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

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

Ushachi is located 101 kilometers (63 miles) west of Vitebsk. In 1939, 487 Jews lived in the town, making up 23.8 percent of the total population. The Jewish population of the Ushachi raion (without the town of Ushachi) constituted 306 people, the bulk of whom lived in the small town of Kublichi.

There was no organized evacuation from Ushachi because the town had no significant factories. Some Jews who held senior positions in the administration managed to flee, but the majority remained in the town. Ushachi did not suffer much damage from the fighting.

Ushachi was captured by units of the XXXIX Corps of the 3rd Panzer Group on July 3, 1941. On July 15, 1941, when the 3rd Panzer Group moved east, the area was occupied by the XX Corps of the 9th Army. From this time on, Rayon Uschatschi belonged to the Rear Area, 9th Army. Later in the summer of 1941, Ushachi came under the authority of Rear Area, Army Group Center, being situated on its western edge, close to the area under “civil administration” (Generalkommissariat Weissruthenien). There was a military commandant’s office (Ortskommandantur) in Ushachi.

The Germans imposed forced labor on the Jews. For example, the Jews had to haul out the timber that remained in [End Page 1740] the Ushacha River, a tributary of the Zapadnaia Dvina, when timber rafting was stopped because of the war. Some work tasks were senseless and purely humiliating: for example, they forced girls to pull water in big barrels for the horses of the German cavalry. According to a witness, during the first days of the occupation the Germans pulled down a Lenin statue using a tractor, then forced Jewish youngsters to break up its pedestal with hammers.¹

Eyewitnesses (non-Jewish) mention a certain Azril Nemtsov, who most probably was the Jewish elder in Ushachi. Before the war, Nemtsov was an employee (possibly a manager) of the Administration for Leather Procurement (Zagotkozh). According to Anna Shnitko, he had to collect gold and valuables from the Jews and was beaten for the small quantity of gold he was able to gather for the Germans.

A ghetto was established in Ushachi in October 1941 on Oktiabr’skaia Street. It was fenced with barbed wire, most probably in November 1941, and guarded by a sentinel. According to various witnesses, it consisted of 10 to 15 houses. Barter between Jews and non-Jews continued, at least in the initial stages of ghettoization. Non-Jewish witnesses attest that Belorussians came to the ghetto to exchange food for fabric and clothing; sometimes Jews also left the ghetto to conduct barter transactions.

In December 1941 or, more probably, in January 1942, the Nazis resettled Jews from nearby Usaia (29 kilometers [18 miles] east of Ushachi), from the Kublichi ghetto (18 kilometers [11.2 miles] to the west), and perhaps also from Bobynichi (17 kilometers [10.6 miles] northwest of Ushachi) into the ghetto of Ushachi.² The Soviet Extraordinary State Commission (ChGK) estimated the number of people resettled at 500; this may be an exaggerated number.

Judging from the interviews with non-Jewish witnesses conducted in the 1980s, Jewish/non-Jewish relations under the German occupation were tense but not hostile. All the witnesses stated that they deplored the passivity and cowardice they saw in the Jews. Soon after the ghetto was established, the stove maker Mikhail Grokholskii came to the ghetto and told the Jews that things looked bad for them and advised them to flee to the forests. However, one Jew denounced Grokholskii to the Germans. As a result, Grokholskii, his denouncer, and two other Jews were arrested by the German police and interrogated; the two arrested Jews testified that it was not the stove maker Grokholskii who came to the ghetto, and Grokholskii was released.³

The Ushachi Jews in the ghetto were murdered on January 12, 1942. Two weeks prior to that, local residents were drafted to dig pits near the Russian Orthodox cemetery on Doletskaia Street, to the south of the town’s center, ostensibly “for potatoes”; the labor took much time because the ground was frozen. Rumors circulated immediately that in fact the pits were “for the Jews.” Panic spread in the ghetto, but a German officer who came to the ghetto succeeded in calming the Jews, saying that the pits were indeed for potatoes and that the Jews would be resettled to Polotsk. In any case, before the mass shooting took place, the people of Ushachi already had some foreknowledge of what was to come. In spite of this, very few Jews attempted to flee the ghetto. There are no records of Jews from the Ushachi ghetto having survived the war.

On the day of the ghetto liquidation, the Belorussian police went down the streets through which the Jews were to be led to the killing site and ordered all the residents to lock their doors and not to let in any Jews. The Jews were told that they would be moved to Polotsk. People took food and clothing with them, and while they were being formed into a column, four abreast, they remained relatively calm; some were even greeting Belorussian acquaintances who happened to pass by. The column was escorted mainly by the Belorussian police; only a few Germans were present. When the column turned south towards Doletskaia Street, the Jews realized where they were being led and, according to non-Jewish witnesses, began to throw their photographs, letters, clothing, valuables, and other things away on their way to the killing site.

According to the non-Jewish witnesses, the main perpetrators of the killing were indigenous local police (politsais). The victims were brought to the pits in groups of four; near the pits they were told to undress. Witnesses attest that many people were still alive when they were thrown into the pits.

According to Kublichi survivors Vera Gilman and Nikolai (Folya) Gilman, when they arrived in the Ushachi ghetto under guard, it was empty because all the Jews of Ushachi had been killed. The new arrivals found graffiti in Yiddish in one of the houses: “They are bringing us to be shot. If somebody survives, let him avenge us” (Undz firt men shisn. Ver vet zikh rateven un bleibn lebn, nemt nekome far undz). Old people put on their talles (prayer shawls) and prayed.

Some days later, the Jews of Kublichi were killed too. On the morning of the day when the Nazis began to drive the Kublichi Jews out of the Ushachi ghetto, somebody set the ghetto on fire. Some of the Kublichi Jews were killed on the spot; the rest were brought to the same pits where the Ushachi Jews were killed and were shot there.

After the ghetto liquidation, the Germans distributed the belongings of the Jews among the population. In addition, some local people dug up the mass graves looking for gold and valuables, sometimes also for clothing.⁴

The ChGK estimated the total number of Jews killed in Ushachi as 925 people. This number is almost certainly exaggerated, taking into account that there were only 893 Jews living in Ushachi and its raion in 1939.