Lyakhovichi, region of Brest, Belarus
Johanna Lehr
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Located in the country’s southwest, more accurately in the north-eastern part of the region of
Brest, the territory to which Lyakhovichi belongs was Polish between 1920 and 1939. As a
result, many Poles lived in Lyakhovichi before the war, along with Belarusians and Jews.
When the Soviets took control of this territory in September 1939, they integrated it into
Soviet Belarus. In June 1941, the city fell under German military administration, but rather
quickly, during the fall season, a constables’ stations was set up and the area was then
administered by a civilian German administration, successively headed by Messrs Reinhold
Hein (October 1941), Lustig (November 1941-August 1942), Wille and Meier1.
According to the German archives2, approximately 1,000-1,500 Jews lived in Lyakhovichi
when the Germans arrived June 23, 1941. However, according to two Jewish survivors from
the town; the Jewish population reached 6,000. Some of them are likely to have fled before
the Germans arrived.
The first day after the German invasion, the Jews of Lyakhovichi were gathered in the
synagogue and stripped of all their valuables. For two months they were forced to work 16
hours a day building roads, guarded by Germans and Belarusians.
A few days after the Germans arrived in Lyakhovichi, leaders of the Jewish community
were arrested, tortured, and then executed in the forest of Kominke. Shortly afterwards, 80
Jews were killed in a pogrom.
1!
Information provided by Martin Dean in his memo on the ghetto of Lachowicze. See: Geoffrey P.
Megargee and Martin Dean, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Encyclopaedia of Camps
and Ghettos, volume II: Ghettos in German Occupied Europe, part B, Indiana University Press, April
23, 2012.
2!
Statement of September 20, 1962 by Karl G., Wehrmacht soldier, Federal Archives of Ludwigsburg,
B132-6947 ARZ 16/1967 p. 575 à 593.
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On July 8, 1941, the day of the mass shooting, the village was surrounded by German
policemen and their Baltic auxiliaries who had come especially for the execution, and also by
Belarusian policemen under Mashkovsky’s command3. At sunrise the Jews were ordered to
leave their houses and brought to the central square4. The ones who had already been led to
their labour sites were brought back to the village and beaten along the way by German and
Lithuanian policemen and their Belarusian auxiliaries. They had to sit down with their hands
up and were forbidden to move until 3 p.m. Anywho tried to run away were shot by
Lithuanians and Belarusians who had been posted by the Germans with machine guns on the
other side of the bridge over the Vedma, in the direction of Baranovichi. Approximately 150
persons were killed when they came close to this bridge.
A selection was made on the central square: about 1,500 persons were singled out as
“specialists” and separated from the rest of the group, because they could still be of some
use5. The remaining 4,500 people – men, women, children, young and old – were led to the
shooting site by the German policemen. On the way, 1,000 of them managed to slip away and
hide.
The whole village population was able to watch the Jews being gathered and marched to
the execution site.
“All the people stood behind fences and watched the Jews walking away. The Belarusians
knew virtually all the Jewish men, and said goodbye to them6.”
3!
Information provided by Martin Dean. According to him the shooting took place early in November
1941.
4!
Mikhail O., Witness YIU B257.
5!
According to Martin Dean, the figure reaches 280 persons. On the whole, 1,000 Jews avoided the
first shooting session, either because they had been selected for work by the Germans, or because they
had managed to hide.
6!
Leonid V., Witness YIU B258.
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The Jews walked to the execution site, which Wehrmacht soldier Karl G. described as
“located in an uncultivated field, on the left of the road to Baranovichi7.” The place was 500
metres from the railway station, on the top of a hill. There were carts at the end of the column.
“The Jews tore up their money and carried their children in their arms as they walked. A
Jewish woman ran away and into a farm yard. The guards caught up with her and killed her.
Her body was placed on a cart8.”
