USVIATY
[End Page 1832] Pre-1941: Usviaty, village and raion center, Kalinin oblast’, RSFSR; 1941–1943: Uswjati, Rear Area, Army Group Center (rückwärtiges Heeresgebiet Mitte); post-1991: Usviaty, Pskov oblast’, Russian Federation
Usviaty is located about 70 kilometers (44 miles) south-southeast of Velike Luki. According to the 1939 census, 136 Jews were living in Usviaty (5.46 percent of the total population). In the villages of the Usviaty raion, there were another 10 Jews.1 German armed forces occupied the settlement in July 1941, approximately three weeks after the German invasion of the USSR on June 22, 1941. In those three weeks, some of the Jewish population was able to evacuate to the east. Men of an eligible age were called up for service in the Red Army.
During the course of the occupation, from July 1941 until January 1942, a German military commandant’s office (Ortskommandantur) controlled the village. The Ortskommandantur appointed a village head and recruited a police force (Ordnungsdienst) from local residents.
Shortly after the occupation began, the local administration organized the registration and marking of the Jewish population. Jews were also exploited for various kinds of heavy labor.
At the end of September 1941, a ghetto was created in the village. A few homes that had been emptied of their Russian residents were designated for this purpose, and the “Jewish quarter” was surrounded with barbed wire. Jews in the ghetto did not receive provisions. Food rations were issued only to Jews who performed labor, and they received only 200 grams (7 ounces) of bread per day.2 Most sources estimate that around 160 Jews were living in the ghetto, but the actual number was probably less than this.3 The ghetto existed for about four months. The German security forces did not have time to liquidate the ghetto. On January 28, 1942, the Red Army liberated the remaining Jews in the ghetto in the course of their winter counteroffensive. Unfortunately about 30 Jews perished in the ghetto from cold and starvation just before the arrival of the Red Army.4
SOURCES
Documentation regarding the ghetto in Usviaty can be found in the following archives: GARF (7021-20-25); GASmO (R-1630-1-369); and YVA (M-62/55 and O-33/3275).
NOTES
1. Mordechai Altshuler, ed., Distribution of the Jewish Population of the USSR 1939 (Jerusalem: Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 1993), p. 64.
2. GARF, 7021-20-25, p. 113.
3. Ilya Al’tman, Zhertvy nenavisti: Kholokost v Rossii 1941–1945 gg. (Moscow: Fond Kovcheg, 2002), p. 99; Vadim Doubson, “Getto na okkupirovannoi territorii Rossiiskoi Federatsii (1941–42),” Vestnik Evreiskogo Universiteta. Istoriia. Kul’tura. Tsivilizatsiia, no. 3 (21) (2000): 159. The number of Jews in the ghetto given by these sources is probably too high. There were only 136 Jewish residents before the war, and some of these people were able to evacuate the area. Therefore, one can surmise that there were probably around 100 people in the ghetto.
4. Al’tman, Zhertvy nenavisti, p. 99.
