OBOL’TSY
[End Page 1708] Pre-1941: Obol’tsy, village, Tolochin raion, Vitebsk oblast’, Belorussian SSR; 1941–1944: Obolzy, Rayon Tolotschin, Rear Area, Army Group Center (rückwärtiges Heeresgebiet Mitte); post-1991: Abol’tsy, Talachyn raen, Vitsebsk voblasts’, Republic of Belarus
Obol’tsy is located 40 kilometers (25 miles) west-northwest of Orsha. In 1923 the Jewish population was 353 out of a total of 382 residents.
German forces of Army Group Center occupied the village in early July 1941. The Germans established a ghetto there on August 14. About 150 people (25 families) were moved into two single-story buildings of a school.1 The ghetto was guarded by the local police; the chief of the guard unit was Pavel Kuntsevich.2 The inmates wore armbands with a yellow star; forced labor was imposed. Boris Etin became the Jewish elder.
According to survivors’ accounts, Jewish youth from Obol’tsy collected arms abandoned by the retreating Soviet forces. On March 5, 1942, news of the murder of the Jews in Smoliany, Orsha raion, reached the ghetto. The survivor Anna Iofik recollects: “The decision to flee came immediately. We waited until midnight. Then some 60 Jews, headed by Semion Iakovlevich Iofik [the pre-war chairman of a Jewish kolkhoz in Obol’tsy], escaped from the school and suggested to the local policeman Linich that he let us go, and when we had reached the forest, he should shoot over our heads. Otherwise, Semion Iakovlevich said, we will use our weapons against you. Iakov Iofik and Aron Levin had rifles.”3 Leonid Kogan, 16 years old, even succeeded in getting his 4-year-old sister Raisa out of the ghetto.
The number of 60 escapees, as well as certain other details of these accounts, may be an exaggeration, but the fact is that a number of young Jews from Obol’tsy later fought in Soviet partisan units, including the Zaslonov brigade.
The ghetto was liquidated on June 4, 1942; the Aktion began at 5:00 or 6:00 a.m. The remaining approximately 100 Jews of Obol’tsy were shot in a pit close to the site of the ghetto.4 The list of victims compiled by the Soviet Extraordinary State Commission (ChGK) contains 37 names.5
SOURCES
Publications regarding the ghetto in Obol’tsy include the books by Gennadii Vinnitsa: Gorech’ i bol’ (Orsha, 1998), pp. 126–128; and Slovo pamiati (Orsha: Orshan. Tip., 1997), pp. 27–29. The ghetto is also mentioned in Marat Botvinnik, Pamiatniki genotsida evreev Belarusi (Minsk: Belaruskaia Navuka, 2000), p. 165.
Documents dealing with the persecution and murder of the Jews of Obol’tsy can be found in the following archives: GARF (7021-84-14, pp. 28–29); RTKIDNI (69-1-1067); and YVA.
