MOGILEV
Pre-1941: Mogilev, city, raion, and oblast’ center, Belorussian SSR; 1941–1944: Mogilew, Rear Area, Army Group Center (rückwärtiges Heeresgebiet Mitte); post-1991: Mahiliou, raen and voblasts’ center, Republic of Belarus
Mogilev is located about 200 kilometers (124 miles) east of Minsk. According to the census of 1939, Mogilev’s 19,715 Jews made up 19.8 percent of the city’s population. [End Page 1703]
The German invasion of the Soviet Union prompted the evacuation to the east of a considerable number of Jews and the conscription of part of the male Jewish population into the Red Army. The exact number of Jews remaining in Mogilev at the start of the occupation is not known.
Units of the Wehrmacht entered Mogilev on July 26, 1941. Occupied Mogilev was at first located in Panzer Group 2’s zone of operations and then came under Rear Area, Army Group Center. Authority in the city was divided between the local commandant’s office (Ortskommandantur I/292 under Major Krantz) and the field commandant’s office (Feldkommandantur 191 under Oberst Jatschwitz), with the former subordinated to the latter. Later, they were replaced by Ortskommandantur I/843 (1942–1943), Ortskommandantur I/906 (1943), and Feldkommandantur 813 (April 1942–1943).
In the very first days of the occupation, the Germans imposed a number of restrictions on the Jews in Mogilev, including a curfew, markings on their clothes, and forced labor. The creation of a Judenrat by the Nazis further isolated the Jews.
In early August 1941 the Germans registered the city’s Jewish population, which, according to the witness testimony of N.G. Sorkin, documented 14,000 Jewish residents.1 The Judenrat was forced to take an active part in implementing this measure. The occupiers then used this information to prepare the lists of persons for execution.
The Jews were divided into three categories. In the first group were those considered capable of heading up a resistance movement or becoming active participants in the anti-Fascist struggle. They were executed first, with 80 Jews being killed in August 1941 by Einsatzkommando 8 under Dr. Otto Bradfisch.2 Among the victims were party workers Astrov and Khavkin and business manager Rozenberg.
The second category included the bulk of the Jewish population, which initially had been subjected to confinement in an isolated area. On August 13, 1941, a notice appeared, signed by the head of the city authority, Felitsin: “By order of the Herr Kommandant of the city of Mogilev, all persons of Jewish nationality, both genders, are to leave the city limits within 24 hours and relocate to the Ghetto zone. All persons failing to comply with the stated order in the stated period of time will be forcibly moved by the police and the property of those people will be confiscated.”3
Mogilev’s Jews, or a great many of them, were herded into the ghetto on Grazhdanskaia Street in the Podnikol’e quarter. Jews from Kniazhitsy and the Vorotyn’ area were also relocated here.4 In September 1941, the ghetto was moved to the bank of the Dubrovenka River, with borders running from Bykhovskii Market to Vilenskaia Street (later Lazarenko Street). Mayor Felitsin selected the territory for the ghetto. A small number of Jews left Mogilev upon hearing of the relocation to the ghetto.
Bada Iudina went to Mstislavl’, where she soon found herself among prisoners of the ghetto there. To save herself, she claimed to be a Belarussian woman and was sent to work in Germany.5 A student from the Mogilev Pedagogical Institute, Inessa Parkhovnikova, set out for the village of Polykovichi, where she hid with a friend’s family.
Confinement to the ghetto was accompanied by the killing of Jews as well. People were shot on the doorstep of their own homes. According to a German Security Police report, “[I]n Mogilev, the Jews also tried to sabotage their resettlement into the ghetto. One hundred and thirteen Jews were liquidated.”6
Between 40 and 60 people were forced into each house in the ghetto on the Dubrovenka. Foodstuffs were not provided. Jews were forbidden to leave the ghetto. The ghetto was a “closed ghetto” and was guarded by the Feldgendarmerie and Belorussian policemen. All those who were capable of work were sent to do hard physical labor. Young people were regularly beaten, while old men were mocked and their beards and mustaches were shorn. The shooting was almost continuous. Accused of impertinent behavior, 337 Jewish women were executed.7 Two Jews were killed because they were not wearing the yellow patch. Another 2 were shot as alleged agents of the People’s Commissariat of Internal Affairs (NKVD). Three Jews were shot after being discovered with explosive material, and 4 for refusing to work. Eight Jews were accused of incitement and propaganda and then shot.
