SMOLIANY
[End Page 1733] Pre-1941: Smoliany, town, Orsha raion, Vitebsk oblast’, Belorussian SSR; 1941–1944: Ssmoljani, Rayon Orscha, Rear Area, Army Group Center (rückwärtiges Heeresgebiet Mitte); post-1991: Smaliany, Orsha raen, Vitsebsk voblasts’, Republic of Belarus
Smoliany is located 24 kilometers (15 miles) west-northwest of Orsha. In 1926, 950 Jews lived in the town (52.8 percent of the total).
German forces of Army Group Center captured the town on July 9, 1941. At the start of the occupation, the Jews were permitted to remain in their own houses. It seems that the situation in Smoliany was less harsh than in Orsha. The eyewitness Zinaida Suvorov stated that she brought food from Smoliany to her relatives in the Orsha ghetto. Later some Jews managed to flee from Orsha and found refuge in Smoliany.1
The Germans established a ghetto in Smoliany, which consisted of some 30 houses on Shkol’naia Street, with the synagogue at the end of the street. According to one source, between 700 and 840 Jews resided there. The ghetto was not enclosed, and the Jews were still able to leave it to exchange their remaining possessions for food with local non-Jews. It would have been possible for many of the Jews to escape, but most did not want to abandon their families.2 Some sources date the establishment of the ghetto in the fall of 1941, just before the first snow, and others in March 1942.3 According to Sarra Leyenson, it was only sealed off just before the liquidation in early April 1942, when Jews were brought in from the surrounding villages.
Suvorov stated that one day before the mass shooting the Germans distributed some flour to the Jews “to bake matzot for Passover.” They did it, most probably, to calm the Jews, because the Jews of Smoliany were well aware of the liquidation of the Orsha ghetto. Nobody had time to use this flour, because the next morning the Germans conducted a mass shooting of the local Jews.4
The Germans liquidated the ghetto in Smoliany on April 5, 1942, on the second day of Passover. They prepared the ditches on the day before the Aktion in the forest at Gubinskaia Dacha, about 3 kilometers (2 miles) east of the town, using explosives. A force consisting of 15 Germans in uniform, four officers, and local police escorted the Jews to the ditch and shot them there.5 A number of Jews tried to hide and escape, but most were found by the local police. The Soviet Extraordinary State Commission (ChGK) laid the responsibility for the massacre on the local commandant Kregel, or Kroegel. The ChGK estimated the number of victims at 610 people. The list of victims compiled by the ChGK contains the names of 254 Jews.6
SOURCES
In the book by Gennadii Vinnitsa, Slovo pamiati (Orsha: Orshan. Tip., 1997), there is a short section on the Smoliany ghetto (pp. 51–53). The Smoliany ghetto is also mentioned in the following publications: Marat Botvinnik, Pamiatniki genotsida evreev Belarusi (Minsk: Belaruskaia Navuka, 2000), p. 177; 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. 1204; and Leonid Smilovitsky, Katastrofa evreev v Belorussii 1941–1944 gg. (Tel Aviv: Biblioteka Matveia Chernogo, 2000), p. 282.
Documentation on the fate of the Jews of Smoliany under German occupation can be found in the following archives: GARF (7021-84-10); VHF (# 14353 and 35029); and YVA (e.g., O-3/11082).
