[Page 593]

The Jews lived quiet, unassuming lives in Vitebsk. Religious life was conspicuous in the city. Even Jews who were not religious observed Shabbos and Holidays. All of the stores and offices were closed, and there were no non-Jewish businesses by us. Thus did our settlement live with its customs and traditions until the Bolshevik overthrow,

The First World War had already brought great unrest to our lives. The initial great defeats at the front brought with them persecutions of Jews. The military regime wanted to account for its defeats, so they devised terrible rumors about Jews being the real enemy. In 1915, people began to drive Jews out of areas near the front. Many refugees from Lithuania and Courland came to Vitebsk. We lived then near two shuls where the refugees were settled. They found an open door by us and used to come to ask advice and to pour out their hearts.

My father, a”h, threw himself into community efforts to aid the refugees. And a great deal of help was needed. First the refugees had to be taken from the shuls and beis-medreshes and situated in more permanent dwellings. With the influx of refugees, that was no easy thing. People also had to take care of material needs. In our courtyard, my father distributed food to the refugees, and he also helped them monetarily that he got from the city, and he also provided more than a little from his own pocket. Our family knew nothing about that. But people we knew told us that he gave too much, beyond his means. But he was also involved in helping the unfortunate that he could think of nothing else.

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It was a bit easier in July of 1920 when the peace agreement was made with the Lithuanian Republic. The agreement made the point that the Soviet government was responsible for releasing the refugees and conducting them to the Lithuanian border. Many of the refugees took advantage of this and returned to their cities and shtetls in Lithuania from which they had been expelled. My father, a”h, understood that under the Bolshevik realm, Russia was no place for Jews, especially for religious Jews, and he knew to return to Lithuania, from which he had come (He was born in Vilkomir, in the district of Kovno.), although my great-grandfather, R' Shloymeo-Zalman Mushkatin, a poultry slaughterer, pleaded with him to remain in Vitebsk and be his replacement. My father could not resist, and so he gave in.

After the death of my great-grandfather, my father became a poultry slaughterer for a short time. Consequently he had to put up with a lot from the Bolsheviks, especially because they looked down on his pedigree—it was not much to come from generations of slaughterers! My great-grandfather and my father, as well his sons, were all slaughterers. He got no credit for this from the Bolsheviks.

In Vitebsk at that time there were more than 80 shuls and beis-medreshes. There were also, you must understand, yeshivas, cheders, and Talmud Torahs. The shuls all had not fewer than two daily minyans, and even at 3 or 4. On one of our main streets, on Vokzalner Street, there was a shul—Kleyn Pisarevski's Shul—whose door was open all day. People said the morning service from early in the morning until noon. From then until mid-afternoon they said the afternoon service. And after that they did the evening service.

Along with the refugees came rabbis, slaughterers, heads of yeshivas. Among them were great scholars. Many of them were frequent visitors to our home. Some of them took rabbinical positions. Others took positions as slaughterers. It is important to note that between these holy people—the new arrivals and the important residents—there were no quarrels. Rather, people tried as hard as they could to help. After the war, the re-evacuation began and many of them returned to their homes. Several, however, remained in Vitebsk.

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Truly, they thought to remain for a while and then they hoped to return home. But later, with the end of the re-evacuation, they were not allowed to leave Russia and they had to remain permanently with us in Vitebsk.

At that time in Vitebsk there were three high rabbis: Rabbi Shemaryahu Medalia on the small side, Rabbi Mordechai-Ber Gurewitsch on the Zarutscheyer side, and Rabbi Yehoshua Niemoitin in Zaharia. On religious life, as well as on community matters, Rabbi Shemaryahu Medalia had a great influence. His younger son, Hillel, was my friend starting in childhood. I was often at their home. I knew the Medalia family very well.

Rabbi Medalia was born in Kretingen, Lithuania. He held the rabbinical chair in Tula and then in Krolewetz, Ukraine. From there he came to Vitebsk. Rabbi Medalia was a great scholar and magnificent preacher and was very musical. He belonged among the intimates of the Lubatshiver Rebbe. Even Christians trusted in him and came to him when there were financial disputes. He was by habit a loving man, always with a smile on his face. I never remember Rabbi Medalia being angry or cross with anyone. But the good and affable Rabbi Medalia could be stern when he had to deal with a matter that had a bearing on Yiddishkeit.

I remember one case when he was outspoken. Let me tell you. This happened in the time of the Bolsheviks. On one Shabbos, the famous chazan Pintshik came to Vitebsk. People were only allowed into the shul with tickets. The public, hungering to hear a cantor, particularly Pintshik, tore into the shul. Around the shul there were militiamen who did not allow entry to those without tickets. When, early in the morning, Rabbi Medalia came to the shul, they did not allow even him to enter without a ticket…When he saw militiamen by the shul and the large crowd who were not allowed into the sacred place, he was so angry that he became as pale as the wall. Meanwhile, a militiaman recognized him and he was allowed entry. The shul was packed. When people saw Rabbi Medalia, people crowded together to let him through. When he got to the reader's stand, he looked toward the bimah, where Pintshik was already standing, and he called out:

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“The chazan must come down from the bimah! This is a desecration of Shabbos!”

The crowd was astonished. Since Rabbi Medalia had not called on the chazan to start the prayers, he would not go to the reader's stand. The shul officials and the leading citizens who were there told him to dismiss the militiamen and to admit all the Jews who were standing outside. Only then could Pintshik began the prayers. Pintshik said the prayers with such sweetness that that Shabbos was remembered in Vitebsk for a long, long time.

He had a large family—six sons and five daughters. All of his children survived. His eldest son, R' Aharon-Shlomo, was a remarkable scholar. His second son, R' Moyshe, was also a great scholar. He learned to be a slaughterer from my father, a”h. And I learned to read Torah from him. At twenty-something years old he received rabbinical ordination and became the rabbi of Tula. After that, he took rabbinical positions in Rostov-on-Don. The NKVD arrested him there and sent him to a camp from which he did not emerge alive. His youngest son, Hillel, is now a rabbi in England.

Inasmuch as Rabbi Medalia was so popular and influential in the city, it is no wonder that the G.P.O. ranks focused on him and targeted him, and the local press went after him. Finally he had to leave Vitebsk, and he settled in Moscow. But he did not emerge alive from the hands of the Bolsheviks.

On the smaller side, there suddenly appeared a Rabbi Goldberg, who was called in Vitebsk “The Russian Rabbi.” Earlier he had been the rabbi in a small shtetl near Vitebsk. With his arrival in the city, things turned dark. First he got into a quarrel with Rabbi Medalia. That anyone would have a quarrel with Rabbi Medalia was already a new thing. But people could ask no questions of the Russian Rabbi. It remained only to go to the Lubavitsher Rebbe, z”l, to adjudicate. He ruled that Goldberg must not encroach on Medalia. But the Rebbe's ruling was of little help.

