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

Pre-1941: Pukhovichi, town, Pukhovichi raion, Minsk oblast’, Belorussian SSR; 1941–1944: Puchowitschi, Rayon Marina Gorka, Rear Area, Army Group Center (rückwärtiges Heeresgebiet Mitte); post-1991: Pukhavichy, Pukhavichy raen, Minsk voblasts’, Republic of Belarus

Pukhovichi is located about 60 kilometers (37 miles) southeast of Minsk. According to the 1939 census, there were 976 Jews living in the Pukhovichi raion (without the raion center, Mar’ina Gorka), most of them in Pukhovichi. A number of Jews worked on two kolkhozy, one Jewish and the other mixed, not far from Pukhovichi.

Pukhovichi was occupied by units of German Army Group Center at the beginning of July 1941. The head of the local police in Pukhovichi was Alexander Goncharik. During the second half of August 1941, a German punitive unit arrived in Pukhovichi. On instructions from the Rayon mayor, Derban, and with the aid of the local police, the German unit rounded up more than 90 Jewish men. These men were interrogated by the Germans in turn and beaten cruelly before being sent back to the group. They were then loaded onto trucks and transported to a site behind the Jewish cemetery in Pukhovichi, where they all were shot. Two Russian women who had worked for the Soviet administration were shot together with the Jews.¹

At the end of August or in early September 1941, the Germans assembled all the Jews of Pukhovichi in the courtyard of a barracks and told them they were going to be sent to Palestine. In preparation for this they had to move into the former postal service sanatorium, which formed a makeshift ghetto.

In the second half of September 1941, Gendarmerie Wachtmeister Bruno Mittmann drove to the area of Mar’ina Gorka and Pukhovichi from Minsk together with some 20 Gendarmes and 27 men of the Schutzpolizei to carry out an Aktion against the local Jewish population. In charge of the Aktion was SS-Brigadeführer Zenner, as well as Gendarmerie Leutnant Karl Kalla. The Aktion was carried out on orders [End Page 1720] issued by the newly appointed Generalkommissar in Weissruthenien, Wilhelm Kube.²

In Pukhovichi, the Rayon mayor, Derban, instructed the local police to surround the Jewish “ghetto,” as a German police unit had arrived. Among the local police who participated in the Aktion were the leader Goncharik, Alexander Mayevskiy, and Fedor Mayko. The Jews were instructed to put on their best clothes and to take their most valuable belongings with them. When the column was ready, the Germans and their collaborators escorted the Jews to the Blon’ kolkhoz near Mar’ina Gorka.

At Blon’, the Jews were made to undress in a pigsty and then taken up the hill of Popova Gorka in groups of 10 to be shot by German police with machine guns. The Jews from the nearby Mar’ina Gorka ghetto were also taken on foot to Blon’ on the same day and were shot together with those from Pukhovichi. Children were thrown into the grave and buried alive. According to one account, some women were raped before they were shot. The shootings lasted nearly all day, and the Germans tried to drown out the noise from the local inhabitants by running tractor engines.³