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

Pre-1941: Rogachev, city and raion center, Gomel’ oblast’, Belorussian SSR; 1941–1944: Rogatschew, Rear Area, Army Group Center (rückwärtiges Heeresgebiet Mitte); post-1991: Rahachou, raen center, Homel’ voblasts’, Republic of Belarus

Rogachev is located 121 kilometers (76 miles) north-northwest of Gomel.’ In 1939, the Jewish population was 4,601 (30.3 percent of the total).

Shortly after the German invasion of the Soviet Union, a great many refugees started to arrive in Rogachev from Minsk, Bobruisk, and other places in western Belorussia. As the tide of refugees increased, schools and other buildings were taken over to accommodate them. Some refugees continued moving east across the Dnieper River, but many remained in Rogachev. Fewer than half of the Jews managed to leave, either as members of labor collectives of enterprises and organizations or on their own initiative by foot in the direction of Gomel’ before Soviet forces destroyed the bridges across the Dnieper.¹

German forces entered Rogachev on July 3, but resistance continued. Rogachev finally surrendered on August 19, 1941, as Army Group Center swung south towards Gomel’ and Kiev, outflanking the city.

The territory of the Rogachev raion was administered by the German Rear Area, Army Group Center. In Rogachev, a local commandant’s office (Ortskommandantur) and a field commandant’s office (Feldkommandantur 528 (V)) were established. In the building of the former Machine Tractor Station (MTS), an office of the Secret Field Police (Geheime Feldpolizei, GFP-724) was established, and units of the military Feldgendarmerie and the Security Police and SD all operated in the city. According to Soviet sources, in the Rogachev raion, Major Marlo and his deputy, Major Diller, were in charge of the Feldkommandantur; Captain Zipke headed the agricultural commandant’s office (Landwirtschaftsführer); Oberleutnant Rudolf headed the Ortskommandantur; Oberleutnant Mentrop (or Matron) was the head of the Security Police (Gestapo) branch; Kresse headed the punitive squad; and Lobikov became head of the local Belorussian police. The German authorities established camps for Soviet prisoners of war (POWs) at Gadilovichi and Dvorets near Rogachev, as well as in Novyi and Staryi Dovsk, about 30 kilometers (18.6 miles) to the northeast.²

The first victims of the Nazis were Soviet activists and Jews. German security forces conducted mass shootings near the timber mill, in the basements, and around the building of the central warehouse in Rogachev. Among those shot were Pribylskii, the former chairman of the timber mill executive committee; Frumenkov, a member of the raion party executive committee (raiispolkom); and Admiralov, the kolkhoz chairman.³

Initially, under the German occupation the Jews continued to live in their own homes. They were not permitted to go out into public spaces, walk along the main streets of the city, or engage in relations with non-Jews. In September 1941, the Nazis introduced measures for their complete isolation from the Belorussians and Russians. On September 9, the Rogachev administration began implementing an order for the resettlement of the Jews into the building of the city’s heating and power plant. Then the process of selection began. Able-bodied men were taken away to a labor camp and quartered in the basement of a former military warehouse. In the course of the resettlement, Jews had to leave behind all their belongings at their old place of residence, leave their doors unlocked, and leave the keys in a visible place. The police watchmen guarded the ghetto around the clock. They used rubber batons to beat prisoners for their own “amusement.” Since the Germans did not entirely trust the local police in Rogachev, only those men were armed who were given the task of guarding the Jews.⁴ The Germans led away groups of Jews to perform the most grueling and dirty labor, using methods that amounted to torture. The Jews had to clear stone and brick rubble and carry sand and water without proper tools. Often the labor was very degrading. They made women and young teenage girls clean up feces with their hands in lavatories that were designated “Only for Germans.” There were many similar incidents.⁵

To survive, Jews had to rely on their own modest reserves of food, barter, or gain the assistance of the local Belorussians. The Belorussians provided some buckwheat, frozen turnips, cabbage, and a small amount of bread. As a rule, the local residents helped out their “own” Jews free of charge. Those who were married to Belorussians or Jews from nearby villages were assisted by former neighbors and fellow villagers. These more integrated Jews were only a small minority of those in the ghetto. Most Jews had to barter goods for food, which was forbidden. They did so anyway, despite the risk to their lives. The barter trade required careful organization and mutual trust, and in many cases, Jews worked with local policemen who looked the other way. Escape from the ghetto was impossible. Sometimes the Belorussian policemen and the Germans would beat Jews they caught bartering, to teach them a lesson.⁶ [End Page 1722]

