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

Pre-1941: Polotsk, city and raion center, Vitebsk oblast’, Belorussian SSR; 1941–1944: Polozk, Rayon center, Rear Area, Army Group Center (rückwärtiges Heeresgebiet Mitte); post-1991: Polatsk, raen center, Vitsebsk voblasts’, Republic of Belarus

Polotsk is located about 110 kilometers (68 miles) west-northwest of Vitebsk. In 1939, 6,464 Jews lived in the city (21.9 percent of the total). The Jewish population of the Polotsk raion (without the city of Polotsk) consisted of 621 people, who lived in the nearby “military settlement” Borovukha 1-ia (the First), in the village of Trudy, and in some other places. (See also Borovukha 1-ia and Trudy.)

After July 15, 1941, Polotsk and its raion found themselves in the Rear Area, 9th Army, administered by Ortskommandantur 930. Later in the summer of 1941, Polotsk came under the authority of Rear Area, Army Group Center. Ortskommandantur 262 and, from the end of 1941, Feldkommandantur 815 of the 403rd Security Division were both based in the city. In July 1942, Feldkommandantur 815 was transferred to Vitebsk, and Polotsk became the site of the 201st Security Division’s headquarters. There were Ortskommandanturen also in Dretun and Trudy.

The mayor of Polotsk was Kichko, and later Dmitrii Petrovskii; his deputy in charge of Rayon Polozk was Bubnov. The chief of police was Albert M. Abukhovich (or Obukhovich). The Belorussian police numbered 50 men, all of them volunteers. Numerous local policemen actively participated in the mass murder of Jews, among them Shastitko, N. Oguretskii, Avlasenko, V. Pravilo, and others.

Abram Sherman, a former carpenter, was appointed Jewish elder (starosta) in the city of Polotsk; the deputy elder, according to witnesses, was Apkin, a former bicycle repair mechanic. Sherman’s main function was assigning ghetto inmates to forced labor; some witnesses describe him as a brutal man who punished those guilty of any “violation” with a lashing.

With the occupation came registration, markings, forced labor, and the killing of some Jews whom the Germans accused of being Communists.

The first ghetto was established on the initiative of the local Ortskommandantur in early August 1941. It was situated in the city center, not far from the railway station, and had a total area of some 135,000 square meters (161,459 square yards). The ghetto extended from Kommunisticheskaia Street in the south to Internatsional’naia Street (formerly Evreiskaia; the street does not exist now) in the north, and from Sakko i Vantsetti Street in the west to Gogolevskaia in the east, thus enclosing 13 blocks of buildings, although some of the houses were wrecked. The ghetto was surrounded with barbed wire but not guarded. Ten families lived in each house. Jews were forbidden to leave the ghetto. The entrance to the ghetto was from Gogolevskaia Street, where there was a sign saying “Ghetto.” Non-Jews from this area were resettled in former Jewish apartments. During the resettlement of the Jews to the ghetto, the Nazis confiscated valuables and other belongings; many Jews were beaten in the process.

In the middle of August, a detachment of Einsatzkommando 9 (commanded by Dr. Alfred Filbert) was sent to Polotsk,¹ and this unit carried out an Aktion. The victims were Jewish men (maybe also some women). According to a survivor, removing the men from the city did not greatly frighten the rest of the ghetto population; those who stayed in the ghetto believed the Germans’ story that the men had been taken for forced labor: harvesting or something else. The number of victims and the date of the first Aktion remain unclear.²

Witnesses interrogated by the Soviet Extraordinary State Commission (ChGK) mention some Jews killed in the fall of 1941 on the outskirts of Polotsk. One witness mentions a killing of 22 to 25 Jews who lived in Zapolot’e (northwest of the city center, across the Polota River); other witnesses mention “around 25 Jews” killed, who lived on Lepel’skaia and Krasnoznamennaia Streets (south of the city center, on the left bank of the Zapadnaia Dvina River). It is not clear whether these Jews were killed within the framework of the Aktion carried out in August or in a separate Aktion.

