Brest Ghetto (December 16, 1941 — October 18, 1942) was a Jewish ghetto, a place of forced resettlement of Jews from the city of Brest, Brest region, and nearby settlements during the persecution and extermination of Jews during the Nazi German occupation of Belarusian territory in World War II.

Brest was captured by German troops on June 22, 1941, and the occupation lasted 3 years and 1 month — until July 28, 1944. Almost no residents of the city managed to evacuate.

Already on June 28–29, 1941, Einsatzgruppe "B" together with Wehrmacht units took 4,000 to 5,000 Jews out of the city and shot them.

In the summer and autumn of 1941, the Germans constantly robbed Jews, forcing them under threat of death to pay various "contributions." They demanded 40 apartments furnished with furniture, constantly ordered certain sums of money to be handed over, confiscated all kinds of valuables, and extorted gold separately. To intimidate, the Nazis each time took 30–50 Jews hostage to ensure the delivery of valuables within the set deadlines. Besides "contributions," they took everything of any value — fur products, clothing, fabrics, electrical appliances, bicycles, typewriters, and much more. Such robberies affected both the Jewish community as a whole and individual wealthy Jews. From the synagogues of Brest alone, 100 kilograms of silver were taken out, and after that, as stated in the report of the Extraordinary State Commission (ChGK), "...all synagogues and prayer houses were occupied as stables and garages."

From the order of the German occupation authorities regarding the Jewish population of Brest:

"On purchasing from Jews.

I forbid the purchase of furniture and other items from Jews. The population is required to strictly observe this prohibition to avoid losses. Furniture and similar items purchased from Jews are subject to confiscation without compensation.

On selling to Jews.

Any sale to Jews is strictly prohibited. Jews are allowed to enter only special stores selected by me.

On the prohibition of trade through Jewish intermediaries.

Jews are forbidden to conduct any trade. If there is a need for trade between Jews and the city... special orders will be issued.

On movement in the streets.

Any movement and presence on the streets without necessity is forbidden for Jews. They are allowed to be on the streets only on the way to work and back."

Besides robbery under the guise of "contributions," the Germans extorted Jews with numerous fines (from 50 to 500 rubles) — for violating city behavior rules, sanitary regulations, losing documents, receiving bread on the card of a deceased family member, trading vegetables and fruits at speculative prices, and other violations of the order prescribed by the occupation authorities (this also applied to children from the age of 12).

Children from the Jewish orphanage (one of four orphanages in Brest) were taken out of the city and killed by the Germans in the first days of occupation. Jewish children in other orphanages were separated from the rest, and as a result, in Orphanage No. 2 on the territory of the future ghetto (corner of Moskovskaya and 17th September streets), there were 90 Jewish children under 14 years old. Several Jewish children were saved from transfer to the Jewish orphanage by registering them under Russian surnames, but some of them were later handed over to the Germans by provocateurs.

From the beginning of the occupation, it was forbidden to talk to Jews or sell them anything. Jews were ordered to wear a white armband with a six-pointed star on the sleeve, and later — patches (latas) in the form of yellow circles 10 centimeters in diameter on the front and back of outer clothing.

The Germans took the possibility of Jewish resistance very seriously and therefore primarily killed Jewish men aged 15 to 50 in the ghetto and even before its creation — despite economic impracticality, as these were the most able-bodied prisoners. In connection with this, already in early July 1941, the Nazis began raids on Jewish youths and men, as well as Soviet and party workers, who were seized on the streets and in apartments, then taken out of the city and killed. The first such "action" (a euphemism the Germans used for their organized mass killings) took place on the first Saturday of July, and the captured people were shot in the city — at the stadium. But from the first days of occupation, Jewish men were killed right in the city — at the market, in queues for food, in institutions, and there were cases when a person was doused with gasoline and burned alive in front of everyone.

In a report by the party leader of Belarus, Ponomarenko, "On the situation in the occupied regions of Belarus" dated August 19, 1941, it is said about the situation of Jews in Belarus, including Brest: "The Jewish population is subjected to merciless extermination... In Brest, the Germans set fire to some houses inhabited by Jews, did not allow them to leave, and all burned alive... Such facts are numerous."

One of the first actions of the occupation authorities was a census and passportization of the population, which revealed that out of 51,000 residents, 18,000 were Jews.

Then all Jews in the city aged 14 and older were ordered to be photographed and undergo special registration, which began on November 10, 1941. Jews were issued new passports, which were recorded in a registration book in Polish. By June 5, 1942, 12,260 such passports had been issued. Simultaneously, a questionnaire in Polish (Protokół) was filled out for each Jew, including children under 14.

