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

Pre-1939: Dmitriev-L’govskii, town and raion center, Kursk oblast’, RSFSR; 1941–1943: Dmitriew, Army Group Center (Heeresgruppe Mitte); post-1991: Dmitriev-L’govskii, Russian Federation

Dmitriev-L’govskii is located 120 kilometers (75 miles) northwest of Kursk on the railway line from Briansk to L’gov. The census of 1939 revealed that the Jewish population stood at 111.

German forces of Army Group Center occupied the town on October 8, 1941, three and a half months after Germany’s invasion of the USSR on June 22, 1941. During this intervening period, the overwhelming majority of the Jews managed to evacuate to the east, and eligible men were inducted into the Red Army. According to Soviet sources, only 16 Jews remained in the town at the start of German occupation. These included several key professionals, such as the dentists Kaplan and his wife, the head of the pharmacy, a tailor, a cobbler, and a barber.¹

During the entire occupation period, from October 8, 1941, to March 2, 1943, a German military Kommandantur ran the town. The German military administration formed a town council, and a police force (Ordnungsdienst) was recruited from among local residents.

Soon after the occupation, the town council organized the registration of the Jews, as well as their use in various kinds of heavy labor. The German occupiers spread antisemitic propaganda and imposed a special tax of 5,000 rubles per month on each Jew. They also proceeded to seize and rob remaining Jewish property.²

In November 1941, the Germans set up a “ghetto” in Dmitriev-L’govskii, forcing all the Jews to move into a single house, which bore the following inscription on the door: “Entry forbidden to non-Jews.” (Another source indicates that some Jews were shot in the town shortly after the arrival of the Germans, and the remainder were placed in the ghetto.) Jews were also required to wear a Jewish star on their clothes, on the chest and back, and were forbidden from having any contact with non-Jews.³ The Jews in the ghetto were forbidden from carrying out their former professions and were taken under guard to perform heavy, dangerous labor, including digging up bombs that had failed to explode. As they worked, they were whipped and beaten mercilessly with sticks.⁴

The fate of a 16-year-old Jewish boy named Boris is known from two witnesses. He was the barber’s apprentice and was forced to work for the Germans, carrying water and cleaning toilets. By accident he splashed water on a German dog, and the Germans started to beat him. When they discovered from other boys that he was Jewish, they beat him further for concealing that he was a Jew. The Germans threw him into the cold cellar of the Pedagogical School for three days, and on the fourth day a German came and shot him with a pistol. His body was left there among the trash until spring 1942, when it was thrown into the pit behind the cemetery.⁵

Following a Soviet counteroffensive, the Jews feared that they might be killed, and a few managed to run away. Shortly after this escape effort, probably in March 1942, the Germans liquidated the ghetto by shooting the remaining Jews.⁶