RIASNO
Pre-1941: Riasno, village, Dribin raion, Mogilev oblast’, Belorussian SSR; 1941–1944: Rjassno, Rayon Dribin, Rear Area, Army Group Center (rückwärtiges Heeresgebiet Mitte); post-1991: Rasna, Drybin raen, Mahiliou voblasts’, Republic of Belarus
Riasno is located about 55 kilometers (34 miles) east-northeast of Mogilev. According to figures from the 1939 census, there were approximately 350 Jews living in Riasno.
The village was occupied on July 14, 1941, about three weeks after the German attack on the USSR on June 22. At that time, part of the Jewish population was able to evacuate to the east, and men of eligible age were called up to the Red Army. Many Jewish refugees also arrived and settled in the village, adding to the population. Following the occupation of the village, the German military commandant appointed a village elder (starosta) and organized a Belorussian police force (Ordnungsdienst) consisting of local residents, including Fedor Hot’man and Fedor Terent’ev.1
In the summer and fall of 1941, a series of anti-Jewish measures were implemented in Riasno. Jews were registered and forced to wear patches in the shape of the Star of David; they had to perform heavy labor without pay, were prohibited from leaving the limits of the village, and were subjected to systematic beatings and robbery by the local police.
In September 1941, the German authorities established some form of ghetto for the Jews in the center of the village. According to historian Marat Botvinnik, it existed for about six months. The ghetto was liquidated on March 3, 1942, when a detachment of Einsatzkommando 8 from Krichev numbering 30 or 40 men arrived in Riasno. With the help of the local police, they collected the entire Jewish population (men, women, children, and old people) and escorted them to a killing site about 1.5 kilometers (1 mile) to the east of Riasno. Here the Germans ordered the Jews to remove their clothes down to their underwear. Then the Jews were ordered to get into the prepared ditches, and the Germans and their collaborators shot them with machine guns. At least 410 persons, including Jews from the village and Jewish refugees, were murdered.2 On March 18, 1942, Landesschützen Battalion 285, which formed the Ortskommandantur in Riasno, reported that money had been found in the clothes of Jews who had been “liquidated” (erledigt) that month by a German punitive unit assisted by the local police.3
In April 1942, only a few weeks after the liquidation of the ghetto, the mayor of Mogilev sent several hundred civilian evacuees who had just arrived from the Russian town of Gzhatsk from Mogilev to Riasno, where they were accommodated in the former ghetto.4
SOURCES
Information on the extermination of the Jews in Riasno can be found in the following publication: “Rasnianski sel’sovet,” in Pamiats’: Belarus’ (Minsk: Resp. Kniha, 1995), p. 430. Marat Botvinnik, Pamiatniki genotsida evreev Belarusi (Minsk: Belaruskaia Navuka, 2000), names Riasno as a ghetto on page 291.
Documents about the extermination of the Jews in Riasno on the basis of Soviet official commissions, German documents, and the testimonies of witnesses can be found in the following archives: BA-BL (R 58/216-220, R 2104/28); GARF (7021-88-37); NARB (861-1-9); TsGAMORF (Fond 49th Army, opis’ 9733, delo 120, p. 46); USHMM; and YVA.
NOTES
1. USHMM, RG-53.002M (NARB), reel 7, 861-1-9, p. 166.
2. TsGAMORF, Fond 49th Army, opis’ 9733, delo 120, p. 46; GARF, 7021-88-37, pp. 1–2, and 7; and NARB, 861-1-9, p. 163, all give the figure of about 600 Jewish victims. See also BA-BL, R 58/220, Ereignismeldung UdSSR no. 194, April 21, 1942.
3. BA-BL, R 2104/28, report of Landesschützen Battaillon 285, March 18, 1942.
4. Nicholas Terry, “The German Army Group Center and the Soviet Civilian Population, 1942–1944: Forced Labor, Hunger, and Population Displacement on the Eastern Front” (Ph.D. diss., King’s College, University of London, 2005), p. 194, citing Mikhail Badaev, ed., Pamiat’ khranit vse, (Smolensk: “Smiadyn,” 1995), pp. 81–82 (testimony of Anna Ivanova, 16 years old in 1942).
