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

Pre-1941: Shklov, town and raion center, Mogilev oblast’, Belorussian SSR; 1941–1944: Schklow, Rayon center, Rear Area, Army Group Center (rückwärtiges Heeresgebiet Mitte); post-1991: Shklou, raen center, Mahiliov voblasts’, Republic of Belarus

Shklov is located about 40 kilometers (25 miles) north of Mogilev. According to the 1939 census, 2,132 Jews lived in Shklov, comprising 26.7 percent of the total population. In addition, there were some 457 Jews living in the Shklov raion, most in the village of Starosel’e (about 200).

The German attack on the Soviet Union forced many Jews to evacuate to the east. In addition, some Jewish men were called up to the Red Army. Therefore, it is not known exactly how many Jews remained in Shklov under the German occupation.

Units of the German XLVI Panzer Corps, subordinated to Panzer Group 2, captured the town on July 11, 1941. The region of Shklov was administered by Rear Area, Army Group Center. The town was controlled by the local commandant’s office (Ortskommandantur), which reported to the 286th Security Division based in Orsha. According to one German report, about four fifths of Shklov was destroyed in the fighting, which together with the supposed threat of disease provided an incentive for relocating the Jews to ghettos.¹

By the end of July 1941, the city council, consisting of eight local non-Jews, forced the Jewish population of Shklov and the towns of Zarech’e and Ryzhkovichi, located in the southern suburbs, into two ghettos.

The first was located in an area near the Orthodox church in Ryzhkovichi, which was fenced off by barbed wire and guarded by Belorussian policemen. Some Jews were able to remain in their own houses within this area,² but others had to sleep in the open. The Jews were able to leave the ghetto and trade their property for food. The German officers and soldiers, exploiting the absolute lawlessness, robbed the ghetto inhabitants, taking everything that was at all valuable. According to the testimony of B.M. Galperin, the Taruch family was thrown into a well, and one Jew, after having his gold teeth knocked out, was murdered.³

It appears that in August 1941 some of the Jews were herded into a second ghetto, this time a closed ghetto, located in Shklov on L’nozavodskaia Street. The inhabitants of the ghetto were forced to live in horribly cramped conditions. Each house held between 100 and 150 people. The ghetto inmates were not allowed to leave their houses after 6:00 p.m. The Jews were regularly beaten. In order to transmit its instructions to the Jews, the Germans created a Jewish Council (Judenrat), but very little is known about its activities in Shklov.

Galperin recalls “how they buried the wife of the Shklov rabbi. They allowed her to be buried at the cemetery and even provided a horse. I carried her torn jacket on the street and was horrified to see that it was covered in lice. My mother said quietly, ‘My child, the lice ate her.’ ”⁴

From the first days of the occupation, the German forces spread their propaganda, which exploited and inflamed inter-ethnic hatred. For example, they distributed leaflets proclaiming that the “the days of Judeo-Bolshevik commissars in Russia are over” and that “the biggest enemy of society are the kikes [Jews].” In Shklov a newspaper was published by Loshakov that included antisemitic articles.

[End Page 1729] The first Aktion or mass shooting was conducted in Shklov at the beginning of August 1941, when Sonderkommando 7b of Einsatzgruppe B murdered 84 Jews. According to the Einsatzgruppen report, the victims “comprised 22 arsonists, 25 looters, 22 terrorists, 11 functionaries and franc-tireurs and 4 people who had spread malicious rumors.”⁵

It is possible that this initial Aktion was a response to some actual displays of resistance, but it may also have been merely a pretext used by the Germans to justify their preemptive measures against the Jewish “intelligentsia.” Participation in sabotage was the reason alleged for the shooting of 627 Jews living in “Schidow” (in or near Shklov) in October 1941, as well as the murder of 812 men and women (presumably in Shklov itself) by units of Einsatzkommando 8.⁶ It is possible that the 627 Jews were the inhabitants of the Ryzhkovichi ghetto, and the 812 Jews were from the ghetto in Shklov.⁷

According to local testimony, in October 1941, the Germans transported the prisoners from the ghetto in Ryzhko vichi across the Dnieper River on boats to Zarech’e. In the center of the village, the Jews were forced to the ground and searched, with all their valuables being taken. Then they were organized into a column and were herded by German soldiers towards the village of Putniki.⁸ The Jews were shot in an antitank ditch.

The Soviet Extraordinary State Commission (ChGK) report dated December 18, 1944, mentions that near the village of Putniki, 2,700 people were executed or buried alive, but the report does not state whether those killed were all Jews.⁹

The inhabitants of the second ghetto, located in Shklov, were taken by the occupiers in motorized vehicles and driven to the ditches around the villages of Zarech’e and Ryzhkovichi. They were made to undress down to their underwear, forced to lie on the ground, and were shot. Many were beaten beforehand, and children were thrown into the ditch alive. The number of victims estimated by the ChGK is approximately 3,000 people.¹⁰ In light of the pre-war Jewish population, however, it seems unlikely that the total number of Jewish victims in Shklov was much over 2,000.

According to the testimony of S.M. Petrovskoy, the Germans conducted the shootings in the autumn of 1941 and in December 1941. Furthermore, according to R.A. Sher, an eyewitness of the events, Rogner, senior lieutenant of the “secret police” (probably the Geheime Feldpolizei), played an active role in these executions, as did his assistants Julius Ewald and Obergefreiter Emil Eger.

Before the war, a Jewish cemetery was located in the village of Ryzhkovichi (in the southern suburb of Shklov), but during the war it was completely destroyed. The tombstones were leveled to the ground, and local citizens took the stones and bricks for their own building purposes.

Aleksandra Shuminaia and Liza Ratsevskaia both survived the war, serving in the “Chekist” partisan brigade. Tatiana Pushilina, who ran away during the shootings, became a fighter in the “Kerpicha” brigade. The Soviet partisans did not initially believe Iakov Shumin, who also fled from the site of the massacre, and he was forced to prove to them that he was not a traitor to his homeland.

In the village of Ganchvichi, Maria Dubovskaia protected Clara Altshuler, even against the wishes of her husband and son. For saving Asia Tzelinina and Anastasiia Dereviago, Nadezhda and Efim Shutikov were awarded the honor of “Righteous Among the Nations” by Yad Vashem.¹¹

According to the wishes of the relatives, in Shklov in 1955 the bodies of the murdered Jews were exhumed and moved to the Jewish cemetery in Ryzhkovichi, where a memorial was placed.¹²

On the Iskra kolkhoz, near Ryzhkovichi, the Germans herded 96 Jews into a large barn near the judicial hall. At the end of September or the beginning of October 1941, they were shot. Among those murdered were 30 men, 40 women, and 26 children.¹³

Starosel’e is a village about 10 kilometers (6.2 miles) to the northwest of Shklov. The exact date of the massacre of the village’s Jewish population is not known. The few survivors state that it occurred in August or September 1941, while the memorial to the victims states that it occurred in 1942 (without a more specific date or month). The night before the killing, all the Jews were herded into a school. In the morning, the Jews were formed into a column and ordered to march to the Brinkov Forest, located 2 kilometers (1.2 miles) south of the village. There, in two predug ditches, the Jews were shot.¹⁴ Approximately 200 people were killed. Maria and Iosef Tsukerman survived and later joined the partisans. Braina Surina also avoided being killed by crossing the front line into Soviet-controlled territory.