225 Bakharova St., Bobruisk, Belarus
Bobruisk Ghetto — a Jewish ghetto that existed from August 1 to December 30, 1941 — was a place of forced resettlement of Jews from the city of Bobruisk and nearby settlements during the persecution and extermination of Jews during the Nazi German occupation of Belarusian territory in World War II.
According to the 1939 census, 26,703 Jews lived in Bobruisk — 31.6% of the total population (84,107). After the German troops invaded the USSR, some Bobruisk Jews managed to evacuate eastward, some Jewish men were drafted into the Red Army, but the exact number of Jews remaining in the city by the day of occupation is unknown. On June 28, 1941, Bobruisk was captured by Wehrmacht units, and the occupation lasted 3 years — until June 29, 1944. Jews became the first victims of the Nazis.
From the very first days of occupation, the Nazis introduced a number of discriminatory measures against Jews. Besides the general curfew, Jews were specifically forbidden to be “outside the limits of their place of residence,” and were forced to wear yellow six-pointed star badges.
In July 1941, the Nazis organized a Judenrat, which was one of the ways to alienate Jews from the rest of the population. The administration body imposed by the occupiers was initially located on Pushkinskaya Street and consisted of 12 people, headed by Rabbi Rosenberg. The Judenrat’s first duty was to register Jews — one of the occupiers’ measures to obtain complete information about Bobruisk’s Jews. Additionally, the Judenrat handled work assignments and refugee arrangements. The Nazis also demanded the Judenrat pay “contributions,” collecting money, gold, jewelry, and furs from Jews through it.
The next stage of the Nazi genocide program involved isolating Jews in a separate city district. The announcement of mandatory resettlement of Jews into the ghetto appeared on August 1, 1941. Part of the local population immediately began looting abandoned Jewish property. Some Jews tried to hide, so the complete resettlement process took more than 10 days. The ghetto was established within the boundaries of Novoshosseynaya, Zaturensky, and Bobrov streets. The Bobruisk ghetto was “closed type,” meaning it was fenced, guarded, and exit was forbidden.
In September-October 1941, Einsatzkommando 8 (SS-Sturmbannführer Otto Bradfisch) carried out three mass shootings, killing 407, 380, and 418 Jews. The most massive killing during this period was committed by a unit of the SS cavalry brigade in September 1941, shooting about 7,000 Bobruisk Jews on the airfield territory.
The final destruction of the ghetto was carried out by the Germans on November 7-8, 1941 (according to some sources, from November 6, 1941). Early in the morning, Belarusian policemen and German soldiers who broke into the ghetto drove Jews out of their homes. To conceal the true reason, people were told they were going on a trip to Palestine. Jews were beaten with rifle butts and herded into trucks heading to the village of Kamenka. Loading continued until evening.
The planned execution site was nine kilometers from Bobruisk, near the highway to Slutsk. Prisoners of war had dug three large pits in advance. The delivered Jews were first stripped of clothes and shoes, then killed in groups. On November 7-8, 1941, 5,281 people were shot. The execution was carried out by Einsatzkommando 8 and the 316th Police Battalion. Besides these special units, the Wehrmacht forces actively participated in the mass murder of Bobruisk Jews in November.
The next stage of alienation was their isolation in a separate city district. In the ghetto, Jews lived 10-16 people per room. They were forbidden to heat stoves or cook food. They obtained food at night, under threat of death, secretly escaping the ghetto and trading belongings for food.
A large number of Jews died from disease and hunger; some ended their lives by suicide. The occupiers abused their prisoners and raped women. Raids were regularly conducted on teenagers; all caught were taken to the hospital and had their blood drawn. The greatest tragedy of the ghetto was the children. The entire horror of the Jews’ hopeless situation was reflected in them. All hardships and misfortunes were endured silently; no child’s cry was heard, they sat quietly, needing no explanations. They understood everything, not even asking for food. They knew that if there was food, they would be given some. People starved but gave the last edible piece to the children. It was impossible to look at the children. They resembled little wise old men with sad eyes. When shooting and screams came from the street, children clung to adults; the worst was that adults could not protect or help them.
Children of ghetto prisoners had no right to study. According to the order of the General Commissioner of Belarus, schools could not be opened in the ghetto.
Some ghetto inhabitants, feeling hopeless, resorted to suicide. Occupiers and collaborators mocked the prisoners and raped women.
Ghetto inhabitants were forced into hard physical labor. They were used for earthworks building pillboxes and ditches near the railway. Jews were often involved in the Nazi version of sapper work — people were harnessed to harrows and dragged across minefields. Many died by stepping on mines, and dogs were set on those who tried to hide.
