STODOLISHCHE
[End Page 1826] Pre-1941: Stodolishche, town and raion center, Smolensk oblast’, RSFSR; 1941–1943: Stodolischtsche, Rear Area, Army Group Center (rückwärtiges Heeresgebiet Mitte); post-1991: Stodolishche, Russian Federation
Stodolishche is located 76 kilometers (47 miles) southeast of Smolensk on the railroad from Smolensk to Briansk. According to the 1939 census, there were 232 Jews in Stodolishche, accounting for 10.37 percent of the total population.
German units of Army Group Center occupied the village on July 19, 1941, 28 days after the German invasion of the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941. During that time, some Jews were able to evacuate to the east, and men of eligible age were conscripted into the Red Army.
Shortly after the occupation of the village, in late July and early August 1941, the German Ortskommandantur appointed a community leader (starosta) of Stodolishche and ordered the local administration to organize the registration and marking of the Jews. The Jewish population was also exploited for various forms of forced labor. According to one source, German security forces shot a few Jews in Stodolishche during the second half of July 1941. The remaining Jews were forced to move into a ghetto to concentrate them in one place and isolate them from the rest of the population. In April 1942, the Ortskommandantur in Stodolishche was OK (I) 364. The ghetto was liquidated in May 1942, when German security forces shot all the remaining Jews.1
NOTES
1. I. Tsynman, Bab’i iary Smolenshchiny (Smolensk, 2001), p. 435; and “Stodolishche,” in 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. 1246.
