SOL’TSY
Pre-1941: Sol’tsy, town and raion center, Leningrad oblast’, RSFSR; 1941–1944: Solzy, Rear Area, Sixteenth Army, Army Group North (Heeresgruppe Nord); post-1991: Sol’tsy, Novgorod oblast’, Russian Federation
Sol’tsy is located 78 kilometers (48.5 miles) southwest of Novgorod on the Shelon’ River. According to the 1939 census, there were 156 Jews living in Sol’tsy, accounting for 1.74 percent of the total population.
German armed forces of the LVI Motorized Corps occupied the town on July 13, 1941. On July 16, 1941, the Germans withdrew from Sol’tsy as a result of a Soviet counteroffensive, but they retook it on July 22, 1941. By the time the town was occupied, some of the Jews had succeeded in evacuating to the eastern regions of the USSR, and men liable for military service had been conscripted into the Red Army. No more than 100 Jews remained in the town.
Throughout the occupation period (from July 1941 to January 1944), a German military commandant’s office (Ortskommandantur) was in charge of the town. The German military administration set up a town authority and a police force (Ordnungsdienst) composed of local residents.
Soon after the occupation of the town, the German commandant’s office ordered the town authority to organize the registration and marking of the Jews. They were obliged to wear a white armband with a yellow six-pointed star. The [End Page 1824] Jews also were used for various types of forced labor, and all their valuables were confiscated. In the fall of 1941, all the Jews who remained in the town were concentrated and isolated in one place, to which Jews from surrounding towns and villages also were resettled. In 1941, all the Jews were shot in a nearby forest.1
In 2007, a monument was erected at the site where the Jews were shot. Funds for the memorial were collected by the Jewish community of Novgorod.
SOURCES
Documentation regarding the extermination of the Jews of Sol’tsy can be found in the following archives: AFSBNO; GANO; and GARF (7021-34-360).
NOTES
1. According to ChGK documents (GARF, 7021-34-360), several dozen Jews were shot. According to data from the Novgorod Jewish Culture Society (http://novgorod.allnw.ru/soletsky/news/43769), about 150 Jews were shot in December 1941 and 104 on January 17, 1942; about 500 Jews are said to have been living in Sol’tsy before the war. In the author’s opinion, these figures are too high.