According to several sources, besides the ghetto on the Dubrovenka River, there were other places for concentrating Mogilev’s Jews, which appeared in September–October 1941 somewhere on Vilenskaia Street and in an enclosed part of a field next to where the Hotel Mogilev stands today.8 These should be classified as holding places for victims before execution. A longer period of confinement is connected with the Dimitrov Factory (Strommashina).
In October 1941, the occupiers carried out two Aktions aimed at the destruction of the ghetto on the Dubrovenka River. The first mass killing took place on October 2 and 3, 1941. The executioners were from Einsatzkommando 8, Police Battalions 316 and 322, Ukrainian Schutzmannschaft [End Page 1704] Battalion 51, and a police detachment called “Waldenburg.” In all, 2,073 Jews were shot. The first 65 Jews were killed right in the ghetto on October 2. The remaining 2,008 people were first driven into the Dimitrov Factory and then shot on October 3, 1941, in the Mashekovskii Jewish cemetery.9
The second Aktion was carried out on October 19, 1941. Einsatzkommando 8, Police Battalion 316, and Ukrainian Schutzmannschaft Battalion 51 all participated in the Aktion. This mass shooting, which claimed the lives of 3,726 Jews, took place predominantly in the villages of Kazimirovka and Novoe Pashkovo.10 The annihilation of the ghetto inmates followed approximately the same scenario in both cases: “Fall of 1941. When it was already very cold, the Germans arrived in the ghetto in many vehicles, and began to force the Jews from their homes and load them onto the motor vehicles. Screams, noise, crying arose from the ghetto. Those who were not able to walk were shot on the spot. I saw this with my own eyes. All the vehicles were covered with a tarpaulin.”11 The exact date on which the 4,800 Jews reportedly murdered in Polykovichi took place remains unresolved.
In Mogilev, the Germans used “mobile gas chambers” or “gas vans” to kill some of their victims. This instrument of death looked like a large, black-colored enclosed truck. They killed people by feeding the vehicle’s own exhaust fumes into the hermetically sealed chamber where the victims were held.12
After the liquidation of the ghetto on the Dubrovenka River, remaining Jewish property there was plundered. The deserted homes were combed in the search for valuables, high-quality clothing, and household objects.
The destruction of the ghetto on the Dubrovenka River marks the end of what is conventionally seen as the first phase in the history of the Holocaust in Mogilev. It should be noted that the second period is less clear and more problematic in terms of reconstructing the events. This second phase is connected to a large extent with the fate of the Jews relegated to the third category drawn up by the Nazis after the census. At issue here are the specialist workers and craftsmen whom the Nazis needed and therefore spared from liquidation until later. The saddlers, shoemakers, locksmiths, blacksmiths, carpenters, tailors, tinsmiths, tanners, glaziers, and painters who were thus selected were confined on the premises of the Dimitrov Factory. At the end of September 1941, around 1,000 Jews were driven into the forced labor camp established there.13
At the beginning of its existence, the camp probably was filled only with Jews and was a kind of closed ghetto for hard labor, which also had its own 15-man Jewish police force. It was guarded externally by local police, and the Jews were forbidden to leave its premises. According to the testimony of L.M. Naimark, after the liquidation of the ghetto on the Dubrovenka, a considerable number of Jews were taken to the Dimitrov Factory and killed there.
Work for the camp’s Jewish inmates consisted of hard physical tasks. These could have something or nothing at all to do with an inmate’s vocation. The inhabitants of the forced labor camp were also fed poorly. Every Sunday, the Germans carried out a purge.14 The corpses were buried in two pits, right where they were shot. A typhus epidemic also broke out as a result of overcrowding and unsanitary conditions.
According to Sorkin’s testimony, the camp contained not only Jews. The ratio of Jews to non-Jews, however, has not been determined. After a visit by Heinrich Himmler on October 23, 1941, the camp was expanded. On the basis of witness testimony, it is estimated that the capacity of the camp was about 2,000 people, and during its existence between the fall of 1941 and the fall of 1943, up to 4,000 people probably passed through the camp, most of whom were killed.15
Sometimes contingents of Jews from elsewhere were sent to Mogilev. For example, approximately 400 Jews were brought to the camp from Słonim on May 26, 1942. Available testimony indicates that up to 4,000 Jews were liquidated in the camp in a single Aktion in 1942 (the exact date is not known).16
To cover up the evidence of their crimes, the Germans in the fall of 1943 exhumed their victims’ remains from the mass graves in Polykovichi, Novoe Pashkovo, and Kazimirovka and burned them.