By December 16 (starting from November) 1941, the Germans, implementing the Nazi program of extermination of Jews, gathered all Brest Jews into the ghetto, having previously robbed them and taken their best belongings. Jews from nearby villages and towns were also resettled into the Brest Ghetto. For example, 113 people from the village of Slovatichi and 52 from the village of Rossozh were brought there. The ghetto curator was the chief of police and gendarmerie, Major Rode.

To maintain order in the ghetto and ensure compliance with German orders, Jews were ordered to organize a Judenrat of 60 people. The chairman of the Judenrat was appointed Hirsh Rosenberg, his deputy — Nachman Landau. To assist the Judenrat, the Nazis also forced Jews to create a Jewish police squad of 16 (according to other sources, 15) people, armed with sticks.

The ghetto was located within the boundaries of Sovetskaya, Mayakovskogo, Kobrinskaya (Kirova), and Hospitalnaya (Internatsionalnaya) streets. Moskovskaya street (Warsaw–Minsk highway) divided the ghetto territory into two unequal parts: the larger one in the north and the smaller one in the south. Inside a perimeter of barbed wire 5–6 kilometers long, up to 20,000 (according to other data, 27,000) people were locked in.

The ghetto was fenced with barbed wire and guarded by patrols. Entry and exit without special permission were forbidden; unauthorized exit was punishable by imprisonment at best, usually by shooting. Jews were allowed to pass from one part of the ghetto to another only until 6 p.m. The ghetto had three gates opening onto Moskovskaya, Sovetskaya, and Gogol streets. The gates were guarded by the gendarmerie.

Within the ghetto, there were prayer houses, a synagogue, a hospital (almost without medicines), a store (practically without food or consumer goods), a nursing home, and public charity kitchens.

In August–September 1941, Brest Jews were allowed (although the bureaucratic procedure was very complicated) to obtain permits to open private craft workshops. After the resettlement of Jews to the ghetto, some workshops remained outside the ghetto, and those inside closed due to lack of raw materials, orders, and electricity. Moreover, any Jewish activity was heavily taxed.

The Judenrat constantly had to provide labor force requests. Skilled prisoners were sent to enterprises, unskilled people were used for heavy and dirty forced labor, including clearing debris of the destroyed Brest Fortress and cleaning up bodies found there.

To save Jews from extermination, the Judenrat tried to constantly demonstrate the ghetto's profitability, striving to create new jobs. The Germans, indeed earning large profits from slave labor, maintained illusions of the ghetto's necessity and long existence.

In January 1942, 4,956 Jews were sent from the ghetto to work; in February — 5,490; in March — 5,843; in April — 6,722; in May — 7,248; in June — 7,994 (including 1,571 skilled men). The customers of labor were German military units, city institutions, and private individuals who paid 20% of the prisoners' wages to the district commissariats' funds.

Earned money was paid to Jews with delays, incompletely, or not at all. Moreover, the Germans withheld taxes from these funds, so the real earnings were insignificant — from 4 to 30 rubles per day.

Under chronic starvation and exhausting labor, ghetto inhabitants quickly became physically emaciated, fell ill, and died, which was noted even by occupation representatives.

From October 1942, a craft union of 31 workshops was created under the Judenrat, but even a permanent place for a skilled Jew in these workshops did not exempt from forced labor.

The Germans allowed the creation of a hospital with 75 beds and a pharmacy in the ghetto. But there were neither specialists, medicines, nor even the simplest medical equipment for treatment.

Medicines could only be bought on the black market for huge sums, so treatment in the ghetto was necessarily paid. The cost of a daily stay in the hospital was 30 rubles, and the health protection department at the Judenrat was overwhelmed with requests for free treatment due to lack of funds.

Many able-bodied prisoners hid their illnesses to avoid losing their jobs and leaving their families without income and food cards, although a medical certificate sometimes granted exemption from forced labor.

In the Brest ghetto, 11 Jewish doctors received official permission for private practice, allowing them to treat non-Jews as well. Of these doctors, 6 were also allowed to live outside the ghetto, including the well-known psychiatrist Bernhard Kalvariysky.

Despite constant measures, the sanitary-epidemiological situation in the ghetto continuously worsened. The reasons were lack of necessary means and conditions for treatment, prohibition on bringing medicines into the ghetto, exhaustion from systematic malnutrition, exhausting forced labor, overcrowding, cold, pediculosis, and poor-quality drinking water. Almost all Jewish doctors could do was isolate sick prisoners. At least every 10 days, the medical department of the Judenrat had to report the number of infectious patients in the ghetto to the city magistrate.

The social welfare department of the Judenrat helped as much as possible the orphanage for 80 children, kindergarten for 135 children, hospital (75 beds), nursing home (80 elderly), public kitchen (for 3,800 people), and night shelter (up to 300 people). In summer and autumn 1942, the Judenrat assisted more than 4,000 prisoners in the most difficult situations.

