Memorial to the murdered Jews of Barysaw

Память убитых евреев Борисова / Памяць забітых яўрэяў Барысава

In Barysaw, a memorial at the mass shooting site and a memorial stone at the former entrance to the ghetto remember the Jews who were murdered in the city in 1941.

History

Barysaw (Russian: Borysov, Polish: Borysów), situated on the banks of Berezina about 70 kilometres northwest of Minsk, was founded in 1102. Jews lived there from the 16th century onwards. In 1939 the city had about 10,000 Jewish inhabitants, which was about one fifth of the total population. Their number increased after the outbreak of the war by Jewish refugees from the German-occupied part of Poland.
The German Wehrmacht Barysaw on July 2, 1941. Four days later, all the Jewish inhabitants of Barysaw had to resettle in a ghetto in the north of the city. 170 Jews who defied the order were shot. The living conditions in the ghetto were catastrophic. Many died of hunger and diseases. Part of the inhabitants of the ghetto had to conduct forced labour. At the end of September 1941, members of Einsatzkommando (mobile killing unit) 8 under SS-Hauptsturmführer Werner Schönemann arrived in Barysaw and shot several Jews, accusing them of sabotage. Further »Aktionen« followed. On October 19, 1941 SS-Obersturmführer Rudolf Schlegel gave the order from Minsk to liquidate the ghetto. Some of the Jewish forced labourers were deported to Minsk beforehand. Next day at dawn German members of the SS, in collaboration with Belarusian policemen and Latvian auxiliaries, drove the Jewish men to pits near the city which POWs had had to dig at the beginning of the month and shot them there. Jewish women and children followed. The next day the Germans shot all the Jews who had been able to save themselves from the shootings until then. On these two days more than 7,000 Jews were murdered. In an attempt to cover up the traces of their crimes,in October 1943 the SS forced a group of POWs to open the mass graves and burn the bodies as part of »Aktion 1005«. The prisoners were shot afterwards.

Barysaw, 2016, Inscription on the memorial, Sabrina Bobowski

Barysaw, 2016, Gate at the entrance to the memorial site, Sabrina Bobowski

Victims

During the establishment of the ghetto on July 25, 1941,the Germans shot more than 170 Jews who had resisted resettlement. Individual executions had already taken place earlier. Further »Aktionen« followed. On October 15, 1941 Einsatzgruppe (mobile killing unit) B reported that it had »liquidated« 7,620 Jews in the Barysaw area by then. Alongside Jews, men from Einsatzkommando 8 also shot prisoners from population groups they regarded as inferior, such as Mongolians and Uzbeks. In the ghetto many of the up to 9,000 Jewish inhabitants died of hunger and disease. On October 20 and 21, 1941 it was liquidated and its inhabitants, more than 7,000 Jewish children, women and men, were murdered. The SS were supported by local Belarusian as well as Latvian policemen.
After the murder of the Jewish population of Barysaw there were several forced labour camps into which Jews from other areas were deported. During their retreat in June 1944, the Germans deported about 1,400 camp inmates to camps situated further west. However, 900 prisoners, including Jews, were shot on the spot. According to the Soviet Extraordinary Commission, which investigated the crimes of the National Socialists on site after liberation, a total of approximately 9,000 Jews were murdered in Barysaw.

