FF2G+F9 English Park, Mir, Belarus
By the beginning of the war, in June 1941, more than 2,000 Jews lived in the town of Mir. The town was captured by German troops on June 26 or 28, 1941, and the occupation lasted more than three years — until July 7, 1944. Almost no one managed to evacuate, and Jews from Mir itself, nearby settlements, and refugees from western Poland gathered in the town.
Three months after the occupation, in September 1941, the Germans, implementing the Nazi program of exterminating Jews, established the first ghetto in Mir. It was located within the town and occupied a residential block. All the Jews of the town — about 3,000 people — were relocated there.
The first "aktion" (a euphemism used by the Nazis for organized mass killings) took place on July 20, 1941, resulting in the murder of 20 Jews.
During the second mass shooting on November 9, 1941, between 1,500 and 1,800 Jews were killed. Most of the victims were shot in a ravine, in a sand quarry beneath the fortress wall of Mir Castle, while some were killed directly in the town’s central square, between the church and the Catholic church, and on the streets.
In addition to the Einsatzgruppen, the Wehrmacht forces actively participated in the murder of Jews. In Mir on November 9, 1941, the killing of Jews was carried out by soldiers of the 8th company of the 727th Infantry Regiment of the 11th Lithuanian Infantry Battalion. On March 2, 1942, another 750 Jews from Mir were killed.
The Germans plundered the Jewish cemetery in Mir: they took the tombstones, destroyed, and burned the entire cemetery.
In May 1942, the ghetto was moved from the central part of the town to Mir Castle, where it existed for 3.5 months. About 850 Jews were isolated within the medieval walls. The castle grounds were fenced with barbed wire and had a checkpoint. Prisoners were taken out to work, mainly clearing rubble after bombings. In May 1942, approximately 850 still-living Jews of the town were transferred to the ghetto organized on the territory of Mir Castle. The ghetto in Mir Castle was closed-type, but although the area was fenced with barbed wire and several checkpoints were located around the perimeter, prisoners were allowed to leave the castle temporarily to work in the town. However, the Jews had nowhere else to go.
Prisoners were taken out for forced labor — mainly clearing rubble after bombings. People in the ghetto were not fed, so during these outings, Jews exchanged their clothes for food.
Among the youth in the ghetto, a resistance group was organized, for which 20-year-old Jewish man Oswald Rufeisen, who served as a translator in the local police department, helped procure weapons. With his help, about 200 people escaped on August 11. The remaining 650 Jews in the ghetto were shot by the Nazis in the Yablonovshchina forest on August 13, 1942. Oswald Rufeisen was captured by the Nazis but managed to escape. He hid with nuns of the local Catholic monastery, where he stayed for 15 months. Then he joined a partisan unit, where he fought until the liberation of Belarus. In 1945, he joined the Catholic Carmelite order and later emigrated to Israel. Oswald Rufeisen (Father Daniel) established a nursing home for the "Righteous Among the Nations" in the city of Nahariya, always celebrating Mass at the request of those who came to him. In Haifa, where he lived his last years, the Carmelite superior welcomed believers of any denomination and conducted tours for them. To everyone who visited him, he liked to say: "Here we are at the origins of Christianity. There is no place for divisions here." In 1992, Oswald Rufeisen visited the town of Mir, where he met with surviving prisoners of the Mir ghetto who owed their salvation to him.
In early April 2015, employees of Mir Castle received a package from Israel from Elisheva Hemker, who had been Father Daniel’s assistant for many years. The package contained items that belonged to Oswald Rufeisen: a chalice, a paten, a stole, two crosses (one of which was gifted by a Latin American brotherhood), as well as photographs and the book by Dieter Korbach "Daniel – The Man from the Lion’s Den. From the Life of Daniel Oswald Rufeisen."
In May 2010, two video testimonies of female prisoners of the Mir ghetto were received from the Shoah Foundation Institute at the University of Southern California: Maria (Meri) Gilmovskaya (Brooklyn, USA, January 24, 1997) and Sarra Lander (Kazan, Russia, June 17, 1998), totaling about 120 minutes. The materials obtained from the interviews are partially included in the texts of tours of the exhibitions "Wars of the 20th Century" and "Ghetto in Mir Castle." Installation of interactive equipment for viewing video fragments in the exhibition halls is planned.