The food situation was the most severe. After resettlement to the ghetto, only a small part of the Jews managed to keep some valuables that helped them survive the first time and even support the most emaciated prisoners through public kitchens organized at prayer houses. Then the main way to get food was raids by children under 10 (who were not required to wear yellow latas) outside the ghetto. However, soon the Nazis cut off this source by catching, beating, and killing such children.

Some Jews managed to sustain themselves by private earnings. They asked former neighbors and acquaintances to register them for work outside the ghetto and tried to earn at least some food there. Some intellectuals even managed to earn by giving private lessons.

Only bread was distributed relatively regularly according to rationing; other products were given on a residual basis. Flour, cereals, fat, butter, and salt were allocated only to hospitals, orphanages, and canteens. In the first months of occupation, poor Jews could still eat for free in city public canteens, but later — only in ghetto canteens.

From January 1942, Jews were divided by food rations into working and non-working. Workers received 1.5 kg of bread, 1 kg of potatoes, and 35 grams of fat per week. Children under 14 and non-working adults received 750 grams of bread, 1 kg of potatoes, and 35 grams of fat per week. But already that month, a single bread ration of 150 grams per day was introduced for all prisoners. Meanwhile, the Germans forbade them to use the city market, and peasants were ordered not to sell anything to Jews. If someone managed to buy something edible, policemen still confiscated it during searches at the ghetto entrance.

The winter of 1941–1942 was very harsh; the small amount of firewood and coal that had been stockpiled quickly ran out, and supplying prisoners with fuel was not provided. The Judenrat could get firewood only for bakeries, and in January 1942, 4 cubic meters of firewood were allocated for 6 bakeries in the ghetto (which baked bread for more than 17,000 people), in July — 6, in September — 2 cubic meters. Food rations in the ghetto were half those of the non-Jewish population, but the Brest ghetto was the only one in Belarus where any food was issued at all. In July–September 1942, per person in hospital, nursing home, or orphanage, 25 grams of flour and 50 grams of cereals were issued daily; in kindergartens and canteens — 10 grams of flour and 25 grams of cereals.

Soon after the ghetto's creation, Jews began organizing underground groups that collected and secretly brought weapons found during forced labor in the Brest Fortress territory. They also found radio parts there and assembled radios in the ghetto. The ghetto also had a Komsomol group — one of 10 primary Komsomol organizations in occupied Brest — and a communist cell.

From December 1941, these groups united into the underground organization "Osvobozhdenie" ("Liberation"). One of the organizers was Mikhail Omelinsky, a former officer of the Polish army. From mid-1942, the leader of the entire organization was Arye Sheinman, and the sabotage group was headed by Shloma Kagan (Bolek).

Already in early 1942, information about Nazi plans to destroy the ghetto appeared, and the underground leadership began developing defense plans. Cover groups armed with machine guns were formed. It was assumed that the main mass of prisoners would start breaking out of the ghetto independently, and streets convenient for breaking through to the forest were designated. Meeting places after escape were also planned.

In January–February 1942, another underground group "Nekama" (Hebrew for "Revenge") appeared in the Brest ghetto, led by Frumka Plotnitskaya. Its initiators were members of the Polish Jewish youth organization "Ghechalc" (Hebrew for "Pioneer"), centered in Warsaw. The main goal of these underground fighters was to convince prisoners of the need for uprising and struggle for life, as the ghetto would inevitably be destroyed. The group consisted of teenagers who distributed leaflets and helped adult underground members as couriers.

Preparation for struggle continued throughout the winter of 1941–1942. Weapons were also bought from Germans and policemen for money and valuables and stored in caches. But Jewish underground fighters failed to deliver a preemptive strike against the Germans. Informers infiltrated into the ghetto exposed many underground members, and on the eve of the uprising, the Nazis conducted mass arrests. A provocateur in the Judenrat also exposed several partisan couriers who had penetrated the ghetto to organize assistance for the uprising. This traitor was killed personally by Shloma Kagan, who then managed to escape the ghetto and joined the partisans (he later died in battle). But by October 1942, when the liquidation of the ghetto began, the underground could not organize an armed uprising.

Even before the complete liquidation of the ghetto, prisoners were constantly killed in the city itself and also taken out and killed near the Bereza-Kartuzskaya station, on Bronnaya Gora, in the Sobibor death camp, near Rechitsa, and in the area of Fort No. 8. For example, about 900 Jews were shot at the end of July 1942 alone.

In autumn 1942, the Germans summoned the Judenrat leadership to the Gestapo, where under threat of ghetto destruction, they demanded payment of another "contribution" in gold, silver, and other valuables. Prisoners managed to collect only 80% of the demanded amount — they had nothing more.