In 1926, a “Red Shochet” came to Vitebsk, Shmuel Sverdlov. Only then did the real battle begin in the city. Sverdlov and Goldberg united, and they decided, together with the G.P.O. Even earlier people had recognized

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that the “Russian Rabbi” was wed to the G.P.O. You have to understand that people would not accept meat that Sverdlov had slaughtered. This caused further quarrels in the city. Both of these people who were close to the G.P.O.—Rabbi Goldberg and the shochet Sverdlov—as one can imagine, had the upper hand. The G.P.O. involved itself in the disagreement and expelled all of the shochets on the smaller side. The whole slaughtering business went to Sverdlov. Every day the battles in the city became more bitter. The upshot was that all shochets were prohibited in the city, and not only on the smaller side, from doing any slaughtering.

The economic situation was a little better in Russia in 1921 under the NEP (the New Economic Policy). This so-called “good time” lasted several years—until 1928, when the Bolsheviks returned to their stringent regime, which was much worse than the time of military communism. In those good years, people tried to support our religious institutions—the yeshivas, cheders, Talmud-Torahs, which in the first years of the Bolshevik government had been weakened through persecutions.

There were no large yeshivas in Vitebsk at that time. Rabbi Rabinovitch had a small yeshiva in Zahoria. But when he went to America in 1925, the yeshiva shut down. Cheders—both the state, which the community supported, and the private—as well as the Talmud-Torahs, existed in all three divisions of the city. Generally about 50 students learned in a cheder. But there were new persecutions of the cheders, and from year to year there were fewer students in each. Finally, all of the city cheders had to close. Only private cheders remained. But the teachers remained in jeopardy.

In the summer of 5687 (1927), the Lubavitch rebbe, z”l, founded a yeshiva in Vitebsk and brought the young men from the Lubavitch yeshiva in Polotzk, because that yeshiva had come under attack. Young men from Vitebsk also attended the yeshiva. At first the yeshiva had 40-50 students, and later it grew to 150. The yeshiva had several levels: from beginning Gemara up to levels of Gemara with commentators. It was not so easy to maintain a yeshiva with

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so many students. It was especially difficult in Bolshevik times. As was the custom, people tried to care for the yeshiva students with “days” [i.e., days on which the students would take meals at individuals' homes], but there were not enough “days” for all of the students. People therefore had to be strong and find money for these students. Otherwise the yeshiva could not survive. The Bolsheviks cast their eye on the yeshiva. It became dangerous to hold the yeshiva in a single shul, so the boys were divided up according to classes, with each class in a separate shul.

One fine day in the winter of 1928, between mincha and ma'ariv, all of the shuls where the boys studied were attacked. In one shul they found the head of the yeshiva, R' Avraham Breinin, a”h, teaching a lesson, and they arrested him. On Zarutshaya, the boys studied in the Women's Shul. When people heard that “guests” had arrived from the G.P.O., the head of the yeshiva slipped out unrecognized. When the G.P.O. came into the Women's Shul, they found only the students. The students were asked where the head of the yeshiva was and the names and addresses where they had their “days.” The students were prepared with their responses: they were studying without a yeshiva head, and they ate in their own homes. They gave names and addresses, you understand, were fictitious. This time the boys were not tormented, although it was not hard to tell that they were not telling the truth. From then on, the head of the yeshiva was afraid to come and deliver his lessons. He would come only for one hour per week, give the boys a little money for support, and tell them what to study. Such learning could have little effect. Then they had another idea—to begin the lessons at 6 in the morning. A number of the students lived far away and so had to leave their homes at 5 so that they could be on time for their lessons. Going through the city on the major roads was dangerous. The militia could catch them and take them for questioning about where they were going so early. So they had to go by back roads. They had to take a lot of routes, but there was no alternative. However, the boys did this for the entire winter, and that winter was very severe.

After Pesach, they had to leave the shul on the Zarutshayer Side and

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return to the Baron Shul. On the small side, they still studied in two shuls.

In the winter of 1929, the Bolsheviks dispersed the Lubavitch yeshiva in Nevel and arrested the heads of the yeshiva and its directors. The yeshiva students went from Nevel to Vitebsk. The number of yeshiva students grew, but the dangers became greater and greater. Of necessity, people had to be more attentive to the evil eyes of the G.P.O. The students were divided up into smaller classes and studied in more shuls. People even had to be careful with the custodians of the shuls lest someone blurt out something. And the Bosheviks sniffed and snooped everywhere. Between mincha and ma'ariv, when people came to pray in shul, the students would gather in the Women's Shul and wait there until people had left the shul. Then they would return to their studies. Only the trustees and the sexton knew this “secret.”

In the same year, 1929, the persecutions of our religious institutions grew stronger. In Vitebsk, they took three shuls—first the Kor Shul on Zarutshaya, then the large Lubavitch Shul on Ilinsker Street, and the Pisarevskis Shul on Vokzalner Street. The Bolsheviks were very sneaky—silent, without creating a stir. All large, open buildings belonged to the state power, you see, including the shul buildings. The pretext was that the shul buildings were abandoned and damaged, and so they had to be remodeled, because it was dangerous for people to go there to pray. For this remodeling, the shuls needed a treasure like Korach's, and where would they get such funds? Of necessity, the trustees had to forego remodeling the shuls. In truth, people could understand that even if they wanted to somehow remodel the shuls, they would have been seized. The Bolsheviks could always think up pretexts. The fate of the shuls was sealed. By stages, with one excuse or another, all of the city's shuls were taken. However, the Bolshevik government showed its “broad-heartedness” and “devotion” to religious Jews by leaving one old, broken down little shul for prayers. People had to pray in private houses, and even this was not without its dangers.

Even before the city's shuls were seized, people could not

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study in them. The G.P.O. kept an eye on the shuls and on the students, where they went and what they did. My father, a”h, gave a room in our apartment for the yeshiva students. They began their lessons early in the morning—at 5 a.m. But this learning also did not last long. The Bolsheviks quickly made an end of the last remnants of the yeshiva. A couple of weeks before Pesach in 1930, the head of the yeshiva and the directors were arrested. And my father, a”h, was also arrested. I was also arrested with my father. I was released the next day,, but the others were in G.P.O. custody for three weeks. Then they were all transferred to prison. They were confined to a room with criminals, who actually treated these people well, even with respect. The “leader” in this cell was actually a Jew, though he was not, you understand, a great Tzadik, as he appeared to the frightened, exhausted G.P.O. prisoners, Jews with long beards and sidecurls, dressed in long kaftans. He knew that the “fellowship” in “his” cell would “play” with these religious Jews. He took them under his protection. First he made room for them on a cot, which was already a great kindness. Otherwise they would have had to lie on the floor under the cots. He also told his fellows not to disturb them or their possessions. And so it was.

