SLAVNOE
Pre-1941: Slavnoe, village, Tolochin raion, Vitebsk oblast’, Belorussian SSR; 1941–1944: Slawnoje, Rayon Tolotschin, Rear Area, Army Group Center (rückwärtiges Heeresgebiet Mitte); post-1991: Slaunae, Talachyn raen, Vitsebsk voblasts’, Republic of Belarus
Slavnoe is a railway station located 65 kilometers (41 miles) southwest of Orsha. The census of 1939 does not give precise information for the Jewish population of Slavnoe, but there were about 200 Jewish inhabitants who resided in the village mainly on three “Jewish streets.”1
The Germans bombed Slavnoe from the air during the first days of the invasion. According to a witness, Jews made an [End Page 1732] attempt to leave the town (they went, with horses and carts, in the direction of Krucha, to the southeast) but were intercepted by the Germans, who landed an airborne unit in their path. The Germans captured the town on July 6, 1941.
According to survivors, a ghetto was established on July 9, 1941, on Tolochinskaia Street. Its population was 143; the people were crammed together, with three families in each house. Jews were forced to wear armbands with a “yellow star.” The ghetto was fenced on one side with barbed wire and was guarded by the indigenous police. All Jews aged 10 and older were made to perform forced labor: road construction, cleaning military barracks, and similar tasks. The survivor Vera Pogorelaia describes the forced labor: “Men were engaged in hard work…. Children collected pine and fir cones in the forest for them to be sent to Germany. The quota was high, so they worked from [morning] dark to [evening] dark. In winter people were sent to clear snow from the Moscow-Minsk railway.”2
The Germans did not allot any food to the ghetto inmates. Some young people, however, managed to leave the guarded compound and exchange belongings for food. Sometimes Jewish refugees from other ghettos appeared in Slavnoe. An epidemic of typhus broke out in the ghetto. Reportedly Belorussian medical workers, at the risk of their lives, entered the ghetto in Slavnoe to treat people suffering from typhus.3
The ghetto of Slavnoe was liquidated on March 16, 1942. Pogorelaia recollects this day:
On March 16, 1942, in the morning, I and some other girls washed the floor in the military barracks. As soon as we heard shots, we put on our coats and went outside. Right away we saw two trucks full of SS men beyond the railway; they went in the direction of the ghetto. The shots became more frequent…. When the rest of the soldiers entered the barracks, an elderly [German] soldier came close to us and said: “Run away from here. They are killing the Jews in Slavnoe.”4
The ghetto’s inmates were shot near the village of Gliniki, about 1 or 2 kilometers (about 1 mile) east of Slavnoe. Who the perpetrators were is not clear; witnesses call them Feldgendarmerie. Taking into account the date of the Aktion, most probably it was the same unit that carried out the murders in Tolochin; that is, it was a detachment of Einsatzkommando 8 that came from Orsha. The monument erected on this site in 1959 mentions 106 victims. The Soviet Extraordinary State Commission (ChGK) estimated the number of Jews killed in Slavnoe at 150; Pogorelaia stated the number was 143. The list of victims compiled by the ChGK contains 118 names.
Some ghetto Jews succeeded in saving themselves from being killed, among them S. Shpunt, Moisei Gutkin, the sisters Lyubov’ Belenkaia (née Fridliand) and Vera Fridliand (Pogorelaia), and some others. Many others who fled from the killing site were subsequently denounced by local peasants; for example, a neighbor denounced the two-year-old daughter of the survivor Lyubov’ Belenkaia, hidden by a peasant woman, and the girl was killed immediately.
Slaveni is a village 14 kilometers (9 miles) west-southwest of Tolochin, or 6 kilometers (4 miles) northeast of Slavnoe. In this village, 120 Jews were killed on March 16, 1942 (the same day as in Slavnoe). The corpses were burned over several days. The list of victims compiled by the ChGK contains 96 names.5
SOURCES
Publications regarding the Holocaust in Slavnoe include the books by Gennadii Vinnitsa: Gorech’ i bol’ (Orsha, 1998), pp. 132–136; and Slovo pamiati (Orsha: Orshan. Tip., 1997), pp. 24–25. The ghetto is also mentioned in Marat Botvinnik, Pamiatniki genotsida evreev Belarusi (Minsk: Belaruskaia Navuka, 2000), pp. 165, 183; and in Shmuel Spector and Geoffrey Wigoder, eds., The Encyclopedia of Jewish Life before and during the Holocaust (Jerusalem: Yad Vashem; New York: New York University Press, 2001), p. 1198.
Documents dealing with the persecution and murder of the Jews of Slavnoe can be found in the following archives: GARF (7021-84-14); USHMM (RG-22.002M, reel 8); YVA; and ZGAGO (162-7-7).