When there was a shortage of specialists among the local population, the occupiers temporarily used qualified Jewish labor. It is known that ghetto prisoners worked at the following enterprises: the city industrial complex, the district food supply combine, a coffin-making workshop (in the former “Red Furniture Maker” factory building), and the Titov salting plant. The “slow death” of doomed Bobruisk Jews did not satisfy the Nazis, and from July 1941 mass shootings were conducted, euphemistically called “actions.” It is practically impossible to fully reconstruct the picture of the murders of Bobruisk Jews, but information about some shootings has been preserved. In July 1941, at 7 a.m., 250 people were shot on the right side of the Slutsk highway near the village of Kamenka. According to some data, about 10,000 Bobruisk Jews were killed in July 1941 alone. In September-October 1941, Einsatzkommando 8 (SS-Sturmbannführer Otto Bradfisch) carried out three mass shootings, killing 407, 380, and 418 Jews. The most massive killing during this period was committed by a unit of the 8th SS Cavalry Brigade in September 1941, shooting about 7,000 Bobruisk Jews on the airfield territory.
The memorial complex at the site of the murder of Bobruisk ghetto prisoners near the village of Kamenka (now closer to the village of Slobodka) on November 6-8, 1941, was created in 1978 through the efforts of Meer Zeliger and Maria Mintz, and reconstructed in 2006.
The final destruction of the ghetto was carried out by the Germans on November 7-8, 1941 (according to some sources, from November 6, 1941). Early in the morning, Belarusian policemen and German soldiers who broke into the ghetto drove Jews out of their homes. To conceal the true reason, people were told they were going on a trip to Palestine. Jews were beaten with rifle butts and herded into trucks heading to the village of Kamenka. Loading continued until evening. The planned execution site was nine kilometers from Bobruisk, near the highway to Slutsk. Prisoners of war had dug three large pits in advance. The delivered Jews were first stripped of clothes and shoes, then killed in groups. On November 7-8, 1941, 5,281 Jews were shot near the village of Kiselevichi. The execution was carried out by Einsatzkommando 8 and the 316th Police Battalion. However, besides these special units, the Wehrmacht forces actively participated in the mass murder of Bobruisk Jews in November.
The sites of the most massive killings of Bobruisk Jews were near the village of Kamenka (then 9 kilometers from Bobruisk), in the “Bald Mountain” ravine near the village of Yeloviki (4 kilometers along the Minsk highway from Bobruisk at that time), and on the territory of the city Jewish cemetery.
Little data remains about Jewish resistance to the Nazis. The above-mentioned shooting of 380 Jews was allegedly due to “spreading propaganda” against the Hitlerites. Moreover, in late October – early November 1941, “in Bobruisk, immediately after the departure of the security police and SD units, the Jews became active again. They stopped wearing identification marks, refused to work, established contact with partisans, and behaved defiantly toward the occupation authorities.” Connected with acts of resistance were the killings of two ghetto prisoners accused of arson, and the execution of a Jewish doctor for poisoning two German officers and four soldiers. It is known that underground anti-fascist groups operated in the ghetto; in September 1941, several Jewish underground members were shot by the occupiers. One form of passive resistance was spiritual resistance, expressed in saving ritual objects. It has been established that ghetto prisoners buried the Talmud, Torah, and prayer books wrapped in a tallit, as well as lists of ghetto prisoners. Observance of religious rites was also part of spiritual resistance. For example, Rabbi Bespalov secretly buried the dead according to Jewish law. Tortured ghetto prisoners were wrapped in a sheet and lowered into the grave. On November 7, 1941, before the shooting, Bespalov refused to kneel before the Germans and was killed by a local policeman who hammered nails into the rabbi’s head.
After the shooting on November 7-8, 1941, the Nazis declared that the territory of Bobruisk was “free of Jews,” although a small part of the ghetto prisoners, whose labor was needed by the occupiers, were temporarily spared. For them, part of the former ghetto was fenced off, and tailors, shoemakers, and carpenters were settled in four houses on Novoshosseynaya Street.
Besides using Jewish labor, there was another reason for preserving the ghetto in some form. A considerable number of ghetto prisoners managed to survive, and the Germans posted a notice stating that repressions against Jews had ceased and they were invited to return to the ghetto. Some survivors, dying of hunger and cold, returned due to lack of choice.