The prison committee quickly learned that they had a “good life” in this cell, so they were transferred to another cell. In this new cell, they had to lie under the cots. My father, a”h, became ill. His feet were so swollen that he could not bend his knees. When he had to bend down to get under the cot, he was in such pain that he could not stand it, and more than once he begged for death.

We were able to smuggle into the prison taleisim and tefillin for our leaders, and even a shofar for the Days of Awe. At one point, people learned that there would be an inspection of the religious Jews. They hid the taleisim and tefillin with a Christian detainee. The inspection went by without incident. They wanted to reward the detainee, but he refused to take any gifts for saving those arrested from danger…

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Our people were in the prison for three months. On the first day of Rosh Hashanah we got the good news that on that day the representatives of the yeshiva would be released. I went to the prison right away. There I met a huge crowd of Jews—both local and from afar. Even now when they said they would free them, the Bolsheviks could not proceed without playing a trick. Our yeshiva people had to wait to sign a paper so that they could get back all of their things. Remember—they were forbidden to write on Rosh Hashanah. They were threatened that if they did not sign the papers, they would remain in jail for who knows how long. However, they held out and did not sign the papers. At the end of the holiday, they were all released.

Now that the yeshiva was closed and private study was not possible, twelve young men fled to Kutais in Gruzia [Georgia]. The Bolsheviks had not yet rampaged there. Ink Kutais, the young men met with other difficulties. Quite simply, they did not know how to converse with the local Jews—the young men did not understand their language, and the local Jews did not speak Yiddish. They settled on Hebrew. They knew how to say “Shema Yisroel,” but they said it in such a way that it was impossible to understand. The twelve young men could not be helped. But luckily, a little earlier a group of Lubavitch Chasidim, including Rabbi Chaim Lieberman, had come to Kutais. Thanks to them, the young men could stay there and resume their studies of Torah.

In the winter of 1931, militiamen came to our home to ask about my father, a”h. People knew that if they came to ask questions, that meant arrest. Since the militiamen did not know him, my father told them that he was not at home and had gone to work. My father, a”h, quickly left, you understand. The militiamen came looking for him several times, but they did not find him. He was arrested in 1938. A provocateur pointed him out. He was a former shochet from a small town. He had committed some infraction and was to be shot. Naturally, he could save himself from death if he became an agent of the NKVD. So he did. He came to Vitebsk and

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began to seek out victims among the religious Jews. One of his victims was my father, a”h. The “good news” about my father's arrest was conveyed to me by the same provocateur in Moscow, where he met me in a shul while I was praying. It appears that Vitebsk was too small for him and he was looking for victims in Moscow.

For the last years before the world war, I could not remain in Vitebsk. Only once, in 1938, when my mother died, did I return home. Then I went to Moscow. When I saw that provocateur in shul, I understood that he was after me. With great effort, however, I managed to extricate myself from his hands.

In this way, in the thirties, this chapter of Jewish religious institutions ended in Vitebsk…

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When the editors of “Vitebsk Amol” invited me to write this work and we discussed the matter, a fact arose that had no similarity in any of the already published Yizkor Books and in similar publications. The number of such books today is in the hundreds. But I don't know a single one of them that does not have a section about the destruction and annihilation of the former kehillah in the dark time of the Nazis. There are Yizkor Books where most of the contents concern materials about the Holocaust. These materials are based mostly on eyewitnesses and memoirs of the surviving remnants, as well as on other materials, such as official documents. There are also cities where there were hidden manuscripts or even whole archives (for example, Lodz, Warsaw, Bialystok, Vilna, and so on), folk songs and camp songs, folklore, and so on.

Wholly different is the situation of Vitebsk. However much the editors tried to get eyewitness testimony from Vitebsk Jews who survived the catastrophe, they did not receive any. It appears that even in the Gehenna of Nazi mass murder, there were also degrees. In this regard, Vitebsk was an exception–we could find not a single person who transmit to the world the pain and the agony of the local Jews.

But the editors were solidly determined to find a way to raise the curtain of the Vitebsk tragedy and set up a monument for our murdered martyrs. We therefore decided to find materials, whatever the cost. The first step was to seek materials in newspapers, Yiddish and Hebrew, as well as in other languages, that were distributed around the world.

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In these newspapers, hundreds of articles and memoirs were published about destroyed cities and towns. So, for example, about Warsaw there are now more than 1,600 bibliographical references in the YIVO-Yad Vashem files to articles and books that deal with the fate of Warsaw's Jews in the time of the Nazis. About Vilna, Bialystok, Lodz, and other cities there are hundreds of such bibliographical references for each city. But about the destruction of Vitebsk, within a certain time, we found only a single article with only a little information about what happened in the city in those dark Nazi years. This was an article entitled “Remember!” by the well-known writer Duvid Bergelson, published in the Moscow “Eynikeit” [Unity] on September 5, 1942. This article was written at the height of the war and of the Nazi Holocaust, and the information is neither detailed nor exhaustive. Probably the information came from refugees who appear to have escaped from Vitebsk or its neighborhood either after the arrival of the Germans or who had been hiding for some time in the woods. So their information was second-hand. But this was the only report that was published about Vitebsk, and it later appeared in various Yiddish newspapers and other publications.^[1]

Only ten years later a second man was found who told about the Holocaust in Vitebsk. In this case, he was an eyewitness who saw the misfortune with his own eyes. But he was not a Jew. He was a Russian socialist of Lithuanian extraction who published his memoir about the great misfortune in the Russian periodical “Socialist Messenger.”^[2] Because he is the only and most important witness who reported on the tragedy in Vitebsk, it is appropriate to say some words about his life.

Ivan Ivanov, the author's article, was actually named Edward Martinovitsch Duna. Ivanov was his pen name. As a young man, he took part in the October Revolution, but he soon was disappointed and became a member of the underground Anti-communist Democratic Center. The Bolsheviks soon arrested him and sent him to the infamous camp Vorkuta. Shortly before the war he was freed, and he was

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permitted to settle in Vitebsk, where he was united with his wife and child. There he worked in the state hospital as a bacteriologist. When the Germans took Vitebsk, they took the hospital and its personnel for the German military. Ivanov remained living in the hospital, but his child and his wife, who was Jewish, were killed in the ghetto. When the Germans retreated from Russia, Ivanov undertook to flee and made his way to France, where he joined a French partisan unit to fight against the Nazis. After the liberation of France, he published in “Socialist Messenger” his article “The Vitebsk Ghetto.” This is the only work that we have from a living witness of the catastrophe.

