Trip report on research trip number 3 in Russia

Bryansk Region

October 21, 2010 – November 4, 2010

Team:

Patrice BENSIMON – Team Leader Svetlana BIRULOVA – Interpreter Anna MOZHAROVA – Interpreter Mary MOUTIER – Trip report Denis MOURAVITSKY- Investigator Mikhail Strutinsky – Ballistics expert Vincent LE GAL – Cameraman David Merlin-DUFEY – Photographer

Sites investigated:

Uritsky Bryansk Karatchevsk Pochep Novozybkov Karkhovka Novy Ropsk Klimovo Zlynka Starodub Souraj Mgline Ounetcha

Following are the results from 14 days of investigation by Yahad – In Unum in Russia.

The investigation concentrated on the region north and west of Bryansk. Several western villages of this Russian region marked the boundaries of the former Jewish residential area, the territory where Jews were authorized to live before the revolution of 1917.

It is for this reason that just prior to the war, a number of these villages still had a high proportion of Jewish residents. The Jews of these villages were very much “sovietized” whether voluntarily or by force; most synagogues having been closed before 1937, mixed marriages between Russians and Jews were very common. More than half the Jews of the Bryansk region were able to depart before the Germans arrived.        

Forced to watch

One of the main assumptions of Yahad’s work is the public nature of executions of Jews. During this third research trip, the testimony highlighted not only the “possible presence” of villagers at the place of execution, but also the “forced presence of villagers” for all types of executions: individual executions, mass executions, initial executions and late executions.

Olga O., born in 1922, Nina K., born in 1923, and much of the small town of Karatchev were forced by local police, after the arrival of German soldiers, to watch the hanging of several Jewish residents. The bodies remained over a week on the town square “as a deterrent.”

Tatiana B., born in 1930, a resident of the hamlet of Velichko says her aunt, like all the inhabitants of the hamlet of Gorka, was forced to witness the shooting of Jews in the city Novozybkov (between 950 and 1,100 victims according to sources). “Those who could not bear to watch the massacre were beaten and had no choice but to watch the murder of the last victim, as a warning,” said the witness.

Ksenia T., born in 1927, was imprisoned with other villagers in a house, 200 meters from the pit where the Jews were executed. From the window, she saw the shooting from beginning to end: “We brought the Jews to the edge of the pit; they were shot by the police who then gave them a kick to make them fall into the pit. The victims advanced one at a time.  When there was a mother with her children: the shooters did not shoot the children but rather struck the head of one against the head of another. The Jews entered the pit, one at a time along a path of sand with Germans on either side. It was the Germans who were guarding them, not the police. The pit was about 500 meters from the prison – they had to cross almost the entire park. “

These warnings were not the only places of execution of the Jewish population: any gathering, any punishment, any act against the local Jewish or Russian population conducted by the German military administration and its collaborators should be “seen”.

Tatiana B. and all the inhabitants of Veltichko were gathered in a barn.  “A punishment detachment arrived in the village to punish two Russian policemen who had poorly guarded the bridge. One policeman was sentenced to 15 lashes, the other 25; naked, hanging from a pear tree (they died of their wounds). They gathered the village to watch, including the children – who were terrified. Other policemen were forced to apply the punishment. If they performed poorly, they in turn were beaten by the Germans. Before the punishment, the chief mounted a chair and made a speech, warning against the poor guarding of the bridge. He made his speech in Russian, or rather with Russian and German words. But some Germans spoke a little Russian and new a few keywords.”

Presumably the absence of a civilian administration and a German occupation zone marked the constant advance and retreat of a front sometimes very close, and the presence of a strong and active partisan movement, exacerbating the German will to terrorize the local population.

Shootings without pits

In several places that were investigated, YIU team noted that the Jewish victims were not shot in mass graves dug in advance, as is often the case.

At Klimovo, Fyodor M., born in 1928, said that “the Jews, women and children, were executed in the marshes. Ten days later, I saw the corpses still floating in the marshes. There were a lot of bodies. In the spring, the water would rise. We started to remove the bodies with hooks; they were dragged into pits and covered with lime. Men from the village were requisitioned by the police for the job.”

Fyodor M. told us outside of the interview that his father had been one of those requisitioned.

In the same village, the team interviewed Praskovia P., born in 1927, who was forced by the police to bury the bodies, once spring had arrived and the earth had thawed.  He said: “The police came to get me at my home. There were a dozen of us requisitioned for the task. The bodies were already in the pits, dressed, and those who had brought the bodies were gone. There were two pits at this site. The pit was about 15 meters by 10 meters. There were Jews of all ages, including my friend Tania. The police watched the people during the filling of the pit. The filling took at least two hours.”

It seems that in some cases the Germans decided not to shoot their victims in pits because the soil was frozen and hard to dig. In the Bryansk region, the majority of executions took place in winter, between November 1941 and March 1942.

