DEMIDOV
Pre-1941: Demidov (until 1918 known as Porech’e), town and raion center, Smolensk oblast’, RSFSR; 1941–1943: Demidow, Rear Area, Army Group Center (rückwärtiges Heeresgebiet Mitte); post-1991: Demidov, Russian Federation
Demidov is located about 110 kilometers (68 miles) northwest of Smolensk on the Kasplia River. In 1939, the Jewish population was 206 (2.6 percent of the town’s total population).
German forces of Army Group Center occupied the town on July 13, 1941, about four weeks after the German invasion of the USSR on June 22. During this intervening period, much of the Jewish population fled or was evacuated to the east, and men eligible for military service were drafted into the Red Army. It is not known how many Jews remained in the town, but it was most probably less than 50 percent of the preinvasion population.
At the end of July 1941, the German military administration in Demidov, Ortskommandantur (OK) I/593, appointed a local mayor.1 A police force (Ordnungsdienst) was also recruited from local inhabitants. On August 6, 1941, the Ortskommandant ordered that all Jews living in the town over the age of 10 had to wear a yellow marker at least 10 centimeters (4 inches) in diameter on the right sleeve of their clothes and overcoats, which they were to make themselves. Jews of both sexes were not to be evacuated but were to remain in the town and to perform forced labor. The same order also forbade the ritual slaughtering of animals to prepare kosher meat.2
On August 29, 1941, two suspected Soviet partisans (non-Jews) were publicly hanged in Demidov, as a warning to the rest of the population. On September 4, OK I/593 issued an order denying the Jews freedom of movement and prohibiting them from trading with non-Jews.3 The detailed effects of this order are not known, but it may have resulted in the establishment of an open ghetto for those Jews that still remained in Demidov.
Shortly after this, during the second week of September 1941, units of the German 161st and 183rd Infantry Divisions, together with part of Sonderkommando (Sk) 7a and the Ortskommandant in Demidov, conducted an antipartisan sweep in the area south of the town, which resulted in the arrest of some 2,000 people “capable of bearing arms,” of whom about 200 were shot or hanged.4 On September 28, OK I/593 in Demidov reported the execution of 398 individuals under the heading of “Partisans, Political Commissars, and Party Functionaries,” as well as 3 commissars.5
One Jewish woman, who was seized and brought to Demidov together with her brother and another Jewish girl at some time in the fall of 1941, stated that the Germans raped the other Jewish girl. When she learned that she would be next, she managed to escape in time.6
From mid-August 1941, a Sonderkommando 7a detachment headed by SS-Untersturmführer Claus Hüser was located in Demidov for several weeks. According to German postwar investigative sources, the Russian Ordnungsdienst frequently handed over individuals they had arrested to the detachment while it was based in Demidov. Those prisoners that were Jews were shot without being interrogated. Allegedly up to 50 Jews [End Page 1789] were murdered by SK 7a in this manner while it was based in Demidov or shortly thereafter.7
More reliable information about the murder of the Jews of Demidov has not been uncovered. According to one partisan report, the remaining Jews in the town were allegedly shot at the start of 1942, by which time advancing Red Army forces had almost cut off the town. However, as this source considerably overestimates the number of victims, it may refer to the German antipartisan sweeps of September 1941 or other subsequent similar Aktions that were directed mainly against non-Jews.8
SOURCES
Documents dealing with the persecution and murder of the Jewish population of Demidov can be found in the following archives: BA-L; BA-MA (RH 23/223); GARF (7021-44-622); GASmO; and NARA (NOKW-1320 and 1326).
NOTES
1. BA-MA, RH 23/223, Activity Reports of Korüeck 582 for the period August to December 1941; OK I/593 Demidow, Kommandantur Order no. 2, July 31, 1941.
2. OK I/593 Demidow, August 6, 1941, Kommandantur Order no. 6, as cited by Theo Schulte, The German Army and Nazi Policies in Occupied Russia (Oxford: Berg, 1989), pp. 326–327.
3. BA-MA, RH 23/223, OK I/593 Demidow, Kommandantur Order no. 17, September 4, 1941.
4. Nicholas Terry, “The German Army Group Center and the Soviet Civilian Population, 1942–1944: Forced Labor, Hunger, and Population Displacement on the Eastern Front” (Ph.D. diss., King’s College, University of London, 2005), p. 217; Justiz und NS-Verbrechen (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2001), vol. 25, Lfd. Nr. 643, pp. 299–311.
5. Schulte, The German Army, p. 223.
6. USHMM, RG-50.378, # 006, oral testimony of Ida Moyseyevina Brion.
7. LG-Ess, 29 Ks 2/65, verdict of December 22, 1966, against Meyer and others, published in Justiz und NS-Verbrechen, vol. 25, Lfd. Nr. 643, pp. 311–315.
8. RGASPI, 17-88-1067, p. 86.