In early October 1942, a group of Gestapo officers arrived in Brest to organize the "final solution of the Jewish question." They gathered the leadership of German, Polish, and Ukrainian police at the "Mir" cinema for instructions on actions during the ghetto's destruction. Jews learned about this and began preparing for an uprising — weapons were taken from caches, disassembled machine guns were assembled, and the resistance leadership called on underground fighters not to disperse but to wait for the attack all night from October 14 to 15. But some fighters went home, believing that this time there would be no liquidation, and the remaining underground fighters also returned home at dawn.

However, on the morning of October 15, 1942, the ghetto was surrounded by vehicles with gendarmes. These trucks were parked every 10 meters, and every three trucks were flanked by tankettes. Raids began in the city, and hamlets around the city near the forest were set on fire. The entire Brest was cordoned off, with armed reinforced patrols on every street and every exit from the city. Machine guns were installed near each of the three ghetto gates, guarded by reinforced security detachments.

Some residents hid in pre-prepared shelters, but almost no one managed to escape — Germans and police broke into houses with dogs, found all hiding people, dragged them out onto the street, and shot them. Some Jews, unwilling to die at the hands of Nazis and collaborators, killed their children and themselves before their arrival. The remaining prisoners were gathered into columns and escorted by Germans and police toward the fortress. There, the doomed people were loaded into freight cars and taken to death at Bronnaya Gora.

https://reveal.world/story/pamyatnik-zhertvam-massovyh-rasstrelov-derevnya-bronnaya-gora

From October 15 to October 18, 1942, the Brest ghetto was completely destroyed. Many bodies of the killed lay in the streets. Mass shootings took place at the cemetery at the junction of Moskovskaya and Dolgaya (now Kuybysheva) streets, in the yard of house No. 126 on Dolgaya street (now between Kuybysheva and Karbysheva streets), about 5,000 Jews were shot near the hospital on Internatsionalnaya street. Also, 90 Jewish children in Orphanage No. 2 and 64 Jews in the nursing home were killed. As a result, almost all Jews of Brest were killed. Only 19 (according to other data, 17) people survived from all ghetto prisoners.

In the devastated ghetto, a hunt was on for the few surviving Jews. Wells were blocked with barbed wire to prevent survivors from accessing water. Those who managed to escape were caught in nearby villages and killed. Only in Motykaly, during October–November 1942, more than 500 people who escaped from the Brest ghetto were caught and shot on the cemetery grounds.

In the ChGK act "On the atrocities of the German-fascist invaders in Brest," based on numerous witness testimonies, it is recorded: "Jews went to death with a sense of high dignity and the greatest contempt for the German beasts. Even small children did not cry and behaved calmly."

A monument at Trishinsky Cemetery in Brest marks the reburial site of about 1,000 Jews. Their remains were found during construction work on Kuybysheva street.

In the Brest region, a partisan detachment named after Shchors operated under the command of Pavel Pronyagin. This detachment readily accepted Jews, including many escapees from the Brest ghetto. At the initiative of the detachment's command, a Jewish family camp was created within it.

In Brest, 4 people were awarded the honorary title "Righteous Among the Nations" by the Israeli memorial institute Yad Vashem "as a sign of deep gratitude for the help provided to the Jewish people during World War II":

Ignaty Kuryanovich — for saving Moshe Smolyar in Brest;

Pyotr and Sofya Golovchenko and Pelageya Makarenko — for saving the Manker and Engelman Misha families in Brest;

According to German reports and ChGK investigations, from the creation of the Brest ghetto until its liquidation, 17,000 to 20,000 Jews were tortured and killed.

Incomplete lists of Jews killed in Brest have been published. The State Archive of Brest Region holds 1941 questionnaires for more than 12,000 ghetto prisoners. It also holds the "List of Jews of Brest city for passport issuance," containing 12,260 names of Brest ghetto victims.

Monuments to the killed Jews of the Brest ghetto have been erected in Brest and on Bronnaya Gora. The first monument was erected in 1946 at the site of the shooting of 5,000 people with an inscription in Yiddish. In 1947, the monument was demolished, and after numerous complaints, the remains of the shot were reburied in the city cemetery. In 1974, the monument to ghetto victims near Kuybysheva street was also demolished — it was restored in October 1992 with inscriptions in Yiddish, Hebrew, and Belarusian, funded by Jews from the USA, Argentina, and Israel. This monument has repeatedly been the target of vandalism.

In January 2019, during the construction of a residential quarter in the city center — in the courtyard of a house near Masherov Avenue — the remains of 1,214 shot prisoners of the Brest ghetto were discovered and reburied in the "Northern" city cemetery. A memorial sign is planned to be installed at the site of the murder.

In 1994, a documentary film about the Brest ghetto was made (directed and scripted by Jonas Misyavichus, Elena Yakovich, and Ilya Altman), shown in 1995 on the Central Channel of Russian television.

Sources:

https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brest_Ghetto