MIKULINO
1938–1941: Mikulino, village, Rudnia raion, Smolensk oblast’, RSFSR; 1941–1943: Rear Area, Army Group Center (rückwärtiges Heeresgebiet Mitte); post-1991: Russian Federation
Mikulino is located on the shores of a small lake close to the border with Belarus, 69 kilometers (43 miles) west-northwest of Smolensk. According to the 1939 census in the former raion of Rudnia (not counting Rudnia), there were 556 Jews.
Mechanized units of Army Group Center occupied the village in July 1941, approximately four weeks after the German invasion of the USSR on June 22. In these four weeks, a portion of the Jewish population was able to evacuate to the east, and eligible men volunteered for or were conscripted into the Red Army.
Shortly after the occupation of the village, the German military commandant’s office (Ortskommandantur) ordered the village administration to organize the registration of the Jews. The Jews were also required to wear distinctive yellow patches and had to perform heavy labor of various kinds, including work on the nearby kolkhoz. German soldiers made their quarters in the local school.1
In August 1941, the Germans established a ghetto in the village. The transfer into the ghetto took place late in the evening, when local Russian police summoned all the Jews to leave their houses and forcibly moved them to Barkovskaia Street.2 The local authorities designated five houses that had been vacated by their Russian residents as the ghetto. The ghetto was not enclosed by a fence but was guarded by the Russian police, and the Jews were not allowed to leave that street. Including refugees from Smolensk and Rudnia, around 250 Jews resided in the ghetto, with about 50 people sharing each house; many people had to sleep on boards or on the floor.3 There was a terrible shortage of food, and some of the young people occasionally left the ghetto to beg for food from the peasants. As there was little opportunity to wash, disease soon spread, and many children and elderly ghetto inhabitants died. Survivors do not recall any Jewish leadership within the ghetto. Harassment was common, including beatings, thefts, and some rape attempts by the Russian police. In the winter of 1941–1942, most of the Jews did not try to escape, as they had received news of the Soviet counteroffensive and expected to be liberated by the Red Army soon.4
On February 22, 1942, the Germans liquidated the ghetto. They took the remaining 200 or so Jews to Rudnia and shot them there two days later.5 German Security Police from Einsatzkommando 9 and local Russian police carried out the mass shooting. The synagogues and Jewish books in Mikulino were destroyed during the German occupation.6
SOURCES
Documents dealing with the persecution and murder of the Jews of Mikulino can be found in the following archives: GARF (7021-22-430); GASmO; VHF (# 23069); and YVA.
NOTES
1. VHF, # 23069, interview with Gutia Turk, November 23, 1996.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.; Il’ya Al’tman, Zhertvy nenavisti: Kholokost v Rossii 1941–1945 gg. (Moscow: Fond Kovcheg, 2002), pp. 99, 258; Vadim Doubson, “Getto na okkupirovannoi territorii Rossiiskoi Federatsii (1941–42),” Vestnik Evreiskogo Universiteta. Istoriia. Kul’tura. Tsivilizatsiia, no. 3 (21) (2000): 157–184, here pp. 159, 164; I. Tsynman, ed., Bab’i iary Smolenshchiny (Smolensk, 2001), pp. 81, 435; Shmuel Spector and Geoffrey Wigoder, eds., The Encyclopedia of Jewish Life before and during the Holocaust (Jerusalem: Yad Vashem; New York: New York University Press, 2001), p. 823.
4. VHF, # 23069, interview with Gutia Turk, November 23, 1996.
5. GARF, 7021-44-630, pp. 319 and reverse side.
6. VHF, # 23069, interview with Gutia Turk, November 23, 1996.