Already in July, the fascists began systematically exterminating the Jewish population of Bobruisk — carrying out mass shootings. On November 7-8, 1941, the Germans shot 5,281 people. The final destruction of the Bobruisk ghetto occurred on December 30, 1941. On that day, the punitive forces cordoned off the ghetto, and all Jews there were loaded into trucks and taken to the execution site. In February 1942, the occupiers executed about 70 last prisoners of the Bobruisk ghetto. These were specialists working for the commandant’s office.
After killing the local Jews, the occupiers faced a labor shortage. In May and July 1942, more than 3,000 Jewish men from the Warsaw ghetto were brought to a forced labor camp near the village of Kiselevichi. The camp (commanded by Klibek) had a designated Jewish section where the arrivals were placed. Supervision over the Jews was carried out by Untersturmführer Eykopf. Polish Jews were forced into hard physical labor (carrying logs, rails, construction work). There is a known case when 30 Jews worked all day building a crematorium and were then shot. The Germans competed among themselves to see who could kill more Jews. Prisoners were poorly fed and lived in a former stable. Every day, the Germans selected the weakest and shot them near the village of Kamenka. By early autumn 1943, almost all Jews had been killed and buried in pits dug along the Bobruisk-Minsk railway line. In January 1944, only 40 Jews remained in the camp, who were sent to Lublin.
From autumn 1943 to January 1944, the occupiers exhumed the remains of murdered Jews near the villages of Kamenka and Yeloviki and burned them at the Bobruisk Jewish cemetery, trying to hide traces of their crimes. This barbaric act was carried out by prisoners of war, who were then killed. Where the Nazis did not manage to do this, they tried to mask mass graves by sowing grain or building roads over the filled graves.
At the trial of German war criminals in Minsk in 1946, the main organizers of the mass killings of civilians in Bobruisk were named as:
Moll Reinhard Georg — Major, former commandant of the city of Bobruisk and the town of Parichi;
Langut Karl Max — Captain, former deputy commandant of camp 131 in Bobruisk;
Burkhard Rolf Oskar — Sonderführer of the Bobruisk commandant’s office;
Bitner August Iosef — Lieutenant, Sonderführer, former commandant of the agricultural commandant’s office of the Bobruisk district;
Getze Bruno Max — Captain, former deputy commandant of the Bobruisk commandant’s office;
Cases of rescue and “Righteous Among the Nations”
In Bobruisk, 13 people were awarded the honorary title “Righteous Among the Nations” by the Israeli memorial institute Yad Vashem “as a sign of deep gratitude for assistance provided to the Jewish people during World War II”:
Stefanida and Galina Mikhalap — they saved Mats Genya;
Darya Kot (Rusetskaya) — she saved Zaitseva Nina;
Efrosinya and Alexander Belyavsky — they saved Mintz Maria;
Anton and Maria Moroz — they saved Blagutina Maya;
Yulia and Viktor Yalovik — they saved Altshuler (Epstein) Bronislava;
Feodosia Lagun — she saved Dadasheva Darya;
Ivan, Anna, and Valentina Peshkov — they saved Vikhman Zhanna, Maya, Alik (Albert);
According to the commission of the Extraordinary State Commission (ChGK), the total number of murdered Jews in Bobruisk is about 25,000. The exact number of surviving prisoners is unknown; only isolated cases are known.
Incomplete lists of genocide victims in Bobruisk have been published. The State Archive of the Mogilev Region holds a list of 77 Jews — prisoners of the Bobruisk ghetto.
Near the village of Yeloviki, Sychkovsky village council (since 1972 the territory was annexed to Bobruisk, Minskaya Street), a monument with the inscription “To Soviet Citizens” is installed. In the “Bald Mountain” ravine, besides Jews, prisoners of war were also shot.
A similar inscription was on the monument near the village of Kamenka, Gorokhovsky village council, but later a memorial complex was installed there, which was reconstructed for the 65th anniversary of Belarus’s liberation. At the execution site — by two ditches — two stars are installed: a yellow six-pointed star and a red five-pointed star.
In the city center, on Socialisticheskaya Street, on July 3, 2005, the “Alley of the Righteous Among the Nations” was opened in honor of fifteen Belarusians who saved Jews.
On October 19, 2008, a memorial sign “To the Prisoners of the Bobruisk Ghetto” was installed on Bakharova Street.
At the Bobruisk Jewish cemetery on Minskaya Street, five monuments are installed. After the war, the remains of murdered Jews from the villages of Gorodok (Glusk district), Lyubonichi (Kirov district), Svisloch and Yasen (Osipovichsky district) of the Mogilev region, as well as Shchedrin (Zhlobin district) of the Gomel region, were brought here and reburied.
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