A separate chapter in this entire history is the information about the Righteous Among the Nations from the town of Mir — Sofya and Ignat Yermolovich. During the war, they saved Jews twice. The first time — on November 9, 1941, the day of the first mass shooting — the Yermolovich family managed to save six people from death by hiding them in their barn, where they were not discovered during a search. Among them was a 20-year-old girl, Tsilya Kopelovich (later Zakheim), who before the war lived on the same street with them. After waiting several days in the barn, the Jews returned to the ghetto. The second time — they saved only Tsilya, who, having escaped from the ghetto in August 1942 and wandering in the forest for several days, realized she would not survive. The girl returned to Mir. Sofya and Ignat Yermolovich hid her, fed her, and gave her clothes and shoes. At dawn, Ignat led Tsilya to the forest, where she was fortunate to find the camp of the Belsky family. After the war, the girl came to Mir and bowed to those who helped her survive during the war years. Tsilya sold her house and moved to South Africa to relatives. Later she moved to Israel but maintained contact with her Belarusian compatriots. The feat of the residents of Mir was not forgotten. On November 26, 1995, the National Memorial of the Holocaust and Heroism Yad Vashem in Israel recognized Ignat and Sofya Yermolovich as Righteous Among the Nations. They are among 618 Belarusians (data as of January 1, 2016) who have been awarded this honorary title.
In 2017, thanks to the Belarusian segment of the program "Wait for Me" on the ONT TV channel, descendants of the Righteous Among the Nations — Sofya and Ignat Yermolovich, natives of the town of Mir — were found. On June 28, Olga Vyacheslavovna Tatur, daughter-in-law of Sofya and Ignat Yermolovich’s adopted daughter, visited Mir Castle to donate the diploma and medal of the Righteous, as well as photographs for the exhibition. Currently, the diploma and medal are displayed in the museum.
The Commission of the Extraordinary State Commission established that the main perpetrators of the murders in Mir were: district police commandants Semyon Serafimovich (grandfather of British comedian and actor Peter Serafinowicz) and Pankevich; gendarmerie translator and executioner Andrey Bakunovich; assistant to the district police commandant and commandant of Mir SD Ivan Mazurok; district burgomaster Belyanovich; SD employees Iosif Slinko and Anton Demidovich; policemen Adolf Kulikovsky, Ibrahim Miskevich, Vladimir Barashko, Ivan Stoma, Vitaly Levkovich, Pyotr Levkovich, Pyotr Khinevich, Poluyan, Alexander Gursky, Ivan Konstantinovich Lichko, Pyotr Petrovich Shkoda, Boris Antonovich Popko, Vasily Pechenko, Foma Sakovich, and Tyurin; Viktor Iosifovich Stotko, Leonid Iosifovich Stotko, Mikhail Pavlovich Rudik, Vladimir Yuzefovich Bochkovsky, Lev Avdeichik, and Iosif Beresnevich.
German commandant Fast and policemen Semyon Serafimovich, Pyotr Levkovich, and Ivan Mazurok organized a den in the house of Maria Chebotarovich on Zavala Street in the town, where Jewish girls and women were raped and then killed. According to the Extraordinary State Commission, girls named Abershtein, Sonya Mirskaya, Raya Mirskaya, and many others died this way.
During the occupation, a total of 2,900 Jews were killed in the town of Mir. In 1966–1967, obelisks were erected on the mass graves of the victims of the Jewish genocide:
on Tankistov Street (near building No. 42 — Vocational School No. 234, or opposite, across the road from house No. 57) — an obelisk from 1966 in memory of 1,700 Jews killed in November 1941;
on Oktyabrskaya Street (between houses No. 10 and No. 12) — an obelisk from 1967 in memory of 700 Jews killed in November 1941;
in the Yablonovshchina tract (1 km southeast of the town) — an obelisk from 1966 in memory of 750 Jews killed in June 1942;
on the road to the Moshecki tract (1 km southwest of the town) — a mass grave: in 1941, 7 people were shot here, including 5 Jews.
In memory of the Jews of Mir who perished, the Jewish National Fund, together with the Jerusalem community, created a forest area north of the Pisgat Ze’ev district, on the border with the Judean Desert, and named it the "Forest of Mir." The first 100 trees were planted with funds from sisters Inda Kravets and Rosa Tsvik in memory of Rosa’s husband, the scribe Israel Tsvik, with whom they managed to escape in August 1942.
The memorial to the murdered Jews of Mir was erected at the "Nachalat Yitzhak" cemetery in the Israeli city of Giv'atayim. The Yad Vashem museum archive holds several testimonies about the fate of Mir’s Jews during World War II.
Incomplete lists of the murdered Jews of Mir have been published. In particular, the museum of the Mir castle complex holds partial lists of the town’s residents who were shot, found in 2008 in the Baranovichi archive.
Sources:
26 Kirova St., Mir, Belarus
5 Volodarskogo St., Minsk, Belarus
9a Maksima Bogdanovicha St., Minsk, Belarus