With the outbreak of the Second World War in September 1939 and the Red Army’s invasion of eastern Poland the north-east of the country was annexed to Soviet Belarus. In summer 1941 the whole of Belarus was occupied by German troops. Over the next three years between one in four and one in three residents met a violent death. Almost all of the towns were completely destroyed. The Wehrmacht or SS systematically annihilated around 620 villages together with theor inhabitants, including Chatyn. The largest extermination camp on occupied Soviet territory was located in Maly Trostenets outside the Belarusian capital Minsk. It is now presumed that at least 60,000 German and Belarusian Jews were murdered there. Up to 85,000 Jews are estimated to have died in Minsk and 230,000 in the country as a whole. From 1941, Belarus was at the heart of the Soviet partisan struggle against the German occupation with over a thousand active partisan groups. The Red Army began to recapture the country at the end of 1943 and the German occupation was considered over by summer 1944. The country was largely destroyed, the society shattered and the people traumatised. Belarus was reincorporated into the Soviet Union in 1944. A large part of the Polish territory annexed in 1939 remained part of the country. National memorial and memory culture in post-war Belarus were dominated by the liberation of the country on 3 July 1944 and the day of victory on 9 May 1945 as the end of a »heroic« struggle in the Great Patriotic War. Memory of the partisan war was also of key importance. The genocide of the Jews was not mentioned directly in the Soviet republics. An obelisk put up at the »Yama«, a pit where mass murders took place in the Minsk ghetto, was therefore an exception in the former Soviet Union. It was erected as early as 1946 and for decades was the sole memorial with a Yiddish inscription and a direct reference to the murdered Jews. The memorial site at Khatyn is also unusual. Here,153 people were burnt alive in March 1943. The memorial site, established in 1969, is notable for its simplicity, its concentration on the human dimension of the plight of the victims amidst the horrors of war and the absence of monumental features otherwise common in the former Soviet Union. After Belarus claimed independence in 1991 the search began for an independent national identity. The number of victims plays a decisive role, especially those killed during the Second World War. However, there is consciously no distinction drawn between the territorial situation of the country pre- and post-1939. Both the crimes of the Stalinist regime and the Holocaust have come to the fore but the nature of the state has prevented public discussion of these aspects. State remembrance continues to be dominated by the war in the years 1941 to 1944. Its main symbol is the monumental new building of the Museum of the History of the Great Patriotic War, opened in 2014. In the meantime, however, the association of Jewish communities in Belarus has established a series of memorials to the victims of mass murder. Since the early 1990s, several German towns have also put up stelae in Minsk to remember the Jews deported and murdered there. The Berlin stele, financed by the federal state of Berlin and the Foundation Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, was inaugurated in an official ceremony on June 25, 2009. There is also movement with regards to a fitting development of the Maly Trostenets area: In 2015, a memorial complex was inaugurated at the site. A second segment which was co-financed by Germany was opened in 2018 by the presidents of Belarus, Austria and Germany. Germany has also pledged to finance the renovation of the Historical Workshop’s historical building on the former territory of the Minsk ghetto, documenting the fates of its victims.

Remembrance

The Red Army liberated Barysaw on July 1, 1944. Some 50 Jews who had survived in hiding in Barysaw were also liberated. As early as 1947 relatives of the victims erected an obelisk-shaped memorial at the site of the mass shooting. At its tip was a stylized flame. The memorial originally had a Yiddish inscription, but it was removed in the 1950s and replaced by a Russian one which no longer mentioned Jews but referred to »Soviet citizens« as victims. In 1995 a menorah was added to the memorial. Since 1991, the Jewish History and Culture Community »Svet Menory« has organised commemorative events for the murdered Jews of Barysaw. The same association was also involved in the restoration of the memorial in 2004.
In the north of the city is the building of the former Great Synagogue and the Jewish cemetery, which is no longer in use. The synagogue was built in 1912 and partially destroyed by the Soviet authorities in the 1920s. Although the building was restored in the 1960s, it was never used as a synagogue again and was auctioned in 2015. The smaller Hevre Telihim Synagogue is still being used today as a place of worship. Nearby there is also a memorial stone at the former entrance to the ghetto. It has the following Russian inscription: »From August 27 to October 20, 1941 this was the location of the entrance gate to the ghetto, the last abode of the 9,000 martyrs – victims of the genocide«. In Uritskogo Street, a plaque with a Belarusian inscription remembers the employees of the former children's home who hid Jewish children there from 1941 to 1944. The building still houses a kindergarten. Today Barysaw has about 1,000 Jewish inhabitants.

Barysaw, 1944, Bodies of prisoners who were murdered during the German retreat, Yad Vashem

Barysaw, 2016, The path to the memorial, Sabrina Bobowski

Open

The memorials are accessible at all times.

Contact

Denkmal am Ort der Massenerschießung: ul. Lopatina / vul. Lapazina 172
222120 Borissow

Barysaw 2011, Gravestones on the Jewish cemetery, Vadim Akopyan

Barysaw, 2011, Jewish cemetery, Vadim Akopyan

Barysaw, 2011, Memorial stone at the former entrance of the ghetto, Vadim Akopyan

Barysaw, 2014, The former Great Synagogue, Liashko

Barysaw, 1918, Historic town view with synagogue, public domain

Barysaw, 2015, Memorial at the site of the mass shooting, avner

Barysaw, 2016, Hevre Tehilim Synagogue, Sabrina Bobowski

Dresden

Münchner Platz Dresden Memorial

Until 1956, political opponents of numerous regimes were put to trial and sentenced at the Dresden Regional Court: under National Socialism, during the Soviet occupation and under the dictatorship of...

Berlin

German Resistance Memorial Center

The German Resistance Memorial Center commemorates in its exhibition »Resistance against National Socialism« individuals and groups who stood up to the National Socialist dictatorship between 1933 and...

Münster

Villa ten Hompel Memorial Site

Between 1940 and 1944, the headquarters of the Ordnungspolizei (order police) for the military district VI were located in the former villa of industrialist Rudolf ten Hompel. The Ordnungspolizei was...