Ivanov's article is valuable not only because it is, as is known to us, the only report, but also for its literary virtues. It was written by a person who was an accomplished writer and journalist and had a talent for observing and writing. He was also a person who had deep feelings for the fate of the Jews. Nevertheless, Ivanov never allowed himself to be carried away by his subjective feelings and he described the events in an objective tone.

But Ivanov's work cannot fully satisfy us because he, as a non-Jew, could not have an in-depth view of the internal life of the ghetto. But unfortunately there are no other sources to complement this one. Another flaw in Ivanov's work is that he give no precise dates and no statistical information, for example, about the number of victims in the different aktions. He gives only approximate estimates that people could hear in the streets or in the hospital where he worked.

But when it comes to the total horror of the Vitebsk Jewish catastrophe, that is, the German extermination aktions, the number of victims, the procedures of the aktions, and so on, the Germans themselves took care that no materials were lacking. The special German extermination brigades, the so-called Einsatzgruppen, provided detailed reports to the German high command in Berlin. There were duplicate reports: the daily “activity reports” and the monthly summaries, which were called Ereignismeldungen. These reports would be sent every day

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in encoded telegrams from Russia direct to the high command of the Gestapo in Berlin. There they were edited in the “Reichssicherheit Office” (the SS High Command). The editor was SS Colonel Kurt Lindoff, with his assistant, Colonel Dr. Knobloch, an inspector from “Kripo” (the criminal police).^[3] The reports were put into the German archives, which were confiscated after the war by the Allied military. Some of these reports, or summaries of them, were used as evidence against the Nazi war criminals in the Nuremberg Trials.^[4] But only a small number of these reports later appeared in the 42 volume publication about the International Nuremberg Trials. Some were mimeographed and can be found today in various archives in the United States, in Israel, and in Europe. But most of the reports of the Einsatzgruppen were not mimeographed. The material concerning Vitebsk that we use here was never published and generally, as far as we know, was never used for other purposes, as, for example, in the trials of the war criminals. This material can be found in the archives of the Jewish World Congress in New York. From this material that we have about all the crimes and offenses, we will try to reconstruct as much as possible, the Vitebsk Jewish tragedy in its outlines. Understand that this description will not be exhaustive. Before we get to this description, we must analyze the character, the composition, and the activities of the so-called Einsatzgruppen.

In the first phase of the Second World War, the Germans conducted various horrible pogroms against Jews, especially in Poland. They also passed many anti-Jewish laws both in Poland and in other occupied countries. But a systematic extermination action of the entire Jewish population began, in fact, in the second phase of the World War, that is, after the beginning of the German-Soviet War. Preparations for the attack on Russia began in Germany already in November-December, 1940, when the

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German invasion plan was worked out, with the name Operation Barbarossa. Soon after a plan matured among the Nazis for an audacious action against Jews and against certain other elements in the Russian domain that they hoped soon to occupy. Hitler already had a completed project for how to liquidate in these areas all Soviet political commissars, “asocial” elements, professional revolutionaries, officials of the Comintern, and “inferior elements”–Romani and Jews. It also seems that Hitler gave these instructions to the negotiators between the SS and the German Military High Command. These negotiations ended with an agreement between the two sides on 26 March 1941. On the basis of this agreement, the Einsatzgruppen were created with the professional obligation to carry out the mass murder of the abovementioned “undesirable elements.”^[5]

Soon thereafter began the work of choosing the proper people for brigades and teaching them their murderous jobs. The choosing process was quite strict. For the officers of the Einsatzgruppen, they took men who had a “good reputation” as fanatical National Socialists. These officers were recruited from the “cream of the crop” of the “Kripo,” the Gestapo, the Sonderdienst [German Special Services], and the SS. Among them were men with advanced academic education. Among them were, for example, a former professor of political science in the universities of Konigsberg and Berlin, several jurists, and architect, learned specialists in the German language, a well-known opera singer, and even a former Lutheran minister. In addition, they recruited many high officials from the Reichssicherheit Office, from the Nationalist Socialist Party, and higher officers from the Wehrmacht and the SS. Some of these people were arrested after the war and put on trial for war crimes. At their trials, almost none of these people showed any remorse and defended themselves on the grounds that they were serving patriotic National Socialist “ideals” and were following orders that came from above. Such was the leadership of the Einsatzgruppen. The ordinary soldiers of the Einsatzgruppen were riff-raff from the SS divisions, often

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criminal elements, from the police, and so on. Later on there were also local reinforcements, that is, volunteers who were recruited from among the local population in Lithuania, Latvia, Ukraine, and White Russia. They taught the so-called “Relief-Police.”

The original cadres of the Einsatzgruppen began to learn their criminal work in the spring of 1941 in the barracks of the police academy in the town of Pretzsch, which is near Leipzig in Saxony and in the nearby villages–Deuben and Shmiedeberg. In this manner were prepared four Einsatzgruppen that were denoted with four letters of the alphabet: A, B, C, D. Each of them had between 600 and 900 men. The whole area of Eastern Europe was divided in four sections, and each of the Einsatzgruppen was assigned its own area. Group A operated in the area of the Baltic countries and from southern Russia to Leningrad. Group B received the area of White Russia, with small parts of Lithuania and Western Russia. Groups C and D operated in Ukraine and in South Russia.

Over all, the Einsatzgruppen numbered no more than about 3,000 men. The Nazis well understood that 3,000 men, even well-trained murderers, could not liquidate millions of people. The Einsatzgruppen were only a kind of specialized staff or cadres of specialists who conducted mass murders. They were reinforced by local elements. As we have already mentioned in the matter of Lithuanian, Latvian, and Ukrainian squads, they had the right, when necessary, to get reinforcements either from the police or from the military (the Wehrmacht). Thus, the work of extermination was not carried out only by the Einsatzgruppen, but a heavy burden of guilt should be borne by those who assisted them.^[6]

We will now concern ourselves with the activities of Group B, which operated in White Russia.

