VORONICHI
Pre-1941: Voronichi, village, Vetrino raion, Vitebsk oblast’, Belorussian SSR; 1941–1944: Woronitschi, Rayon Wetrino, Rear Area, Army Group Center (rückwärtiges Heeresgebiet Mitte); post-1991: Varonichy, Polatsk raen, Vitsebsk voblasts’, Republic of Belarus
Voronichi is located 25 kilometers (16 miles) southwest of Polotsk. In 1920, there were 65 Jews living in the village out of a total population of 163.
Forces of German Army Group Center captured Voronichi during the first days of July 1941. It appears that very few Jews fled the village before their arrival. According to witness accounts collected for the Soviet Extraordinary State Commission (ChGK), in early November 1941, an SS unit arrived in three cars. They arrested 6 Jewish men, told them to take shovels, and escorted them to the Ostivki Forest, where the SS told the Jews to undress and then shot them. A local policeman, Semen Rumakov, who took part in the Aktion, was rewarded with a coat that had belonged to one of the victims. At the end of November, the authorities, including the village elder (starosta) Konstantin Harbuk (or Gorbuk), assembled the Jews of Voronichi, 62 people in total, in a ghetto, which consisted of two houses and was surrounded with barbed wire and guarded. During the ghetto’s existence, some men came from time to time to Voronichi from the Vetrino authority; they interrogated Jews, beat them, and took their belongings. According to another account, before the ghetto was established, Harbuk regularly came to the Jewish houses and extorted valuables and good-quality belongings from them, promising that those who gave things to him would not be resettled to the ghetto in Polotsk. [End Page 1748]
On January 16, 1942, a Belorussian police squad from Polotsk, 12 men, headed by two Germans, arrived from Bobynichi. Supported by Harbuk and the local policeman Rumakov, they began to assemble the Jews from the ghetto. Some Jews attempted to flee; they were shot at and wounded. The men of the squad beat the wounded with rifle butts. According to one account, they put out the eyes of 17-year-old Sonia Vaiman, who had attempted to flee, and then killed her. A Jewish woman, Malka Rubin, tried to hide with her 3-year-old son, but Harbuk found them. The rest of the Jews from the ghetto were led to an old cemetery and shot. In all, 62 people were killed on that day, among them 28 children ages 1 to 14 years. The men of the police squad collected the clothing of the victims.
A total of 68 Jews were killed in Voronichi.
SOURCES
The documents of the ChGK for the Vetrino raion can be found in GARF (7021-92-210, p. 104).
