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

Pre-1941: Mar’ina Gorka, town and center, Pukhovichi raion, Minsk oblast’, Belorussian SSR; 1941–1944: Marjina Gorka, Rear Area, Army Group Center (rückwärtiges Heeresgebiet Mitte); post-1991: Mar’ina Horka, center, Pukhavichy raen, Minsk voblasts’, Republic of Belarus

Mar’ina Gorka is located 56 kilometers (35 miles) southeast of Minsk. According to the 1939 census, there were 786 Jews living in Mar’ina Gorka.

Mar’ina Gorka was occupied by units of the German army at the beginning of July 1941. As the Red Army was retreating, local inhabitants killed 11 Soviet soldiers. Sometime in August 1941, about 70 or 80 inhabitants of Mar’ina Gorka (mostly Jewish men) were arrested and taken to the police courtyard where they were held captive and systematically abused for one week. The Germans cut off their beards, cut stars into their heads, forced them to crawl, and beat them with rifle butts, whips, and sticks. Among those held was a [End Page 1702] Jew named Isaak Fried, who with the others was forced to eat grass and jump from a roof. After about a week, the captives were driven to the cemetery and shot.¹

At the end of August or in early September 1941, the German authorities established a ghetto in Mar’ina Gorka in the area of Gorky Street, May 1 Street, and Soviet Street. Some 600 people were confined within the ghetto, mainly women, children, and the elderly. The local population was forbidden to enter the ghetto, and Jews were forbidden all contact with their former neighbors.²

In the second half of September 1941, Gendarmerie Wachtmeister Bruno Mittmann drove to Mar’ina Gorka from Minsk together with some 20 Gendarmes and 27 Schutzpolizei (Schupo) to carry out an Aktion against the local Jewish population. In charge of the Aktion was SS-Brigadeführer Carl Zenner, as well as Gendarmerie Leutnant Karl Kalla. The Aktion had been ordered personally by the newly appointed Generalkommissar in Weissruthenien, Wilhelm Kube.³

Early in the morning, the Germans and local policemen surrounded the ghetto and forced the Jews to assemble on Lenin Square. The people were beaten severely, and children cried and screamed; those who could not walk were dragged along by the others. The Jews were then loaded onto trucks and conveyed to the Blon’ Collective Farm just north of Mar’ina Gorka. One woman, Goda Kogan, called out to a non-Jewish friend as she was driven away: “Live well! We won’t see each other again!” Another Jewish woman sprang from the moving truck into the river and was shot by the German guards.⁴

At Blon’, the Jews were made to undress in a pigsty and then taken up the hill of Popova Gorka in groups of 10 to be shot with machine guns. The Jews from the nearby Pukhovichi ghetto were also escorted to Blon’ on foot that day and were shot together with those from Mar’ina Gorka. Children were thrown into the grave and buried alive. According to one account, some women were raped before they were shot. The shootings lasted nearly all day. The Germans attempted to drown out the noise of the shooting by running tractor engines.

The Rayon mayor, Leonid Derban, was present at the killing site. Clothing and other valuables taken from the victims were loaded onto trucks and taken to Mar’ina Gorka. These items were subsequently sold at the communal shop or stolen by the police. Some 67 Soviet prisoners of war (POWs) were also taken to the killing site on trucks later in the day, and the Germans shot them in a separate mass grave next to the Jews.⁵

The German Einsatzgruppen report states that the Aktion against the Jews in Mar’ina Gorka “became necessary because the Jews were sabotaging all the instructions issued by the occupying authorities. The work assigned to them was done with great reluctance. Nine hundred and ninety-six Jewish men and women were given ‘special treatment’ in order to break this spirit of resistance.” ⁶ Of these, probably some 500 came from the Mar’ina Gorka ghetto and the rest from nearby Pukhovichi. The Soviet Extraordinary State Commission (ChGK) report estimates 970 bodies in one grave and 67 in another nearby.⁷

Bruno Mittmann (born 1901) was tried in Minsk in 1946 for the murder of the Jews in Mar’ina Gorka and Pukhovichi, among other crimes. The Soviet authorities sentenced him to death and hanged him.⁸ Local policeman Nikifor L. Moshenok was convicted in 1946 for service in the German police. In his interrogations, he admitted guarding the Jews during their roundup and execution but denied having personally taken part in the shooting.⁹ In the records examined for this entry, no mention of Jewish survivors could be found.