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

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

Mstislavl’ is located 80 kilometers (50 miles) east-northeast of Mogilev. In 1939, 2,067 Jews lived in Mstislavl’ (19.7 percent of the population).

Soon after the German invasion on June 22, 1941, refugees from western Belorussia began arriving in Mstislavl’. No organized evacuation from the town was undertaken. Young adult males were mobilized into the Red Army. Most women, the elderly, and children were unable to escape on foot, and it was difficult to get a place on the few available trains. Many families decided not to leave their property behind unprotected. On July 14, 1941, the Germans entered Mstislavl’.

During the battles, some Jewish homes were burned, and people had to move to other houses. Soon after their arrival, the German forces arrested Communist activists, officials of the local administration, and some Jews. A local police force was established under the command of police chief Kureshev. The local police assisted the German authorities in controlling the Jews: all Jewish houses were marked with six-pointed stars, and all Jews were registered. Every day the Jews had to report to the marketplace to be assigned to forced labor; those unable to work were beaten. Compulsory labor tasks included the cleaning of cesspools and lavatories.

Probably in September 1941, Egon Noack, commander of Vorauskommando Moskau of Einsatzgruppe B, arrived in Mstislavl’; after consulting with the mayor and the head of the local Russian police, he ordered the creation of a ghetto in the “Sloboda” section of town. All Jews were ordered to move into the ghetto, while local Belorussians were evacuated from this area. During this visit, the Security Police under Noack ordered the collection of fur coats from the Jews, and after the ghetto was established, the German Security Police shot about 30 male Jews.¹

Some testimonies, however, indicate that there was no formal ghetto in Mstislavl’ and that the Jews were taken from their own houses to be shot. Only the Jews from the collective farm in Kazemirovka were taken to town the day before the mass shooting and were held on Leninskaia Street, which used to be the “Jewish street” before the war. At the beginning of the occupation, some Jews from the western part of town had also moved there after their houses burned. Therefore, it appears that the area around Leninskaia Street, which came to be heavily populated by Jews, was some form of “open ghetto” and apparently was not enclosed.²

On October 14, 1941, a punitive unit commanded by Field Marshal Krause and consisting of Germans and some Ukrainians arrived in Mstislavl’. Krause ordered an Aktion against the Jews to be carried out the next morning. At 7:00 a.m., the Jews were driven from their homes, and 30 older men were transported to the Leshenskii ditch, where the Germans shot them, leaving the bodies unburied. Young women were forced into shops and sexually abused; if they tried to defend themselves, they were shot on the square. The rest of the Jews were gathered in the yard of the pedagogic school. Among them were also Jews from Zarech’e, on the opposite bank of the Vikhra. In early October, the Germans had announced through loudspeakers that the Jews of Zarech’e should prepare for resettlement to Palestine. On October 15, 1941, the Germans and local residents escorted the Jews of Zarech’e to Mstislavl’ in columns.

At the school, the guards took the Jews into classrooms, forced them to undress, took their valuables, and sent them back half-dressed to the yard. Among the Jews, rumors soon spread about the killings. At 3:00 p.m., the Jews (at least 700 people) were separated into two columns, one for men and one for women.³ Then the Germans and local policemen escorted them out of town.

The Germans and local policemen escorted the Jews to the west of Mstislavl’ to the Kagalny Ravine between the Zamkovaia and Troitskaia hillocks (near the Inovskii sel’sovet, 2 kilometers [1.2 miles] from town). First they selected 50 [End Page 1706] Jews to dig the pits, then they killed them. Then the others were forced to undress completely and to lie down in the pits, where they were shot from behind in groups of 10.⁴ Some witnesses claim that the local police conducted the shootings while the Germans guarded the site.

The schoolteacher Minkina begged to save the life of her six-year old son, whose father (Orlovski) was Russian. In reply, the Germans stabbed her child with a bayonet and threw him into the pit.⁵ When the shooting was over, the local police checked the dead bodies, and recognizing that two women were still alive, they finished them off.⁶

The report of the Einsatzgruppen recorded that “900 Jews were executed in Mstislavl’ as they had [allegedly] provided food, clothing, and shelter to partisans passing through the area.”⁷ Another source indicates that the Germans and their collaborators murdered some 700 citizens of Mstislavl’ at the mass grave site, most of whom were Jews but including 35 Roma (Gypsies) and 168 Belorussians, shot there subsequently.⁸

Some Jews who had the opportunity to escape decided to die with their relatives. Rusya Zhits was hidden by her friend Nadezhda Lipitskaia, but when the shooting began, she gave herself up because she could not abandon her sick mother. Fanya Eselevich was not taken with the convoy because she was married to a Russian, and the Germans did not recognize her as being Jewish, but when she saw that her relatives, including her eight-month-old son, had been killed, she decided she had no reason to live.⁹

After the shootings, remaining Jewish property was looted. On December 18, 1941, Ortskommandantur I (V)/256 reported the transfer of jewelry and other valuables, which had been secured by the town administration as the property of Jews who had been “finished off” before the unit’s arrival in Mstislavl’.¹⁰

Only a few Jews managed to escape the roundup on October 15. When the Germans and police came for the photographer Eselevich, he and his wife, with three daughters (Fania, Mina, and Khaia) and the grandchildren, were at home. Mina and Khaia managed to escape through the backyard of their neighbors Valentina and Ada Vasil’evy. The twin sisters Vasil’evy gave Mina and Khaya their birth certificates and smuggled them out of town at night. In the village of Kazimirovo, the Germans took the two refugee girls for Belorussians and sent them to Germany as forced laborers (Ostarbeiter). After the war, Mina lived in France, and Khaia returned to Belorussia.¹¹

At the time of the mass shooting, Boris Mikhlin (13 years old) hid in the creek that led to the Vikhra River, and nobody found him. Liubov Basnoi was also rescued from the column of Jews.¹² A German looked at her and said: “You don’t look like a Jew.” She understood this as a sign and, without hesitating, escaped from the column and hid in the town. Ilya Josifovich Malkin lost his children in the massacre on October 15. He managed to escape on his own and joined the Soviet partisans. He survived until the liberation by the Red Army, swearing to avenge his family and bring Nazi criminals to justice. The partisan group “Kazankov” was established by Semen Leibovich Sheinin and Iakov Moiseevich Malkov, who escaped from the mass shootings at the very last moment.¹³

The town was liberated on September 29, 1943, by units of the 344th Rifle Division (Col o nel Strakhov) and the 196th Tank Division (Lt. Colo nel Dukhovny). No Jews were left in Mstislavl’ on their arrival. The 49th Army conducted the first investigation into the murder of the Jews on October 4, 1943,¹⁴ estimating that 1,300 people had been murdered, including children and adults. On November 1, 1943, the Soviet Extraordinary State Commission found a concealed mass grave near Mstislavl’. In Kagal’nyi Rov, they discovered at least 20 pits full of bodies. After conducting a forensic examination and interviewing witnesses, they established the identities of about 650 people.¹⁵