The first Aktion was organized by a detachment of Einsatzkommando 8 based in Gomel’, under the command of Wilhelm Schulz, on November 6, 1941. The chosen site for the mass shooting was a very large antitank ditch about 120 meters by 10 meters, and 5 meters deep (394 by 33 by 16 feet), behind the cardboard factory and the bread-making plant on the banks of the Drut’ River.⁷ The German Security Police and their helpers selected several hundred Jews from among ghetto inhabitants in Rogachev and drove them in groups towards the river in trucks, where they ordered them to undress. With the assistance of local policemen, the SS men lined up their victims at the bottom of the ravine in groups of 10, then shot them in the back of the head with their automatic weapons and rifles. They finished off the wounded with the butts of their firearms and with shovels. They seized young children by the legs, smashed their heads on the frozen ground, and threw them into the ditch. According to the German Einsatzgruppen report, 2,365 male and female Jews were murdered for their alleged support of the partisans in the course of an Aktion in Gomel’, Rogachev, and Korma.⁸

The second Aktion was conducted on December 1, 1941. Under the guise of escorting them out for a work assignment, the Germans took 72 Jews from the ghetto and used them for clearing roads near the villages of Novyi and Staryi Krivsk. Afterwards they shot all of these people.

The third Aktion was carried out on January 1, 1942, at Starina, near the village of Khatovnia. The Germans shot 172 Jews there.

The fourth Aktion took place on February 12 (or according to another source, in March), 1942, in an antitank ditch 70 meters (230 feet) from the Drut’ River. This time, the Jewish victims included the children from mixed marriages, who were gathered from the surrounding villages. They also included the Jewish special laborers who had been set apart during the first Aktion. According to witnesses, six Roma (Gypsy) families were shot together with the Jews.⁹

On December 27, 1941, 260 Jews from the village of Sverzhen’, in the Rogachev raion, were shot.¹⁰

The Nazi German occupiers carried out the killings at a Russian cemetery that came to be called “the valley of death” (dolina smerti). Around 1,000 people were killed there. Later, 10 mass graves were unearthed; they were 3 meters in length, 6 meters in width, and 3 meters deep (almost 10 by 20 by 10 feet).

In the spring of 1942, the Drut’ River flooded, and the water washed away the soil, revealing a few hundred Jewish corpses. According to the testimony of Nina Barantseva, several bodies were recognizable. There were some adults who held children in their arms as they died, not wanting to let them go. The German authorities ordered the local residents of Rogachev to rebury the exposed corpses.¹¹

In November and December 1943, part of Sonderkommando 7a arrived in Rogachev to carry out Operation “Wettermeldung” (“Weather Report”) under the command of SS-Hauptscharführer Stertzinger. They removed 20 Soviet POWs from the SD prison in Rogachev for work as slave laborers to burn the corpses. The unit cordoned off the site of the Jewish graves so that no local residents could witness the events. They informed the POWs that they would be leaving for work in Germany, giving them vodka and cigarettes. Five of the men passed out from the stench of rotting corpses. The corpses were removed from the graves with iron hooks and placed in stacks, covered with tar, and cremated. The remaining ash was transported away in trucks.¹²

During the liquidation of the ghetto in Rogachev, some people managed to escape. Tat’iana Duktovskaia saved the life of Liuda Mazheiko. In May 1941, Tat’iana arrived in Rogachev from the city of Chita but did not manage to evacuate in time. After the liquidation of the ghetto, Liuda’s father Vladimir spoke with 18-year-old Tat’iana and persuaded her to pass off his 5-year-old daughter as her own. The German authorities required a medical certificate, and a Doctor Zubets issued a statement saying that the time of “birth” could not be determined. For 3 years, Tat’iana hid Liuda in the countryside, moving her from one village to another.¹³

A German army officer took in eight-year-old Alevtina Igol’nikova, who lost both her parents in the fighting on July 3, 1941. For several months, he kept her in his home, then sent her away to be raised by a woman named Anastasia Tristenetskaia.¹⁴

On February 24, 1944, forces of the 1st Belorussian Front liberated Rogachev. In November 1944, the Soviet Extraordinary State Commission (ChGK) ascertained that 3,700 people were murdered by the German occupants in Rogachev, and 6,353 perished in the raion. The surnames of 2,233 victims (about 35 percent) were established.¹⁵

The national affiliation of the victims could not be determined precisely by the commission. Overall, during the occupation the population of the Rogachev raion decreased from 57,115 in 1941 to 28,000 in 1944 (49 percent of the prewar population level).¹⁶