Each Group was tied to a particular military unit. Group B was associated with the German Central Army, which had taken White Russia and was supposed

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to take Moscow. The commander of this army was the Field Marshal General von Bock, who was relieved of his command in December of 1941. His successor were these generals: Fieldmarshal Wilhelm List and Gunther von Kluge.^[7] The assignment of the Einsatzgruppen was to cleanse the occupied areas of “undesirable elements.” The commander of Group B was Arthur Nebe. Nebe was a well-known person in Nazi circles. He worked in the Nazi secret police starting in 1933. After Hitler came to power, he advanced until in September of 1939 he became the head of the German Criminal Police (Kripo). His being taken from such an important position in Berlin and made the commander of Group B shows that this group was considered especially important. It was thought that soon–very soon–they would take Moscow and that to cleanse a city like Moscow of “undesirable elements” required putting command into the hands of such an expert. But already in November of 1941, hopes of taking Moscow were fading, and therefore Nebe was sent back to Berlin. Nominated to take his place was SS General Erich Naumann, who held the post until 1943. It is important to note, however, that the tragedy of Vitebsk's Jews happened while Nebe was the commander of the Group. Over all, Nebe was a very dark figure. On the one hand, he was an unmerciful Nazi executioner. On the other hand, he had ties with the German underground organization and he played a role in the conspiracy to kill Hitler. After the unsuccessful to kill Hitler on July 20, 1944, he suddenly disappeared and, according to his friends, the Gestapo arrested him in February of 1945. Soon after that, he was hanged.^[8] His successor, Erich Naumann was arrested after the war and sentenced to death in Nuremberg in April, 1948. The death sentence was carried out in Landsberg in June, 1951.^[9]

Group B consisted of 700 men. These were the original German cadres of the Einsatzgruppen. Soon after their arrival in the occupied territory, the group was reinforced by a battalion of Russian volunteers, a group of Ukrainian volunteers, and

[Page 610]

a division of the SS. The headquarters of Group B were in Smolensk. But the Group itself was divided into several parts that had their local headquarters and their local areas where they carried out their murderous work.

According to the original plan, Vitebsk was assigned to Einsatzkomando 8, which was led by a certain Bradfisch with headquarters in Mohilov. But in fact the boundaries between the activities of the various units were not strongly enforced. In the area that belonged to Einsatzkommando 8, for example, two other sections often were prominent and conducted massacres–one was Einsatzkommando 7, led by Colonel Eugen Steimle, an educated historian and philologist. But most of the “work” in the area of Vitebsk was carried out by Einsatzkommando 9, led by a certain Schafer. Most of the reports on activities that we have from Vitebsk come from Einsatzkommando 9. To illustrate even more the total chaos of the individual killing brigades whose work often overlapped we will offer several examples: in October, 1941, the commander of Group A, Dr. Franz Stahleker officially informed Berlin that he was given White Russia and that his group had already carried out activities in White Russian territory. He offered as an example the horrible aktion in Borisov where, over two days, the whole Jewish population of over 7,000 people were killed in a particularly sadistic manner. Aside from Group A, the sadly famous Dirlewanger Brigade also operated. Dr. Oscar Dirlewanger was a confirmed criminal, an incurable alcoholic, and a sex maniac. This person led an SS Brigade, for which had been recruited mostly pardoned German criminals. This brigade was sent to the Eastern Front with the special duty of combatting “undesirable elements” and partisans, and it the most horrible record for bestiality in its efforts–a record that had no equal even in the awful era of the Nazis.^[10]

The area in which Group B operated

[Page 611]

Had a large Jewish population. According to German estimates, which were greatly exaggerated, a million Jews lived in this area before the invasion. But in fact the number was much smaller, certainly not more than 850,000.^[11] A portion of the Jewish population had fled at the beginning of the war. Young men had been mobilized into the Soviet army, and Jews who had been involved in industrial work and in agriculture had been evacuated by the Soviets. But the remainder of the Jews who had fled on their own often could not get far because of transport difficulties. Many remained stuck in the woods and the swamps and tried to hide there. Some of them, having no alternative, returned to their cities and towns, where they awaited inevitable death at the hands of the Nazis.

It is impossible to establish how many Jews escaped to central Russia, how many to the woods, and how many were killed. Duvid Bergelson asserted that fully eighty percent of the White Russian Jews succeeded in escaping from the Nazis into Russia.^[12] All of the optimistic accounts are, unfortunately, wildly inaccurate. No certain information about the murdered or the surviving Jews in the time of the German occupation was ever published in Soviet Russia.

After the signing of the pact with Germany in August, 1939, no one dared say a bad word about the Nazis. Consequently, no one dared tell the truth about the persecutions of Jews, but even later, during the war, when Hitler's armies had already taken Ukraine and White Russia, where the majority of the Jews lived, for over a year nothing appeared in the Soviet press–neither in the Yiddish nor in the general press–about the whole truth regarding the extermination of Jews in the conquered areas.

The Soviet press began to write about the Jews more freely when the Soviet government had evacuated “the overwhelming majority” of Jews from the conquered cities. Duvid Bergelson even wrote (in the “Eynikeit” of 5 December, 1942), that “as a faithful, tender mother during a fire carries her suckling child in hands raised above the flames, so faithful and tender are the millions of streaming people

[Page 612]

borne from the veritable fire of the Fascist attack and with great care all sent deeper and deeper into the country. The evacuation has rescued the greatest majority of Ukrainian, White Russian, and Lithuanian Jews from total destruction. According to information from various large centers that have been seized by the Fascists–among them Vitebsk, Riga, and others–we know that when the Fascist thieves arrive, as they themselves have said, only a small number of Jews remain. This means that the Soviet government has evacuated in time the overwhelming majority of Jews from cities such as Vitebsk and Riga.”

But several weeks earlier in the same Moscow “Eynikeit” (25 October 1942), Kuzma Charny told another story, that “at the present time, people have already counted 60,000 murdered Jews in Minsk. The ghetto is empty…In human life, every phenomenon has a name, but there is no word in any human language to name what the German bands have done to the Jewish population in White Russia. What happened in Minsk has been repeated in all White Russian cities. The Germans have eliminated nearly all of the Jews in White Russia.”

From this excerpt it is clear that Bergelson's 80 percent rescued Jews is a wild exaggeration.

We now have the German activity reports that convey with characteristic German accuracy the number of murdered Jews. Here are the numbers: during the first five months, Group B killed 45,476 Jews. We lack further figures on the number of victims who were killed under the command of Nebe's successor, Erich Naumann; but we have a report from Dirlevenger that states that in the four months from August until November of 1942 he had liquidated 363,211 Jews.

In 1942, the merciless killer, SS Colonel Dr. Eduard Strauch, was sent from Latvia, from Group A, to White Russia. In six months he killed, according to his own report, 33,970 “Jews and communists.”^[13]

As we can see, the total of these incomplete statistics is already greater than 440,000 Jewish victims. The true number is much greater. It is known that not all reports have been found. A number are missing still. Masses of Jews died in the

[Page 613]

ghettoes from persecutions and other causes. And a certain number were taken to German labor and concentration camps, where they were later killed.

Vitebsk was a middle-sized city in Soviet White Russia and had about 170,000-200,000 inhabitants on the eve of the German invasion.^[14] The city had a number of factories, large and small, several hospitals and clinics. According to the census of 1926, there were 43,180 Jews. Over the next fifteen years that number certainly increased, but we have no certain statistical information. There are only estimates.