The Jews were brought to the execution site in groups of 150 persons. They walked in the
middle of the road, guarded on both sides by policemen: Germans and auxiliaries9. Iossif I.,
whose horse was grazing not far from the execution site, saw Jews lying on the road, and
policemen beating those who tried to raise themselves10. Although it was guarded, the
execution site remained visible for some of the village’s inhabitants: curious children and
young adults like Iossif and his friend who were hiding on the hill facing the execution site, in
a barn where corn had been stored. When they reached the site, the Jews had to take off their
clothes and leave them on the ground, then they went to the edge of the pit, which in fact was
a ravine used as a sand quarry. It was a large pit, including four smaller ones. The Jews had
been made to dig these pits with shovels the day before. The overall pit was enormous, as
deep as a house is high, and with a sloping bottom. Mikhail O., who was requisitioned to fill
up the pit, remembers the procedure: village people were taken from their houses and brought
near the pit on trucks. They had to wait, holding shovels, and they threw earth over the
assassinated Jews after three or four groups had been killed successively. These people were
the most direct witnesses of the slaughter, since they stood by the pit, spreading sand over the
“layers” of shot victims from the beginning until the end of the killing, at about 9 p.m. There
is no agreement on the number of requisitioned people: according to Leonid V., born 1934,
some thirty young village men were employed to fill up the pit; but according to Mikhail O.,
half the village’s population had to be summoned.
7!
Statement by Karl G., B132-6947.
8!
Leonid V., Witness YIU B258.
9!
Leonid V., Witness YIU B258.
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10
Iossif I., Witness YIU B262.
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Mikhail still remembers the presence of policemen whose black uniforms identified them.
Soldier G. remembers that “there were Latvians among the German policemen.” He said he
recognized them because of their olive green uniforms. According to Mikhail O., it was these
Latvians who did the shooting, aiming at the head; the Germans just gave the orders. “The
Germans came by car. They were officers. They said a few words [to the Latvians] and drove
away. They did not stay to watch the shooting.”
Mikhail O. watched the shooting until the end. He explained: “There were many
policemen with rifles and they shot straight into the Jews’ heads.” He added: “Mothers tried in
vain to protect their children.” Some were already dead when they fell down, but others were
only wounded. There was movement for 24 hours inside the filled pit.
In the days after the shooting, there were investigations to find the Jews who had hidden
in cellars.
« For example, when five or six dead Jews were found in a cellar, they were carried to the
pit. The day after, more were found at another place. The policemen looked for them in the
cellars. Some Jews who had been hiding in cellars died because of the lack of oxygen. They
were the last ones. 11”
The carts carrying the bodies of dead Jews to the pit were driven by village people who
had been requisitioned by the soltus and had had to report to the Kommandantur with their
carts.
After this mass shooting, a ghetto was created in the area around the synagogue for the
“specialists” (doctors, opticians, etc.) whom the Germans had set aside because they could
still be of some use, and for the hidden Jews who had managed to escape the first shooting:
lieutenant Kemp called for them to come out from their shelters and come to work. According
to soldier G.’s statement, a few hundred Jews lived in this ghetto. The survivors say there
were 2,000 persons crammed in 28 houses, with no food, struggling to live in extremely
unhealthy conditions12. The ghetto was closed by a fence and guarded by the Germans and a
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11
Leonid V., Witness YIU B258.
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12
See: http://kehilalinks.jewishgen.org/lyakhovichi/Holocaust2.htm#one.
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local police force of 20-30 men. In addition, the German police station was just outside the
ghetto. A Jewish policeman stood at the ghetto’s gate. He wore a white armband with a sixpointed star. He was the only Jew to wear a distinctive sign after the creation of the ghetto13.
He would open and shut the ghetto gate for the labour commandos who, on orders from the
German police station chief, did work both inside the ghetto and outside under supervision by
the local police.
Groups of thirty young Jewish men thus walked every morning to the station, one
kilometre away from the town, to unload railway carriages along with other non-Jewish
Belarusian civilians and Soviet war prisoners who had been assigned to the same duty.
