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

Pre-1941: Novozybkov, town and raion center, Orel oblast’, RSFSR; 1941–1943: Nowosybkow, Rear Area, Army Group Center (rückwärtiges Heeresgebiet Mitte); post-1991: Novozybkov, Briansk oblast’, Russian Federation

Novozybkov is located 60 kilometers (37 miles) northeast of Gomel’ on the railway line from Gomel’ to Briansk. In 1939, there were 3,129 Jews (12.78 percent of the total); an additional 213 Jews lived in the villages of the Novozybkov raion.

Following an aerial bombardment, which killed a number of civilians, German forces of Army Group Center occupied the town on August 16, 1941. In the two months following the start of the German invasion in June, part of the Jewish population was able to evacuate to the east, and the Soviet authorities inducted many men into the Red Army. The rapid progress of the German advance forced back to Novozybkov some of those who sought to flee following the bombing.¹ Around one third of the pre-war Jewish population remained in the town at the start of the occupation.

Until the Germans’ retreat on September 25, 1943, the town was run by a German military commandant’s office (Ortskommandantur), which was subordinated to the Feldkommandantur in Gomel’. The German military authorities established a town administration and organized a local police force (Ordnungsdienst) from among the residents of Novozybkov. Shortly after the occupation began, the town administration organized the registration of the Jews and subjected them to various forms of forced labor; for example, some Jewish women had to clean the toilets in the prison. Jewish homes were marked with yellow stars, and the Jews had to wear yellow stars on their chests. German soldiers were quartered in some Jewish homes, confining the Jewish families to just one room. The Germans shot an unknown number of Jews and suspected Communists, mostly adult men, during the first weeks of the occupation.²

In October or November of 1941, the Ortskommandantur ordered the establishment of a ghetto in Novozybkov. The ghetto comprised approximately five streets. Reports differ on whether or not the ghetto was enclosed with barbed wire.³ However, Russian police were present during the day to prevent Jews from leaving the area without permission. The sole Jewish survivor interviewed in the 1990s does not recall there being a “Jewish Soviet” [Jewish Council] in the ghetto nor encountering there any Jewish refugees from outside Novozybkov.⁴

By early 1942, news had arrived in Novozybkov of the fate of the Jews in Klintsy, where German forces from Gomel’ had liquidated the ghetto in early December 1941.⁵ After this, the Jews had few illusions about their own chances of survival, [End Page 1809] especially as some non-Jewish acquaintances now advised them to run away or hide. Bella Nepomniashchaia was able to escape with her mother on the eve of the liquidation, and she convinced a Russian policeman that she was not Jewish, assisted by her appearance. She received aid in the form of food from some local non-Jews but also had to sleep outside in freezing weather before she was able to link up with the Soviet partisans.⁶

The available sources give somewhat contradictory information on the liquidation of the Novozybkov ghetto. German Security Police forces from Einsatzgruppe B, either part of Sonderkommando 7a based in Klintsy, or from Trupp Schulz subordinated to Einsatzkommando 8 in Gomel’, arrived in Novozybkov in early 1942 (snow was still on the ground) to organize the murder of the “Jews and Communists” in the town with the assistance of the local Russian police.⁷ It appears that several pits were prepared in advance, according to the Soviet Extraordinary State Commission (ChGK), in the Karkhovsk Forest near the railroad station.⁸ On the day before the Aktion, the Jews (more than 800 souls) were all confined within the meeting room of the match factory.⁹ According to one version in the ChGK materials, the Germans and their collaborators shot the remaining 950 Jews (men, women, and children); sources date the Aktion as occurring on either January 18 or February 18, 1942.¹⁰ A German witness, who was a member of a Landesschützen Batallion stationed in Novozybkov at the time, mentions that 1,000 to 1,200 people were killed, although some sources indicate that non-Jews may have been among the victims on that day.¹¹ After the Aktion, the local police plundered the empty houses in the ghetto as they searched for Jews in hiding.