According to the estimate of Dr. Sh. Schwarz, the scholar of Soviet-Russian Judaism, Vitebsk had about 45,000 to 52,000 Jews residents in 1939.^[15] According to the estimate of the Einsatzgruppen, Vitebsk must have had, on the eve of the German invasion, about 50,000 to 60,000 Jews. It is possible that the German estimate is closer to the truth, because the number of Jews in Vitebsk before the war with Germany, especially after 1939, was swelled by a number of refugees who had fled from Poland. The refugees were not integrated, but they lived in private dwellings and had the right to move and work. And understand, there were also non-Jewish refugees.

Here in Vitebsk, however, where the refugees hoped to escape from Nazi atrocities, they fell into a Soviet net. A couple of weeks before the Germans took the city, some of them were arrested and led away somewhere. Where they were taken–no one knew. The Bolsheviks had a policy of not telling where the refugees were taken.

Right after the beginning of the Soviet-German War, German airplanes began to drop leaflets in Russian. In these leaflets, you must understand, they spread antisemitic propaganda. The German leaflets called on everyone to remain where they were, not to fear the “cultural Germans,” promised everyone freedom and “a new order”–everyone except Jews and communists.

But German airplanes not only distributed propaganda. They also dropped bombs. Bombs fell every day on the

[Page 614]

Vitebsk airport. However, this caused no panic in the population, which reacted with a kind of calm. People trusted in the front still being far away–70 kilometers from Vitebsk. But suddenly there was chaos. On July 9, 1941, members of the Comsomol appeared in the city on motorcycles and without warning threw into the houses, into factories, and into shops bottles filled with benzene. Everywhere one could hear explosions; and at the same time, Soviet offices evacuated all the factories, big and small, together with their personnel. Also evacuated were all the other specialists and experts from the various Soviet establishments, industrial, agricultural, sanitary, and others. According to Soviet sources, among the evacuees were no fewer than 76,000 Jews from Vitebsk and its surroundings. What was meant by “its surroundings” was never clarified–whether it meant the immediate Vitebsk area or a larger, undefined, area. As we have already remarked, it appears that the never was greatly exaggerated.

The evacuation and the simultaneous destruction of various institutions and factories caused a panic in Vitebsk's population, who began to flee. The Soviet government said that people should not take it upon themselves to flee but should go in organized groups and on explicit orders from the government. Those who would abandon their work without evacuation orders would be punished as deserters. But all such orders could not stem the panic. People sought various ways to flee. They ran where they were not allowed. But they were not allowed to take prepared, shorter ways, because the Soviet army from Vitebsk was retreating on that same Smolensk road. People had to take a longer and more difficult road through Surasz-Velisz. On the third day of this great escape, the mass of people ran into German tanks that were heading to Vitebsk from Smolensk, which was in the east, a little further than Vitebsk; the refugees wanted to hide from the Germans in Smolensk. This was the German strategy–to pack the opposing army in a closed triangle (called “a kessl” [a saucepan]). Together with the Soviet army, in this triangle were–Vitebsk, Welisz, Smolensk–as well as the large mass of refugees.

[Page 615]

There was no other choice but to return to the city, where the refugees found only burned walls and ruins. The city fell on July 11, 1941. Although people saw no surviving houses, it is interesting that the military barracks, the buildings of the Vitebsk Soviet and of the city's communist committee remained whole. And the German authorities were spared from having to build new barracks for their army or to build buildings for their agencies. In the cellar of the NKVD, whose building was burned a little later, 200 detained people were found at the time of the burning and bombing. They were all suffocated by the smoke from the burning buildings around them. Also in the cellars of the burned or bombed houses, people found many corpses who were killed either by the smoke or by the falling buildings. The survivors had nowhere to go. After the fires and the bombings, the city was a ruin. Having no other choice, they gathered in the cellars of the burnt houses or they put up wooden huts. After the Germans took Vitebsk, the fires lasted for about two weeks. Russian partisans who remained in the city for this purpose still threw in flasks of benzene. The report from the German Einsatzgruppen of July 23 said that “Vitebsk is now more destroyed than Minsk, particularly due to the fires, which were the work of the Russians.” Never mind that the Germans were grateful that the Russians caused the fire: they took every opportunity to blame the fires on the Jews, as well as the rest of the destroyed city. The Germans immediately began an anti-Jewish campaign. They repeated that the Jews were a harmful element, that they were shameless and that they deserved to be exterminated.

The physical terror against the Jews began, not counting the small pogroms, robberies, and anti-Jewish demonstrations, with the greater action against the refugees that came during the night of July 24, 1941. That night many refugees, most of them Jews, were arrested and deported to an unknown location. They never returned. Simultaneously a systematic terror against the Jewish population began.

[Page 616]

One of the worst forms of terror at first was the seizure of people for forced labor.

From the detained Jews, they chose three hundred who were young and healthy. They were given work tools and sent ostensibly to work. In the evening, they did not return home. But no one suspected anything evil. People thought that they had simply stayed over night where they were working. The place was distant and they were tired after hard labor, so they stayed the night, people believed. People realized the bitter truth on the next day when the commander announced that for burning and destroying “the thriving city” they had been shot…

The seizure of people on the streets was not organized. Each German seized whomever he liked. Even a German civilian could seize a Jew on the street and hold him. Those seized were sent to various kinds of military work, extinguishing fires, clearing the streets of mounds of rock, shingles, and iron that remained after the fires and bombs.

Soon the Germans ordered that all Jews from 15 to 55 must present themselves for work in the factories and workshops. In order to instill fear among the Jews, on July 26, 1941, the Germans dragged 27 Jews from their homes and shot them in the middle of the city.

After the first days of chaotic terror, theft, and pogroms, the Germans began to organize in Vitebsk a kind of German civilian administration, and at the same time they installed a White Russian city self-administration, as well as a self-government for the Jewish community. Both organizations were under the control of the German city commander.

Although a large number of those who had fled had to return to Vitebsk because the German army had surrounded the refugees and the Soviet army in their famous triangle, the number of inhabitants of Vitebsk had fallen sharply. In July of 1941 there were no more than 70,000 inhabitants in Vitebsk, but in September of that same year, there only remained 50,000. That is, in two months the population declined by 20,000. By the end of the German occupation, the population declined by

[Page 617]

half. At that time the city had 25,000 inhabitants.

From this one can see that not only Jews fled from the city in large numbers. From this statistic about the Jewish population, we can see in particular that the German extermination aktions played no smaller role than flight from the city.

