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

Pre-1941: Streshin, town and raion center, Gomel’ oblast’, Belorussian SSR; 1941–1944: Streschin, Rear Area, Army Group Center (rückwärtiges Heeresgebiet Mitte); post-2001: Streshyn, Zhlobin raen, Homel’ voblasts’, Republic of Belarus

Streshin is located 105 kilometers (65 miles) northwest of Gomel’. In 1939, the Jewish population was 531, about one third of the total.

On the outbreak of war, men of eligible age were drafted into the Red Army. Despite the absence of an organized evacuation, part of the population managed to leave Streshin in time. They embarked on boats and barges on the Dnieper or left on foot. On August 13, 1941, the 145th Infantry Division of the Red Army, which was defending Streshin, received the order to withdraw. The next day, the German XLIII Corps crossed the Dnieper and, not encountering serious resistance, pushed on towards Buda-Koshelevo and Uvarovichi.¹ German forces captured Streshin on August 14, 1941. The Germans established new organs of authority in the village. Verbitskii became mayor of the Rayon; his deputy was Migai. Vasilii Kashparov became chief of a new police force; his deputy was a man named Gerasimov. Among the policemen were Savelii Bodilovskii, Anton Kurganov, Grigorii Genov, Bodrunov, Drozdov, Foma Gritskov, and Ponomarev. These men volunteered for service, assisting the Germans to find Soviet activists and Communists, and they also organized the registration of the Jews in Streshin.²

In September 1941, the Germans and their Belorussian collaborators established a ghetto in Streshin, which initially contained some 480 Jews.³ On the orders of the mayor Verbitskiy, the chief of police Kashparov assembled the Jews at a site on Kul’mashevka Street, which was closely guarded. The new local authorities forbade the inmates all contact with local Belorussians and made them wear a yellow cloth patch on the left side of the chest as a distinguishing mark. Leaving the area of Kul’mashevka Street, and especially the limits of Streshin, was strictly prohibited. Breaking the rules resulted in fines and exposure to further punishment. Chief Kashparov’s deputy, Gerasimov, kept an eye on the inmates to spot any infraction of the restrictions placed on the Jews. The local authorities named Zalman Melamed as head of the ghetto. They required him to report daily to the police that all Jews were present. In February 1942, the police shot a Jewish woman who had left the limits of Streshin without permission. At about the same time, the police arrested a Jewish soldier who had been hiding behind the German lines. They killed him on the bank of the Dnieper.⁴

The ghetto had no major economic significance, and the Germans and their Belorussian collaborators paid no heed to the unsanitary conditions in which the inmates had to live. The occupiers’ overriding goal was the concentration of the Jews and the prevention of escape before their extermination. The prisoners had to take care of their own subsistence. Forced labor tasks included collecting trash, clearing obstructions, loading and unloading fuel, and performing other menial tasks. Kashparov himself beat those Jews who did not follow orders, and he instructed the Belorussian police to follow his example. In mid-September 1941, the police beat Berko Rabinovich, Yosel’ Khasin, and Zil’bert for failing to remove firewood from the police quarters.⁵ Some individual killings of Jews took place in the fall and winter of 1941. L.P. Khodorenko witnessed the shooting of two young children whose father, Klebanov, was serving in the Red Army.

According to a German report, on February 1, 1942, 394 Jews remained alive in the Streschin Rayon, presumably most, if not all, in the Streshin ghetto.⁶ On March 30, 1942, the German authorities moved them all to Zhlobin, where they were housed on Tovarnaia Street and in the barracks of a poultry farm. On April 1, 1942, Kashparov, the mayor Verbitskii, and the latter’s deputy, Migai, traveled to Zhlobin. The Zhlobin chief of police had requested that Kashparov personally witness the killing of “his Jews.”

The mass killing Aktion began on April 14, 1942, in a field at the village of Lebedevka, about 1 kilometer (0.6 mile) from Zhlobin. At that same place, on April 12, the Nazis and their collaborators had already killed around 1,000 Jews from Zhlobin. On April 14, the police brought the Streshin Jews to two large pits dug at the site. The Zhlobin policemen were posted as guards. Soon several vehicles arrived, carrying about 8 or 10 Germans. Some 20 Jews—elderly men and women and children—were unloaded from the truck, and Kashparov checked them off a roster. The German translator ordered the Jews to undress and lie facedown on the ground. Then members of the German killing squad opened fire with submachine guns. The Germans threw the children into the grave still alive; people were screaming; mothers clung to their children and begged for mercy. A younger man, perhaps 25 years old, who had served in the Red Army and lived for a while behind German lines before his capture, managed to shout, “You will pay for spilling our blood! For all this you will answer with your own black blood!” Several times an enclosed, black gas van pulled up to the pit, and the police extracted Jewish corpses from inside. A German officer, noticing the “curiosity” of the Belorussian police, explained that this was a special vehicle in which the victims were killed with carbon monoxide gas.⁷ [End Page 1736]

Among the victims were some half-Jews: Sonia Kalinovskaia-Pesina (born 1904) and her children; Raia Malashkova-Elkina (born 1919) and one child; Basia Rudnitskaia-Shapiro (born 1915) and two children; and Sara Makei-Nekhamkina and her two children. Having refused to leave the ghetto, Sara’s non-Jewish husband, Nikola Makei (born 1908), died with her. The Germans also shot three young Babitskii children (two brothers and a sister), who had some Jewish grandparents.⁸

The Aktion lasted about five hours. Streshin chief of police Kashparov, mayor Verbitskii, and his deputy Migai all played an active role. Kashparov shot seven people with a revolver.⁹ When the shooting was over, around 5:00 p.m., the large pit had been filled with bodies. According to eyewitnesses, this mass “was moaning and stirring.” Nevertheless, the punitive authorities ordered it to be covered with earth. It is possible that Jews from the neighboring villages of Krasnii Bereg, Pirevichi, Staraia Rudnia, and Kazimirovo perished together with those from Streshin.¹⁰ Gel’shtein, a teacher, somehow escaped the mass killing of April 14, 1942. When Commandant Horn became aware of this, he gave the order that Gel’shtein be found and shot, which was duly carried out.¹¹

When the Germans had arrived in Streshin, Jewish property was considered “ownerless” and thus subject to plunder. Taking Jewish belongings was not considered a crime. At the beginning of 1942, Kashparov ordered the arrest of the Kaganovich family, whom the Germans sent to Zhlobin, where they were shot. The Streshin authorities gave the Kaganoviches’ house and belongings to Degtyarev, a policeman related to Kashparov. The police tore down the Kaganovich house for firewood. Policeman Genov took for himself two beds, a sewing machine, and a bicycle. After the liquidation of the ghetto and the mass shooting, the remaining belongings of the Jews were auctioned off.¹²

Red Army troops of the 1st Belorussian Front liberated Streshin on November 21, 1943. A number of Nazi collaborators were arrested and brought to trial at the end of the occupation, among them Kashparov, Bodilovskii, Kurganov, and Genov.¹³