However, the Jews were strictly forbidden to mix with them. They were supervised by local
policemen and had to wear a triangular piece of cloth sewn on their backs, which allowed
them to be set apart14.
The ones who dropped from exhaustion or weakness were shot immediately15. The Todt
organization had found workers among the ghetto population. Kurt S., a civilian engineer sent
to Stoplce during the winter of 1941-1942 by a German firm based in Munich, was at the head
of a project to build a power station in Lyakhovichi by the side of the railway line16. Jews also
worked at the smithy located outside of the ghetto. They made tools for agriculture. “[The
smithy] was about 400 metres away [from the ghetto]. There were four workshops on one
side, and another five or six on the other side of the road to Podlessie17.” One survivor was
with the 70 men who worked for seven months to build a road to Baranovichi. The ghetto
Jews also worked inside the ghetto looking after the Germans’ horses.
13
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“Only when the ghetto existed did they begin to go to work without an armband. But before the
shooting, they all had one.” This armband was in fact a piece of cloth sewn on the shoulder (Mikhail
O., Witness YIU 257).
14
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Leonid V., Witness YIU B258.
15
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Iossif I., Witness YIU B262.
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16
Kurt S., civilian engineer, member of the Todt organization, Federal Archives of Ludwigsburg,
B162-6947 ARZ 16/1967, tome III, p. 594 à 601.
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17
Mikhail O., Witness YIU B257.
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The working relationships between the Jews living in the ghetto and the non-Jews were
not interrupted in spite of the physical separation. Maria S., born 1924, recalled learning
needlework with a Jewish woman who was a prisoner in the ghetto, but had obtained a permit
to go out for business18. Similarly, after the shooting Iossif I. was able to keep on working
with Yankel V. and the latter’s brother, who made soda water and lemonade. These beverages
were put in barrels and carried by Mikhail O. to the Kommandantur and the constables’
station.
The ghetto also was not hermetically isolated from the rest of the village with regard to
food. Irina B., born 1929, told the Yahad team how she smuggled food to the Jews by hiding
meat in small sledges she would slip under a narrow passage under the barbed wire fence19.
Vladimir S., born 1930, would throw food over the fences20. As for Mikhail O., he would hide
provisions supplied directly by his father and offer them to Yankel and his brother. The Jews
risked being whipped if they were caught bartering their clothes for food.
The ghetto went on for seven months. According to Kurt S., a member of the Todt
organization during that period, there were two or perhaps three series of killings, before the
final round of executions killed the last of the Jews. “After that last annihilation, no more
Jewish labour was available. 21”
The shooting took place on a Friday during the summer of 1942. According to Mikhail O.,
this was because one night, some Jews slipped out of the ghetto trying to join the partisans in
the neighbourhood. Some Jews, but not all, were caught and immediately shot. This was why
18
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Maria S., Witness YIU B255.
19
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Irina B., Witness YIU B256.
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20
Vladimir S., Witness YIU B263.
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21
Kurt S., Federal Archives of Ludwigsburg, B162-6947 ARZ 16/1967.
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the following morning the Germans and local policemen surrounded the ghetto in order to
“annihilate” all those in it22.
According to some ghetto survivors, however, they decided to take action because they
saw in the morning that they were surrounded. The point is that a resistance spirit had been
developing. In the spring, forty Jews of the ghetto had prepared to escape but had given up at
the last moment under pressure from the Judenrat which had been created by the Germans
during the summer of 1941 and invoked the risk of reprisals. As they were determined not to
allow the Germans into the ghetto, they blocked the gates and fighting began. All around the
ghetto there were Jews with stars on their chests and backs. Some of them are said to have
survived the war23. Max E., who was commander of the Baranovichi constables, was in
Lyakhovichi that day. He remembers the trucks outside the constables’ station, the crowd in
the town’s streets early in the afternoon, then a group of Jews walking out of the ghetto
singing and crying24. According to him, the Lyakhovichi constables and their Latvian or
Lithuanian auxiliaries’ mission was merely to control and transfer Jews. The chief constable,
Wille, told him that a special shooting commando was expected from Minsk: the ghetto was
to be emptied and all the Jews shot.