The Germans made strong efforts to win the sympathies of the White Russian population. They wanted to engage the White Russians in the extermination aktions and develop in them an anti-Jewish attitude, as they did in Ukraine, Lithuania, Latvia, and other countries. But at first they did not succeed in White Russia. The report from the Einsatzgruppen on July 23, 1941 says clearly that “the strong German measures against the Jews, especially the executions, have clearly strengthened the anti-German attitudes of the population.” They complained, therefore, that the White Russians were “cowards” who would in no way conduct pogroms against the Jews. It is interesting to take this opportunity to note that in other cities as well the Germans complained that the White Russians would not cooperate with them in conducting pogroms and killings of Jews.

One report from White Russia, for example, says, “Today, as always, we can say that the population stands aside from any action against Jews. It is true, that certain portions of the population complain about the Jewish terror in the time of the Soviets, but they are unwilling to participate in anti-Jewish pogroms.” A later report from 1942 describes the situation: “ For the White Russians, there was no Jewish problem. They consider this a purely German concern, that has no relevance for the White Russians. Soviet education planted in them the viewpoint that there are no racial differences. They regard the Jews with sympathy and pity, and the Germans are thought of as barbarians and executioners. Generally they feel that the Jews are exactly as human as the White Russians.”

A German report from Borisov, the scene of a gruesome slaughter of Jews on October 20-21, 1941, declares that the German atrocities shocked in an extraordinary way the local

[Page 618]

White Russians. “The eyes of the non-Jews,” says the report, “showed either apathy or horror, because the scene that played out in the streets was terrifying. On the eve of the executions, the non-Jews thought that the Jews were playing out their fate, but on the day after the executions, their feelings were quite different: who had ordered such terrible things? How is it possible to simply kill 6,500 Jews? Today this befell the Jews. When will it be our turn? What did these poor Jews do? All they did was that they worked hard.”^[16] From this report we can see that the White Russians were less hostile to the Jews than, for example, the Ukrainians or the Lithuanians. The White Russians were also unprepared for the barbaric character of the German slaughter.

But in time, it appears, the White Russian reaction against anti-Jewish atrocities became dulled. A report from the Einsatzgruppen of November 14, 1941, relates how the White Russian population in Vitebsk received “the total liquidation of all Jews in the Vitebsk ghetto.” The report says that the White Russians evinced no sympathy and were generally indifferent. They quickly became reconciled to the fact that the Jews had disappeared and showed no particular reaction either positive or negative. From this German report, we can understand that the White Russians showed no joy at the extermination of the Jews, and one gets the impression that they were reserved, not showing the Germans their internal reactions and their feelings regarding the horrible crimes.

At the same time that the Germans organized the city government, they organized the Judenrat. The Judenrats in White Russia were organized in this way: in every city, the Germans named a chairperson for the Judenrat and called on him to assemble 3 to 10 members. That was also the procedure in Vitebsk. But we do not know the names of the chair nor of the members of the Judenrat. We know only that the Germans ordered the Judenrat to consist of regular residents of Vitebsk. That means that it could not include

[Page 619]

refugees or new arrivals. From its very beginning, the Judenrat was fully controlled by the Germans. The character of the nomination for the Judenrat from its outset precluded the possibility that the Judenrat would represent the Jewish population. The German pressure on the Judenrat was clear in the German orders that the Judenrat bore a collective responsibility for the conduct of the Jewish population. The first requirement was that the Judenrat should present men between 15 and 55 years old for labor, as was earlier required. The Judenrat had to organize the labor brigades, take care of all the tools and food, and get them to the German worksites. We know that this is how things were organized in other cities as well. But we also know that aside from these regulations, everywhere there were seizures of people in the streets. The second requirement that was imposed on the Judenrat was to conduct a full registration of the entire Jewish population. That had to register all “racial” Jews, including apostates, people in mixed marriages, and others whom the Germans considered to be racial “half-Jews” and “quarter-Jews.”

The registration came up with a total of 16,000 Jews in Vitebsk. As the number of Jews who had fallen at the hands of the Germans before the registration could not have been more than one or two thousand (through deportations, various smaller pogroms, executions, and others), we must conclude that a portion of the Jewish population seems to have fled from Vitebsk to Russia and into the surrounding forests. We can also imagine that a certain number of Jews who lived in Vitebsk did not register because they understood the Germans' intentions.

And during this whole time, parallel with these almost peaceful, civil developments, there were executions and acts of terror toward the Jewish population. At first the Germans did not show that they would carry out the total liquidation of the Jewish population. A report from Group B from July 23, 1941 says clearly: “It seems that the solution to the Jewish question in the time of war in this area (White Russia) is impossible, because there are so many

[Page 620]

of them, and therefore the complete solution would be possible only through deportation.” But as we know, the central German government in Berlin, and especially the leadership of the SS, already had a plan for the full liquidation of the Jewish population. The months of August and September, 1941, were filled with organized, bloody executions. At the beginning of August, the Einsatzgruppen announced that it had neutralized everywhere, that is, that they had “killed Bolshevik party functionaries and NKVD agents, Jewish intelligentsia , criminals, thieves, saboteurs, arsonists, partisans, and so on.”

From the language of this report, we can hear that the executions only included a small percentage of Jews, mostly the intelligentsia. But, in fact, such designations as “party functionaries,” “saboteurs,” “thieves,” and “partisans” actually refer to Jews in a disguised form. This is clear in another report from August 12, which speaks about a new execution: “332 Jews were executed, among them 5 Bolshevik functionaries.” Even the Einsatzgruppen, it appears, sought communist agents among the Jews. But they could not come up with more than 5 Bolsheviks among the 332 innocent Jews.

Another report, from August 19, makes things clear in the following words: “In Vitebsk, they continued the aktions against the Jewish intelligentsia.” The number of victims is not supplied this time.

In order to have an idea about the aktions against the Jewish intelligentsia, about which we lack precise details, let us consider the aktions against the Jewish doctors. The official acts give us a little information about them. According to the reports from the Einsatzgruppen, Vitebsk earlier had (that it, before the German invasion), about 200 doctors, most of them Jews. Of those 200, about 40 remained at this time, among them 8 Jews. Also in the four hospitals and four clinics in Vitebsk, there were many Jews among the medical personnel, and almost all the administrators were then Jews. Of them, none remained. The slaughters that the Germans conducted were first directed against particular categories

[Page 621]

of the Jewish population. Once it was refugees, another time Jewish intelligentsia or those Jews who had transgressed the order concerning forced labor or Jews who were guilty of trumped-up charges such as sabotage, being communist agents, and so on.

Soon there were new categories. On October 1, 1941, Einsatzkommando 9 killed 52 Jews who came illegally from Horodok to Vitebsk. These were Jews who had escaped from the German slaughter in Horodok and thought to find refuge in Vitebsk. But before this, on September 4, the Germans had “filtered through” the camp of civilian prisoners in Vitebsk. After this “filtering,” the Wehrmacht dragged out 397 Jews and, without any legal proceedings, declared them guilty of sabotage and attacking the German army. They were turned over to Einsatzkommando 9, which liquidated them.