A Novy Ropsk Nikolai K, born in 1930, witnessed the murder of about 10 Jews in his village. Two were buried alive, others tortured and shot. Dmitri S., saw the bodies of these victims, including that of his school friend, Moissey, left not far from the Jewish cemetery. He participated in the burial of the bodies.

The fate of parents and children of mixed marriages

In several cities investigated, witnesses recounted the fate of women or men married to a Jewish spouse and their children.

Natalia L., born in 1926, a resident of Pochep, said: “Russian women married to Jews were shot. They had proposed to shoot only their children, leaving the women alive. None accepted, including the sister of my husband. These women were gathered separately and shot separately. They were shot between June-July 1942. They were denounced by starosts, police, and members of the auxiliary.” The victims were shot in a different location than where the main shooting; there is no memorial.

It therefore appears that the fate of people married to Jews was only decided once the extermination of Jews began. In the region investigated, the “half-Jews” were rarely confined in ghettos or camps. They were gathered by the Germans or, more often by the police, a day of two after the main shooting. Once all were gathered, they were shot in their turn, either with other Jews or separately.

We also noted that the status of Russians married to Jews and their children was not the same throughout the region. At Mgline, for example, women and children were not threatened, Ksenia K., born in 1927, said, “All Jews were shot that day, none were spared – except half Jews children.

In contrast, at Starodub, Adelaide, born in 1929, said, “they also shot ‘converted’ Jewish women,” that is to say Jewish women married to Russian men (two trucks, came from nearby villages, it was in the spring) and Russian soldiers. But their children were spared.    

Camps of Soviet prisoners

According to Soviet archives studied and translated by YIU, two camps were created in the city of Bryansk by the German occupiers for Soviet prisoners of war, trapped near the front, and moved westward in stages.  ”In autumn 1941, Germano-fascist invaders established a camp for prisoners of war on the grounds of maintenance base Number 6. Approximately 80,000 Red Army soldiers and commanders were prisoners, surrounded by barbed wire. Not far from Bryansk, near the airfield, in a ravine, there was a second camp of prisoners of war in which there were about 5,000 people. Every day, from 50 to 200 people died of starvation.”

During its fieldwork, the team found Valeri who was imprisoned in the camp for over a month, when he was a civilian teenager: “The civilians were separated from prisoners of war in the camp by barbed wire. There were also other civilians from villages near the forest where the partisans were hiding. Civilians had to perform certain tasks. The Germans smashed the heads of babies against the carts in order to frighten civilians from assisting the Partisans.

Many civilians survived; however, the fate for prisoners of war was often death. “When a horse (the horses were Belgian horses) was wounded, the Germans cut them up into large pieces and threw them into the camp of the prisoners of war. Since they were starving, they threw themselves on the meat and at the same time the Germans shot them. “Says Aleksandra V., born in 1923: “The mortality rate was very high, the officers threw the bodies into the swamp and the bulldozer pushed the bodies in. There were many dead bodies. There were getting rid of bodies every day.”   At Mgline, Varvara G., born in 1927, said that three prisoners escaped from the camp in the village, an older man and two youths. “The young German soldiers were good: the children would see the Germans and plead: “It’s my father!” or “My brother!” And we managed to get these prisoners of war out from the crowd. Then, the Germans ceased to be trustful and demanded to see a document as evidence. ”    

Rare testimony

In the city of Novozyblov, the team interviewed Nikolai M., born in 1924.  His testimony brought a wealth of information on the behavior of the German occupiers, information rarely provided as testimony by a “third party”. This type of detail is usually provided at the trial of the perpetrators or their German colleagues. Requisitioned by a Wehrmacht tank driver to carry his package, he witnessed the anger and scolding by the SS as they brought forward a column of Jews to the shooting site.  ”A soldier of the Wehrmacht should not interfere in the actions of SS, and we let the column pass by. There were wagons with children and the elderly who could no longer walk. There were twenty wagons with several people in each. These carts were guarded by Russian police. Young Jews marched in front with a sign that read, “We are Jews and deserve death.”

In the evening, once he was home, an SS officer stopped by to warm himself and boasted of the shooting: “the Jews were forced to undress down to their underwear and were then searched. A woman fled at that time into the woods in her underwear. The SS officer said that it was the Russian police who had done the shooting. They forced the Jews to lie down in the pit and then they were shot. There was also a tower from which the Germans shot the fugitives. The SS officer had many valuables (gold teeth, precious objects) that he offered us but we refused them.”

During this investigation, YIU identified 10 mass grave sites, 7 of which had memorials.  All of these memorials were erected in the USSR, mostly at the initiative of the victims’ families.

It should be noted that none of the memorials for Jewish victims mention that the victims were Jewish.