NEVEL’
Pre-1941: Nevel’, town and raion center, Kalinin oblast’, RSFSR; 1941–1943: Newel, Rear Area, Army Group Center (rückwärtiges Heeresgebiet Mitte); post-1991: Nevel’ Pskov oblast’, Russian Federation
Nevel’ is located 50 kilometers (31 miles) southwest of Velike Luki. According to the Soviet census, in 1939 there were 3,178 Jews living in Nevel’, comprising 20.4 percent of the total population.
After bombarding the town, German forces of Army Group Center captured Nevel’ on July 16, 1941. Because of the town’s good rail communications, many Jews were able to evacuate to the east in the four weeks following the start of the German invasion, while men of eligible age were conscripted into the Red Army or enlisted voluntarily. Some Jews, however, soon returned to their homes due to misleading information in the Soviet media. Less than one third of the pre-war Jewish population remained in Nevel’ at the start of the occupation.
During the period of occupation, from July 1941 until October 1943, a German military commandant’s office (Ortskommandantur) ran the town. The German military established a local administration and a police force (Ordnungsdienst) recruited from local residents.
Soon after the occupation of the town, Sonderkommando (Sk) 7a established a Jewish Council (Judenrat). The Judenrat was responsible for registering the entire Jewish population. It also had to ensure that the Jews wore distinguishing marks in the form of a yellow star. Able-bodied Jews were formed into work details for various kinds of manual labor, especially cleaning up the town following the bombardment. Jews were also looted and robbed from the first days of the occupation. In the first half of August 1941, a detachment of Sonderkommando 7a, which was headed by SS-Obersturmführer Friedrich Meyer, shot 74 Jews, allegedly in retribution for an arson attack by Jews in the town.1 A Jewish survivor recalls that after the fire all the Jews were gathered together, at which point 25 of the strongest young men were shot in front of everyone.2
On August 7, 1941, all the Jews of the town were resettled into a ghetto, which was located approximately 3 kilometers (1.9 miles) outside the town, in the “Golubaia Dacha” (Blue Dacha) Park.3 The ghetto consisted of an area fenced off by barbed wire, which included several very overcrowded houses and wooden shacks, as well as dugouts prepared in the ground that were also used by the Jews for shelter. The precise number of ghetto inmates is unknown, but it was probably around 700. Some Jews may have been brought into the Nevel’ ghetto from the surrounding area.4
The ghetto existed for only about one month. In September 1941, Dr. Alfred Filbert, in charge of Einsatzkommando 9 based in Vitebsk, sent a detachment headed by SS-Untersturmführer Heinrich Tunnat to Nevel’ in response to reports of Soviet partisans being active in the area. Tunnat soon reported on the ghetto in Nevel’ to Dr. Filbert, who ordered Tunnat to shoot the Jews as soon as possible. According to the report of [End Page 1808] Einsatzgruppe B, a German doctor had detected an outbreak of disease in the ghetto, which was then liquidated to prevent the contagion from spreading.
At some time in the first week of September 1941, a squad of Waffen-SS commanded by SS-Untersturmbannführer Waldemar Clauss drove the Jews out of the ghetto and escorted them to a site nearby, where Soviet prisoners of war had recently prepared a large pit. At the killing site, the Jews were ordered to remove their outer clothing, which was neatly piled up by the head of the Judenrat. The Jews were then shot into the pit by a squad of five or six men armed with machine pistols. Members of the Russian police also participated in the shooting. According to the Einsatzgruppen report, the forces of Einsatzkommando 9 shot 640 Jews during the Aktion. Afterwards the remaining buildings of the ghetto were burned to the ground.5 Only a handful of Jews managed to escape from the ghetto and avoid the roundups, living in hiding, on the “Aryan” side, or serving with the Soviet partisans until the Red Army liberated the area in October 1943.6
SOURCES
Information on the fate of the Jewish community of Nevel’ during the Holocaust can be found in the following publications: Justiz und NS-Verbrechen, vol. 18 (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 1978), Lfd. Nr. 540, pp. 621–622; and 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. 887.
Documentation regarding the ghetto in Nevel’ and the extermination of the Jews there can be found in the following archives: BA-BL (R 58/216-17); BA-L (B 162/21177); GAPO; GARF; NARA (N-Doc., NO-4415); USHMM (RG-22.002M, reel 9); VHF (# 2301, 15070, and 15072); and YVA.
NOTES
1. BA-BL, R 58/216, Ereignismeldung UdSSR no. 73, September 4, 1941.
2. VHF, # 15070, interview with Musia Bogat, May 16, 1996.
3. Ilya Al’tman, Zhertvy nenavisti: Kholokost v Rossii 1941–1945gg. (Moscow: Fond Kovcheg, 2002), p. 249.
4. Vadim Doubson, “Getto na okkupirovannoi territorii Rossiiskoi Federatsii (1941–42 gg.),” Vestnik Evreiskogo Universiteta v Moskve: Istoriia, Kul’tura, Tsivilizatsiia, no. 3 (21) (2000): 159, gives the figure of 800 to 1,000 ghetto inmates. German sources mostly give lower figures of from 100 to 640. Wila Orbach, “The Destruction of the Jews in the Nazi-Occupied Territories of the USSR,” Soviet Jewish Affairs 2:6 (1976): 44, gives a range from 710 to 1,800.
5. BA-BL, R 58/217, Ereignismeldung UdSSR no. 92, September 23, 1941; LG-Be, verdict of June 22, 1962 (3 PKs 1/62) against Filbert and others, in Justiz und NS-Verbrechen, vol. 18, Lfd. No. 540, pp. 621–622. In his own statement, see BAL, B 162/21177, pp. 34ff., Tunnat estimates the number of victims at only 100–120. Il’ja Al’tmann, Opfer des Hasses: Der Holocaust in der UdSSR 1941–1945 (Zürich: Gleichen, 2008), pp. 303–304, cites a captured German document now in the FSB archives that indicates that about 600 women and children were shot in Nevel’ shortly before September 8, 1941. See also VHF, # 2301, interview with Tatiana Nemizanskaia, April 20, 1995.
6. VHF, # 2301, testimony of Tatiana Nemizanskaia, and # 15072, testimony of Roza Shafran.