Karl G., a Wehrmacht soldier, reported seeing from the outside the ghetto houses burning
in the afternoon. “German and local policemen were running everywhere in the ghetto’s
streets and chasing the Jews from their homes. One could see that the Jews resisted and
wanted to go back to their homes. I also saw that the policemen – local ones as well as
Germans – shot at the Jews who rebelled. Women and children screamed horrifyingly. That is
22
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“We were harvesting rye and carrying it to the barn. Then we would thresh the sheaves. There was a
road not far, and a field further on. No one lived there. So one night… I could see it with my own
eyes. The field was made of stripes leading to houses – mine, others, etc. Some Jews came out of the
ghetto and into the field, creeping along in order to get out of the town. It must be assumed they meant
to join the partisans. The Germans found them and shot them. I don’t know who shot them or where.
The Jews suspected something, because they set the ghetto on fire.”
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23
Iossif I., Witness YIU B262.
24
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Statement by Max E., Baranovichi constables’ commander, Federal Archives of Ludwigsburg,
B162-6948 ARZ 16/1967, tome IV, p. 2607 à 2627.
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hard to describe. 25” Iossif I. as a volunteer fireman of the town, was requisitioned to fight the
fires in the ghetto. He remembers discovering a family of Jews in a false ceiling where they
had been hiding.
After several hours of fighting, the ghetto was burning down and most of the inhabitants
had died in the flames or been killed by the SS. Only eleven Jewish men had managed to
escape. Eight of them joined the “Schchors,” a 1,000-strong unit of Soviet partisans including
a group of 130 Jews26. 300 Jews has survived the attack on the Lyakhovichi ghetto.
A Judenrat member had to undress, pick up the corpses lying in the ghetto streets, and
carry them on carts to the pit; an old woman who had been hiding in a bunker also had to
climb naked onto a cart. She was buried alive in the pit.
The last 300 Jews, who had found shelter in three houses, faced another German attack
ten days after the first. They decided to set the buildings on fire when they could no longer
resist the 1,000 Germans and Lithuanians attacking them. Three Jews managed to run away
into the forest and join the partisans’ unit, the “Shchors.” All the others died.
The annihilation operations of the ghettos located in the Gebietskommissariat of
Baranovivhi during the summer of 1942 were organized by the Sicherheit Dienst (SD) bureau
of Baranovichi, whose commander then was the SS Amhelung, with the Lithuanian
Gorniewicz as his second.
A memorial has been built on the location of the former sand quarry that was used as the
only one pit for the mass shooting. As she recalled three distinct shootings in 1942, Maria S.
said that for one of them the 1941 pit was reopened to add the victims from one of the
shootings27. Leonid V. said there were two more pits: the one where the nursery is now
located (this is where the Jews who had tried to flee after the first mass shooting were buried);
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25
26
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Statement by Karl G., Federal Archives of Ludwigsburg, B162-6947 ARZ 16/1967.
See Geoffrey P. Megargee et Martin Dean, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum,
Encyclopaedia of Camps and Ghettos, volume II: Ghettos in German Occupied Europe, part B,
Indiana University Press, April 23, 2012.
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27
Maria S., Witness YIU B255.
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the other, smaller one at the former sand quarry (where the large pit was), where the corpses
of the dead Jews were buried28.
A second memorial was built, but just outside the nursery and therefore is not likely to
mark the place of the pit29. As for Mikhail O, he points to a third execution site: a bunker in
the forest, with no memorial to mark it.
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28
Leonid V., Witness YIU B258.
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29
Leonid V., Witness YIU B258.
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