The German claim of Jewish rebellion, although it was often exaggerated because of its criminal intentions, appears to have had a certain foundation.

In a report from August 29, the Germans told about a Jewish woman in Vitebsk who had placed dynamite in her doorway, and when a German soldier wanted to enter, the dynamite exploded and blew off his hand. The woman was hanged publicly In the middle of the street.

In order to prevent Vitebsk's Jews from avoiding the extermination that the Germans had planned for them, the German command put them into a ghetto. The ghetto was ordered after the Judenrat had conducted its registration of all Jews. Ghettoes had been ordered in other cities and towns in White Russia. The Vitebsk ghetto was ordered for the area from the train station and surrounding streets–an area that had been devastated by the bombs, fighting, and fires. Jews were told to leave their current dwellings and gather in the ghetto, which consisted only of burnt stone and iron ruins. Few buildings in this area even had roofs. People had to improvise dwellings from shingles, iron scaffolding, and girders. Around the ghetto, the Germans called for a barbed wire fence. People dared not leave the ghetto without special

[Page 622]

permission. Such permission was mainly given to people who worked for German industries and for the Wehrmacht. Members of the Judenrat were permitted to remain in their homes outside of the ghetto. Eight Jewish doctors also received permission, at the request of the city's health department. The Jews believed that they would get through the summer in the ghetto, and by winter the Germans would be gone. But unfortunately the Jews were mistaken in their belief, and it turned out that the ghetto was no longer needed for a different, more tragic reason–because of the final extermination of Vitebsk's Jews.

Despite the frightful German terror, not all Jews were in the ghetto. The reports of the Einsatzgruppen tell from time to time about Jews who were captured in the city and were shot, because they did not live in the ghetto and went around the city as “Aryans.” Thus, for example, is mentioned in a report of September 23 that three Jews were shot for this transgression, and on October 25, four more were shot for the same reason.

Not many Jews, as one can understand, hid with non-Jews in the city; and not many Jews could pass as Aryans. People fled to the woods and the swamps to avoid the ghetto. The number of Jews in the woods was at first quite large. As the Germans note in their reports, each group of Jews arranged a special signal corps. These guards would assure that neither German police nor military commandos were coming. If the guards noticed anything, they would warn their group, who would flee deeper into the woods and swamps.

These people who hid in the woods were secure as long as it was warm outside. In the winter, hunger and cold caused illnesses and death. Only a certain number of those hidden in the woods had created partisan groups or had joined other partisan groups that already existed. Occasionally a German commando unit would conduct a raid and seize a group of Jews in the forest.

In a report from September 4, 1941, the Germans boast that they had caught in a pacification action by the Wehrmacht

[Page 623]

a group of 19 Jewish men and women. The Germans accused the Jews of having shot three German soldiers and burned buildings in the city. They were all killed. Meanwhile, the situation in the ghetto grew worse. Hunger raged. Typhus and other illnesses spread. The winter was very cold, which increased the needs of the Jews in the ghetto. The Germans used the fact of the illnesses, which were caused by their own politics, as an excuse to liquidate the ghetto. An activity report from Group B says, “Because of the great danger from the plague, people began on October 8, 1941, the complete liquidation of the Vitebsk ghetto.” The liquidation lasted several days. The Latvian-Russian witness Ivanov describes how it was carried out in his memoir:

“Over the course of three days, Jews were taken by truck to the banks of the small Vitba River. There the little children were separated out and taken away. Older children were killed on the spot and thrown into the river.” All of this was done before the eyes of the inhabitants of the villages near the station. These witnesses later related that the Germans supervised and oversaw the aktion. The shooting itself was done by local militias. The Latvian-Russian witness Ivanov also relates a number of shocking episodes during the aktion. The Jews were taken in tightly packed open trucks, with many of them standing. Some of them cried. On one truck people saw this: a small girl in a plush overcoat standing at the edge of the truck, with a broad, happy smile on her face, looking out. She did not understand where she was being taken. She was happy to be in a truck, seeing the river, many people, trees, and being outside the ghetto.

The Vitebsk police, as it appeared, were even more cruel than the Germans. Accepted into the police were men who were not only prepared to work with the Germans, but they had also recruited “specialists.” These “specialists” were chosen from the Soviet militias and the NKVD, and with their cruelty they sought to gain favor with their new bosses. After the Soviet army had liberated Vitebsk, the

[Page 624]

were put on trial and received severe punishment. Only one of them got off easy. He was the leader of the police at the time of the German occupation. He was sentenced only to seven years imprisonment. People were astonished. He, he who was responsible for police atrocities, should receive such a light punishment? People declared, as Ivanov tells it, that he had been sent by the NKVD.

The Germans kept exact statistics of their slaughters. On December 19 they said in a report that 4,090 Jews had been shot in the October aktion. This means that a larger number of the ghetto population had died or were killed before the last liquidation. The October aktion also had a gruesome epilogue. The Nazis were not satisfied with killing the Jews in Vitebsk proper. Not far from Vitebsk there was a prisoner-of-war camp that also contained Jews. The commander of Group B went into the camp, dragged out 207 Jews, and shot them.

In this way the Jews of Vitebsk were liquidated already in 1941. After that, Jews are no longer mentioned in the activity reports. Only once are Jews mentioned. They are mentioned for the last time in a report from one of the Groups on March 9, 1942. It says there that during the night of January 29-30, 1942, the second mayor of Vitebsk was murdered. The city population, continues the report, considered this assassination either as an act of vengeance by the Jews or as the work of partisans. It is impossible to determine the accuracy of these theories. From the report, we can understand that the Germans and their helpers feared retribution from the Jews or the partisans, and also this is indirect evidence of Jewish partisan groups in the area of Vitebsk.

When the Germans retreated from Vitebsk, not a Jew was left. During the first two years after the liberation, there were a certain number of Jews in the city. According to information from the Soviet Russian press, in 1946 there were 500 Jews.^[17] Who were they? They might have been partisans who returned from the woods or refugees who returned from Russia or demobilized

[Page 625]

soldiers who sought in the ruins a memory of the former Jewish kehillah and of their families? Our information is so meager and scant that we cannot answer this question. We also do not know how many of these Jews decided to settle in Vitebsk. It does not appear that there was ever again a large Jewish settlement in Vitebsk, as there were, for example, in several Ukrainian cities. Reporters who visited this area in recent years describe various Jewish revived settlements in Ukraine and White Russia, but Vitebsk is not mentioned among them.

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