In mid-September the ghetto was transferred to a former brick factory in Lozovka (now a northern suburb of Polotsk).³ This resettlement was accompanied by the confiscation of valuables and other belongings from the Jews. The new ghetto consisted of 10 barracks and maybe also some other premises. Some of the Jews had to live outdoors. The new ghetto was surrounded by a fence and guarded by the local police. Forced labor was imposed, and food was rationed, limited to 100 grams (3.5 ounces) of bread per person each day. Some young people managed to escape from the ghetto and exchange clothes, household utensils, and other items for food. A survivor recollects that sometimes Germans would come to the ghetto to rob Jews, even forcing women to strip naked to be searched. Some people died of starvation and disease. According to a non-Jewish witness, more than 500 corpses were removed from the ghetto and buried.⁴

On November 21, 1941, the majority of the Jews of Polotsk were shot in the area of a former firing range in the military settlement Borovukha 2-ia (the Second), close to Lozovka. According to the survivor Mikhail Minkovich, four pits had been prepared at this place beforehand; about 15 Germans and no fewer than 30 local police (politsais) participated in the murder of 2,300 Jews. Before the shooting, the victims were ordered to undress. Witnesses attest that the perpetrators tossed small children alive into the pits. Some Jews succeeded in fleeing from the killing site; only 2 of them survived until the end of the war.

Some relatively small-scale murders of Jews in Polotsk must have taken place in December 1941. Forces of Einsatzgruppe B killed, most probably, more than 200 Jews “for sabotaging German orders.”⁵

On February 3, 1942, the last 615 Jews of Polotsk were killed. The killing site is described by the witnesses interrogated by the ChGK as “in Lozovka, in a grove near the railway [End Page 1718] crossing.” The perpetrators were most probably members of Einsatzkommando 9, with some participation by men of the 201st Security Brigade.⁶ According to the ChGK, three “specialists,” among them a tailor, were spared for the time being. Some individual Jews, most probably including the specialists, were killed after February 1942.

The extant data do not permit an exact determination of the number of Jews who were killed in Polotsk by the Nazis. The ChGK’s witnesses estimate the number of Jews killed at between 2,500 and 8,000. Some Jews fled the city or were drafted into the Red Army; others took refuge there. For these reasons, there may have been as many as 7,000 or 8,000 Jews in the city when the Germans arrived. Nonetheless, Minkovich’s estimate that 2,300 people were killed by the Nazis in Borovukha 2-ia during the great Aktion of November 1941 seems reliable. By adding to this 250 people killed in December 1941, 615 people killed on February 3, and then 500 people who, according to a witness, died in the second ghetto and were buried, we obtain a total number of victims of the second ghetto: 3,665. To this must be added an uncertain number of Jewish men (and maybe some women) killed by the Nazis in August 1941; taking into account that in other ghettos of the area the number of victims of the “men’s” Aktion generally was no more than one quarter of the entire Jewish population, a maximum estimate for the number of victims probably lies in the range of 4,800 to 4,900. By adding the victims of individual killings in 1941 and “specialists” killed in 1942, we can say that probably around 5,000 Jews in total perished in Polotsk under the German occupation.⁷

Elsewhere in the Polotsk raion, in the Domniki sel’sovet, to the east of Polotsk, 4 Jews were killed in Kotliany, and 8 Jews in another village. According to witnesses interrogated by the ChGK, in the village of Zamozh’e (20 kilometers [12.4 miles] east of Polotsk), of the same sel’sovet, three Jewish families, 17 people, refugees from Polotsk, lived in the bathhouse during the winter of 1941–1942. Sometime in the winter, a German unit arrived from Polotsk, beat the Jews, and then burned them in the same house. According to the account, the Jews who rushed to the windows to get out of the burning house were met with bullets and killed. According to other witnesses interrogated by the ChGK, in March 1942, on the order of the local Kommandant named Schulz, 21 Jews of the village of Kazimirovo (22 kilometers [13.7 miles] northeast of Polotsk), Iurovichi sel’sovet, 4 Jews from Iurovichi, 3 Jews from the nearby village of Sitenets, and probably some more Jews who were found in the territory of the sel’sovet were assembled and locked up in a barn in Kazimirovo. Then the Germans put them in trucks, brought them to a nearby forest, and shot them there. According to another source, the murder took place on February 13 or 16, 1941, and 70 Jews were killed.⁸ In Bel’skii sel’sovet, 8 Jews were killed in the sovkhoz “Pobeda” (later Sel’tso-Beloe, to the northwest of Polotsk) in December 1941 by a squad that arrived from Borovukha 1-ia. Four Jews were killed in Zales’e, east-southeast of Polotsk, and 14 Jews in Novye Goriany, 18 kilometers (11.2 miles) southeast along the Vitebsk highway.