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

Pre-1941: Tolochin, town and raion center, Vitebsk oblast’, Belorussian SSR; 1941–1944: Tolotschin, Rayon center, Rear Area, Army Group Center (rückwärtiges Heeresgebiet Mitte); post-1991: Talachyn, Talachyn raen, Vitsebsk voblasts’, Republic of Belarus

Tolochin is located about 94 kilometers (58 miles) south-southwest of Vitebsk. In 1939, 1,292 Jews lived in the town, making up 21.2 percent of the population. The Jewish population of the Tolochin raion (excluding the town of Tolochin) consisted of 978 people; they lived in the town of Kokhanovo (480 Jews in 1926; the 1939 census does not give the Jewish population of the town) as well as in the villages of Slaveni, Slavnoe, Obol’tsy, Drutsk, and several other places.

German forces of Army Group Center (18th Panzer Division of the XLVII Army Corps, Panzer Group 2) captured Tolochin on July 6–7, 1941. In the second half of July 1941, this area came under the control of the 286th Security Division; on July 18, Ortskommandantur II/650 assumed authority in Tolochin; it was subordinated to Feldkommandantur 683, stationed in Orsha.¹

Only a few Jews succeeded in leaving the town before the Germans arrived.² The Germans established a ghetto in Tolochin in September or October 1941. According to historian Gennadii Vinnitsa, it consisted of 15 houses on Nikol’skaia Street and had 2,000 inmates. It was not fenced with barbed wire but was guarded by the local police. Jews were forced to wear a yellow patch in the shape of the Star of David on their clothes. The Jews were made to perform various forced labor tasks, including road construction. In October, 3 (or 4) men were hanged in the central square “for their refusal to report for work.” A Jewish youth who pilfered a can of food from a starch mill was hanged from the gate of the factory.

There were some cases of people fleeing the ghetto. For example, the blond-haired Mariya Shapiro, assisted by a local policeman she knew, left the ghetto, went to Orsha, and with forged documents volunteered as an “eastern worker” (Ostarbeiter) and was sent to Germany.³

The ghetto was liquidated on March 12 (or 13), 1942.⁴ Its inmates were killed near the town in the field of the kolkhoz Rekonstruktor (now Raitsy, a northwestern suburb of Tolochin).⁵ According to witnesses, the victims were led to the pits in batches of 30 and killed there. A group of Jews tried to run away while being escorted to the killing site, and some were successful. However, a number of those who fled were found by the Nazis and killed the next day. The perpetrators were most probably a detachment of Einsatzkommando 8, subordinated to Einsatzgruppe B.⁶

The number of victims is not clear. The estimate of 2,000, made by the Soviet Extraordinary State Commission (ChGK) and used also by Vinnitsa, seems too high. The town had only around 1,300 Jews before the war, and some of them were drafted into the Red Army or succeeded in evacuating. It seems unlikely that this unimportant railway station would have attracted many Jewish refugees coming from the west. Einsatzkommando 8 reported that it had murdered 1,551 Jews in March, and there is reason to assume that the victims were Jews from the Tolochin raion. Estimating the number of those killed in March 1942 in Slavnoe at 150, and in Slaveni at 120, one can infer that the number of Jewish victims in Tolochin was no greater than 1,280.

Drutsk is a village 8 kilometers (5 miles) southeast of Tolochin. The ChGK mentions six Jews (the Dardyk family) killed there. Documents and witness accounts give conflicting impressions of the relations between Jews and non-Jews in the area. After the liberation, an investigating commission set up by the Soviet authorities confiscated cows from local people who had “acquired them in an illegal way” during the occupation: had taken them from Jews.⁷ This means that the robbery of Jewish property under German rule was rather widespread. However, despite some denunciations, other local Belorussians risked their lives to assist Jews.