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

Pre-1941: Uvarovichi, town, Buda-Koshelevo raion, Gomel’ oblast’, Belorussian SSR; 1941–1944: Uwarowitschi, Rayon center, Rear Area, Army Group Center (rückwärtiges Heeresgebiet Mitte); post-1991: Uvaravichy, Buda-Kashaleva raen, Homel’ voblasts’, Republic of Belarus

Uvarovichi is located some 26 kilometers (16 miles) northwest of Gomel’. In 1939, there were 517 Jews living in the town (11.3 percent of the total population).

After military operations started in June 1941, all men of eligible age were called up to serve in the Red Army. In July 1941, a combat battalion of 588 men under the command of Klimenok was organized in Uvarovichi, which defended the town and punished deserters.¹ Uvarovichi was not located directly on the railroad and therefore was not subjected to German aerial bombardment. Many refugees who arrived in Uvarovichi from the former Polish areas and other western regions of Belorussia reported on the Nazi treatment of Jews. While some residents fled or were evacuated before the rapid German advance, others remained until it was too late, reassured by official Soviet propaganda asserting that the enemy would soon be defeated. Overall, less than half of the Jewish population remained in the town at the start of the German occupation, primarily families and the elderly who were unable to leave.

On August 16, 1941, German forces arrived in Uvarovichi and quickly organized a new local administration. Fedor Makarenko, an accountant under the Soviets, was appointed mayor of the town. He served in this position until November 1941, when he was replaced by Lev Revnovskii (mayor until September 1943). Makarenko remained as his deputy and simultaneously presided as a local judge. Makarenko and Revnovskii organized an administration with departments for agriculture, finance, public services and utilities, education, police, and other functions. They oversaw the administration of the agrarian communes and assisted in the appointment of village elders. Radchenko became the head of the Uvarovichi Rayon; Anton Dzvinskii, the chief of police; Leonid Antipov, the superintendent of police. Koksekov and Titorenko served as police detectives.²

An “open ghetto” existed in Uvarovichi by the fall of 1941. Jews were not permitted to leave their separate residential area, which was guarded by the local police. The Jews remained in their own homes and were prohibited from using the town’s main street or having any contact with local non-Jews. They were required to perform forced labor as demanded by the German army and the local administration.

At the end of October 1941, the German military commandant in Gomel’ issued instructions for all the Jews of Rayon Uwarowitschi to be rounded up by November 10, 1941. Revnovskii and Makarenko also signed this order and transmitted it to the headmen (elders) of the villages where the Jews were living. The Jews from the surrounding area were then all sent to Uvarovichi with their cattle and other property and were resettled on Naberezhnaia Street. Only the Jews from the village of Gut did not appear as instructed. Makarenko issued new orders for their transfer and gave them only 24 hours to comply. On the next day, 47 people, mostly women, the elderly, and children, were conveyed to Uvarovichi by wagon, with a police escort.³ In total, 17 Jewish families (about 250 people) were brought to Uvarovichi.⁴

On November 15, 1941 (according to another source, on November 18), an SS punitive detachment under the command of four German officers arrived from Gomel’ (probably a detachment of Einsatzkommando 8). With the help of the local police, German security forces assembled the Jews they could find in the former court house building. Then they escorted them in a column to a killing site prepared in advance. They selected a grain warehouse located on a kolkhoz not far from the cemetery on the outskirts of Uvarovichi (about 500 meters [547 yards] to the southwest of the town, near a windmill). There were three silage pits (silosnye) there, each 8 meters long, 4 meters wide, and 3 meters deep (26 by 13 by 10 feet). The Germans made the Jews kneel down under guard and then escorted them into the ditches in groups of five. The Jews were made to lay facedown, and the security forces then shot them in the back of the head.

Among those who actively participated in the mass murder were Hoffmann, the German agricultural commandant (Landwirtschaftsführer) in Uvarovichi, and his deputy, Drescher; the Sonderführer Steinmeyer and Ronfleisch [phonetic]; Anton Dzvinskii, the chief of the Uvarovichi district police; Grigorii Novikov and Mikhail Titorenko, the heads of the first and second police departments; Mayor Lev Revnovskii; the policemen Kirpichev, Zhurov, and Baranchukov; and Trusov, the headman (elder) of the village of Ivanovka. After the mass shooting, Makarenko handed over Jewish cattle and property to the Germans, who had collected all the personal belongings of those killed. The Germans took the most valuable items and then rewarded the local policemen from the spoils. Whatever remained after that, Mayor Revnovskii distributed among the local Belorussian population.⁵

On November 27, 1943, the 4th Infantry Division and the 231st Tank Unit of the 48th Army of the Belorussian Front liberated Uvarovichi. It was one of the first Belorussian settlements to be recaptured. The Soviet Extraordinary State Commission (ChGK) arrived in Uvarovichi in February 1944. It ascertained that 633 residents of the Uvarovichi raion (including 290 people of the town itself) had been killed by the German occupying forces. The villages of Goleevka, Alekseevka, Zadorovka, Zesel’e, Klenovitsa, and Reshetniki were completely destroyed.⁶ Between 1941 and 1943, the population of the Uvarovichi raion declined from 48,563 to 35,906 (74 percent of its pre-war level). The population of Uvarovichi itself fell from 3,887 to 2,544 (65.4 percent of the 1941 total).⁷ The Soviet authorities arrested and tried several local [End Page 1742] collaborators, among them Fedor D. Makarenko, who was initially sentenced by a military tribunal to 15 years, which was subsequently commuted to 10.⁸