UNECHA
Pre-1941: Unecha, town and raion center, Orel oblast’, RSFSR; 1941–1943: Unetscha, Rear Area, Army Group Center (rückwartiges Heeresgebiet Mitte); post-1991: Unecha, Briansk oblast’, Russian Federation
Unecha is located on the Unecha River approximately 120 kilometers (75 miles) southwest of Briansk. According to the 1939 census, 1,708 Jews lived in Unecha (comprising 12.24 percent of the total population).
German forces of Army Group Center occupied the town on August 17, 1941, almost two months after the initial German invasion of the Soviet Union on June 22. The advent of war led to panic in the marketplace, making it difficult to buy provisions. Based on information from Polish refugees, as well as heavy German bombing, some Jews decided to evacuate. Since Unecha was an important railway junction, a large portion of the Jewish population was able to escape to the east. However, the local government only organized the evacuation of specific groups of workers, and Soviet regulations made it difficult for others to flee.1 Men of eligible age were called up to enlist in the Red Army. It is estimated that around 20 percent of the pre-war Jewish population remained in Unecha under German occupation.
Shortly after the arrival of German forces, the Germans established a military commandant’s headquarters (Ortskommandantur), which was responsible for the administration of the town. They also recruited a Russian auxiliary police force (Ordnungsdienst) composed of local residents. In the summer of 1941, the authorities compelled the Jews to wear six-pointed stars made out of white cloth, and they were forbidden to leave the town limits.2 Police tasks in the area were also carried out by German forces of the Field Gendarmerie (Feldgendarmerie) and by a detachment of the Secret Field Police (Geheime Feldpolizei, GFP); beginning in the fall of 1941, GFP-Gruppe 729 was based in Unecha.
In October 1941, all Jews remaining in the town were resettled into a ghetto close to the railway line. The ghetto area was based around an old poultry factory and surrounded by a wooden fence.3 Any Jews caught outside the ghetto were shot. The ghetto was unsanitary, particularly because dead bodies were not removed from the area. All Jews over the age of 15 had to perform difficult and dirty forced labor from morning until night. The ghetto inmates were composed mainly of women, children, and the elderly. Some additional women and children were brought into the ghetto after the male members of their families had been arrested and shot. The local Russian police frequently robbed the Jews. It was difficult to obtain water in the ghetto, and there was hardly any food, only a few old potatoes, so some Jews risked leaving the ghetto to barter things with local peasants in exchange for food.4
In mid-March 1942, German security forces liquidated the ghetto.5 Just prior to the ghetto’s liquidation, about 70 Jews from the village of Zhudilovo (in the direction of Pochep) were brought into the ghetto, as were a number of Gypsies (Roma) transported on sleds.6 On the afternoon of March 15, the German-led forces assembled the Jews into a column and escorted them to the edge of town where a 10-meter-long (33-foot-long) ditch had been prepared. Men of the Feldgendarmerie and from GFP-Gruppe 729 cordoned off the killing site. Four or five SD men, probably a detachment of Sonderkommando 7a that was based in Klintsy (in March 1942 under the command of SS-Obersturmbannführer Albert Rapp) then shot the Jews in the back of the neck with pistols.7 All the Jews (including some who had converted to Christianity) and Roma were shot. In total, probably around 342 persons were murdered on that day not far from the Unecha railroad station.8
Solomon Bazhalkin, then 14 years old, escaped from the ghetto just prior to its liquidation. He knocked on people’s doors in the surrounding villages, saying he was an orphan. Some local inhabitants offered him food and occasionally shelter for a short while; but usually he had to move on again soon, as people suspected that he was a Jew. On one occasion he was denounced to the police, but he successfully convinced them he was an orphan and was released. Subsequently he linked up with the Soviet partisans. The Red Army liberated the region during its offensive in September 1943.9
SOURCES
The ghetto in Unecha is mentioned in the following publications: Vadim Doubson, “Getto na okkupirovannyoi territorii Rossiiskoi Federatsii (1941–42 gg.),” Vestnik Evreiskogo Universiteta v Moskve, no. 3 (21) (2000): 158–159; Ilya Al’tman, Zhertvy nenavisti: Kholokost v Rossii 1941–1945 gg. (Moscow: Fond Kovcheg, 2002), pp. 98, 262–264; and Emmy E. Werner, Through the Eyes of Innocents: Children Witness World War II (Boulder, CO: Westview, 2000), pp. 32–33.
Documentation on the persecution and annihilation of the Jews of the town can be found in the following archives: BAL; GABrO; GARF (7021-19-4); USHMM (RG-22.002M, reel 9); and VHF (# 29265). Additional information can be found in the trial verdict against Albert Rapp, published in Justiz und NS-Verbrechen, vol. 20 (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 1979), Lfd. Nr. 588.
NOTES
1. VHF, # 29265, interview with Solomon Bazhalkin, May 6, 1997.
2. Werner, Through the Eyes of Innocents, pp. 32–33.
3. VHF, # 29265, interview with Solomon Bazhalkin, May 6, 1997; Werner, Through the Eyes of Innocents, pp. 32–33, citing Yuri Kirshin, a non-Jewish child in Unecha who corroborates the accounts of Jewish survivors; Doubson, “Getto na okkupirovannoi territorii,” p. 174.
4. VHF, # 29265, interview with Solomon Bazhalkin.
5. Doubson, “Getto na okkupirovannyoi territorii,” p. 159. According to another source, the shooting took place on March 18, 1942; see Partizany Brianshchiny (Tula, 1970), p. 96.
6. VHF, # 29265, interview with Solomon Bazhalkin.
7. LG-Ess, 29 Ks 1/64, verdict of March 29, 1965, against Albert Rapp, in Justiz und NS-Verbrechen, vol. 20, Lfd. Nr. 588, pp. 794–795. The description of the killing Aktion is based on testimony by members of GFP-Gruppe 729.
8. GARF, 7021-19-4, pp. 237–238; see also GARF, 7021-19-1, p. 8. 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. 1361, give the figure of 342. According to partisan sources cited by Al’tman, Zhertvy nenavisti, pp. 262–264, the number of victims was considerably higher, but the figures given in the Soviet Extraordinary State Commission reports are likely more accurate, as Justiz und NS-Verbrechen, vol. 20, Lfd. Nr. 588, pp. 794–795, estimates the number of ghetto inmates at around 300.
9. VHF, # 29265, interview with Solomon Bazhalkin.
