppe B, 361 people were killed at that time. After the liquidation of the Liozno Jews, their belongings were sold in a local shop to the non-Jewish population.5
Taking into account that some Liozno Jews were killed before the last Aktion and that, according to Chernyakov, the mortality from disease in the ghetto was high in the winter months, we can assume that many more than 361 Jews perished in Liozno. Chernyakov may be close to the real number of victims when he estimates that 600 Jews were concentrated in the Liozno ghetto and met their deaths in 1941–1942.
On February 25 or 27 (according to various sources), a police unit headed by Turkov appeared in Babinovichi (27 kilometers [16.8 miles] southwest of Liozno). The squad took “more than 20” Jews from the village and escorted them on horse sledges to Adamenki; however, the politsais shot most of them on the way. The list compiled by the ChGK gives 26 names of Jews killed; it is unclear whether the list is complete.6
The roughly 40 (36 according to the ChGK) Jews of the village of Dobromysli (15 kilometers [9.3 miles] southwest of Liozno) were assembled into one house and then shot at the end of February 1942 in the Adamenki Ravine by a Belorussian police unit that came from Liozno. See also Kolyshki for information on the fate of the Jews in that village.
Elsewhere in the Liozno raion, no fewer than 15 Jews were killed in the village of Ryzhiki, Babinovichi sel’sovet (26 kilometers [16 miles] southwest of Liozno); at least 9 Jews were killed in the Sutoki sel’sovet (8 kilometers [5 miles] southwest of Liozno); in the Zamsheno sel’sovet (15 kilometers [9.3 miles] north of Liozno), 6 Jews were killed, members of the Altman family. In Emelianovo, 18 kilometers (11.2 miles) north of Liozno, 20 people were killed in the winter of 1942; it is unclear whether they were Jews. There are some indications that in Veleshkovichi (12 kilometers [7.5 miles] north of Liozno, Zamsheno sel’sovet) a number of Jews were killed by local inhabitants or at least with their assistance.7
SOURCES
The events in Liozno are mentioned in I. Ehrenburg and V. Grossman, eds., The Black Book (New York: Holocaust Library, 1981), pp. 240–241. On the military operations in this region during the winter of 1941–1942, see A.I. Eremenko, V nachale voiny (Moscow, 1964), pp. 434–440.
The documents of the ChGK for the Liozno raion can be found in GARF (7021-84-8); relevant German documents can be found in BStU (ZUV 9, Bd. XXXI); and BA-MA (RW 46/499).
NOTES
1. The ChGK documents identify it as OK I/991.
2. GARF, 7021-84-8.
3. B. Chernyakov’s letter, in Ehrenburg and Grossman, The Black Book, p. 240.
4. GARF, 7021-84-8, witness Kulagina.
5. The majority of the witnesses interrogated by the ChGK date the Aktion on February 23–28. According to them, some of the Liozno Jews were killed on February 24 or 25, the others, on the following days; see ibid. Contrary to that, Einsatzgruppe B’s Tätigkeits- und Lagebericht (BStU, ZUV 9, Bd. XXXI, pp. 176 ff.), as well as Chernyakov’s letter, date the whole action on February 28.
6. GARF, 7021-84-8; Ehrenburg and Grossman, The Black Book, p. 240.
7. Rumors about a killing of Jews in Veleshkovichi circulated in Vitebsk in 1941; see YVA, O-3/4720.