A small number of Jews survived. As for losses, the report of the Soviet Extraordinary State Commission (ChGK) of October 8, 1944, gives an overall figure of 10,000 Jews murdered.17 However, the aforementioned document says nothing of the shootings in the camp at the Dimitrov Factory. The total number of Jews who perished in Mogilev, therefore, may be as high as 14,000 people.
SOURCES
One of the first attempts to describe the Holocaust in Mogilev was the essay by Ida Shenderovich, “Zabytoe getto,” published in the collection Historyia Mahiliou: Minulae i suchasnasts’ (Mogilev, 2003), pp. 92–101. Another key source of information is the detailed monograph by Christian Gerlach, Kalkulierte Morde: Die deutsche Wirtschafts- und Vernichtungspolitik in Weissrussland 1941 bis 1944 (Hamburg: Hamburger Edition, 1999), in which the author examines the murder of Mogilev’s Jews, citing many archival collections. Other relevant publications include the following: Andrej Angrick et al., “ ‘Da hätte man schon ein Tagebuch führen müssen.’ Das Polizeibataillon 322 und die Judenmorde im Bereich der Heeresgruppe Mitte während des Sommers und Herbstes 1941,” in Helge Grabitz et al., eds., Die Normalität des Verbrechens. Festschrift für Wolfgang Scheffler zum 65. Geburtstag (Berlin: Hentrich, 1994), pp. 32–85; Pamiats’: Mahiliou (Minsk, 1998); Ida Markovich Shenderovich, Martirolog: Spiski evreev, pogibshikh vo vremia vtoroi mirovoi voiny: Mogilev (Mogilev: “Dzhoint,” 2001); Ida M. Shenderovich and Aleksandr Litin, eds., Gibel’ mestechek Mogilevshchiny: Kholokost v Mogilevskoi oblasti v vospominaniiakh i dokumentakh (Mogilev: MGU im. A.A. Kuleshova, 2005); Inna Gerasimova and Arkadii Shul’man, eds., Pravedniki narodov mira Belarusi (Minsk: Tonpik, 2004); and DDR-Justiz und NS-Verbrechen, vol. 2 (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2002), Lfd. Nr. 1044, pp. 284–286.
Relevant documentation on the destruction of the Jews of Mogilev during the Holocaust can be found in the following archives: BA-BL (R 58); BA-L (e.g., B 162/3337); BA-MA (e.g., RH 26-286/10); BLH (video testimony of N.G. Sorkin); GAMO (260-1-15); GARF (7021-88-43); NARA; NARB (e.g., 570-1-1 and 4683-3-943); PAGV; PAIMSh; RGVA; USHMM (e.g., RG-53.006M, RG-48.004M, and RG-53.002M); VHAP; VHF (e.g., # 31372 and 43212); and YVA.
NOTES
1. BLH, video testimony of N.G. Sorkin.
2. Tätigkeits- und Lagebericht, no. 3 (August 15–31, 1941), in Peter Klein et al., ed., Die Einsatzgruppen in der besetzten Sowjetunion, 1941/42 (Berlin: Hentrich, 1997), p. 159.
3. GAMO, 260-1-15, p. 14.
4. GARF, 7021-88-43, p. 111, testimony of K.P. Bazylenko.
5. PAGV, testimony of B.G. Iudina.
6. Tätigkeits- und Lagebericht, no. 6 (October 1–31, 1941), in Klein, Einsatzgruppen, p. 230.
7. Ibid.
8. Material in PAIMSh.
9. USHMM, RG-48.004M (VHAP), reel 1, KTB of Pol. Btn. 322, October 2–3, 1941, and report of 9. Company, Pol. Rgt. Mitte, October 15, 1941.
10. BA-BL, R 58/219, Ereignismeldung UdSSR no. 133, November 14, 1941; and Tätigkeits- und Lagebericht, no. 7 (November 1–30, 1941), in Klein, Einsatzgruppen, p. 253.
11. TsAKGBRB, t. 1, gr. 7, op. 7, por. 4, arkh. no. 1277.
12. GARF, 7021-88-43, p. 113, testimony of V.V. Kurochkin.
13. NARB, 570-1-1, p. 137 reverse; BA-MA, RH 26-286/10.
14. BLH, video testimony of N.G. Sorkin.
15. BA-L, B 162/3337 (202 AR-Z 52/59, vol. 4), p. 637.
16. Ibid., pp. 453, 634, 637, 641–642, as cited by Gerlach, Kalkulierte Morde, pp. 771–772.
17. GARF, 7021-88-43, p. 120, ChGK report, October 8, 1944.
