OBCHUGA
[End Page 1707] Pre-1941: Obchuga, town, Krupki raion, Minsk oblast’, Belorussian SSR; 1941–1944: Obtschuga, Rayon Krupki, Rear Area, Army Group Center (rückwärtiges Heeresgebiet Mitte); post-1991: Abchuha, village Krupki raen, Minsk voblasts’, Republic of Belarus
Obchuga is located about 140 kilometers (87 miles) northeast of Minsk. In 1923, there were 272 Jews, who mostly lived in the center of the town. Between the German attack on the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941, and the arrival of German forces in early July, part of the Jewish population was able to evacuate to the east.
Soon after the start of the German occupation, the German authorities imposed the wearing of a yellow Star of David on their clothes and an evening curfew on the Jewish population. The German military administration also ordered the recruitment of a local police force (Ordnungsdienst) and placed a man named Pogorelskii at its head. It is not clear exactly when the ghetto was established in Obchuga, but at some time before the summer of 1942 all the Jews were moved into 10 houses on Logovskaia Street. The area was enclosed by barbed wire, and the Germans placed a sign at the entrance of the ghetto that read: “Anyone entering will be shot; anyone bringing food will be shot.”1
On May 5, 1942, Germans and local policemen surrounded the ghetto and shot most of the Jews (about 440 people). The few survivors of this Aktion were shot in June 1942.2 Forces of the Red Army recaptured Obchuga from the Germans in June 1944. After the war, partly owing to the loss of its Jewish population, the Soviet authorities downgraded the town of Obchuga to the status of a village settlement.
SOURCES
Publications regarding the Holocaust in Obchuga include the following: Gennadii Vinnitsa, Listy istorii (Vitebsk, 1999), pp. 169–175; Christian Gerlach, Kalkulierte Morde: Die deutsche Wirtschafts- und Vernichtungspolitik in Weissrussland 1941 bis 1944 (Hamburg: HIS, 2000), p. 685; and Shmuel Spector and Geoffrey Wigoder, eds., The Encyclopedia of Jewish Life before and during the Holocaust (Jerusalem: Yad Vashem; New York: New York University Press, 2001), p. 918. David Meltser and Vladimir Levin, eds., The Black Book with Red Pages (Tragedy and Heroism of Belorussian Jews) (Cockeysville, MD: VIA Press, 2005), p. 229, implicate the head of the police in Borisov, David Egof, in the murder of the Jews of Obchuga, citing materials presented at his trial in 1947.
Additional documentation, including the statements of local witnesses, can be found in PAGV. There are statements by local witnesses from Obchuga in the records of the East German trial of Georg Frenzel conducted by Sta. Karl-Marx-Stadt (Chemnitz) in 1970. Some relevant information may also be found in the trial record of David Egof in AUKGBRBMO.
