Memory of murdered Jews in Glubokoye

Память убитых евреев Глубокого / Памяць забітых яўрэяў Глыбокага

In the Belarusian city of Glubokoye several memorials commemorate the Jews of the ghetto who were murdered there between 1941 and 1943 by German units and their accomplices. One of the mass shooting sites is in the small forest of Borok, where there is also a memorial remembering the Soviet and Italian prisoners of war who perished in nearby German camps.

History

The small town of Glubokoye (Belarusian: Hlybokaje, Polish: Głębokie), located in the northern part of Belorussia, belonged to the Russian Empire before the First World War and to Poland between the two World Wars. According to the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, Glubokoye was occupied by the Soviets in September 1939. Jews have lived in the city since the 18th century and made up the majority of the approximately 9,000 inhabitants at the outbreak of the Second World War. After the German attack on the Soviet Union, the Wehrmacht occupied Glubokoye on July 2, 1941. At that time there were approximately 5,000 Jews in the city, many of them refugees. On October 22, 1941 the Germans set up a ghetto in Glubokoye, where all Jews from Glubokoye and surroundings had to live together in a very confined space. Only on work missions were Jews allowed to leave the cordoned off area. Again and again Jews were murdered in groups. On May 27, 1942, Einsatzkommando 9 (Sub-group of Einsatzgruppe) of Einsatzgruppe B (mobile killing unit) under the command of SS-Untersturmführer (2nd Lieutenant of the SS) Heinz Tangermann carried out the first of two »Großaktionen« against Jews. The commando shot about 2,500 Jews who they considered unfit for work in a piece of woodlands called Borok about a kilometre from the ghetto. The remaining Jews stayed in the ghetto which initially grew further due to the relocation of Jewish forced labourers from other ghettos. At the same time, a resistance movement was formed in the ghetto that in collaboration with Soviet partisans succeeded in killing 70 Germans on August 17, 1943. As a result, the occupation authorities decided to liquidate the ghetto and murder the Jews. While the houses in the ghetto were set on fire and the inhabitants were shot, about one hundred Jews were initially able to escape to the forest. Many of them were later re-captured and subsequently murdered.

Glubokoye, undated, Old town view, Public domain

Victims

Already shortly after taking Glubokaye, German units repeatedly murdered Jews. On March 25, 1942, the German gendarmerie, supported by local auxiliary policemen, shot approximately 110 inhabitants of the ghetto. On May 27, 1942 Einsatzkommando 9 of Einsatzgruppe B murdered about 2,500 Jews in the Borok forest. During the liquidation of the ghetto on August 17, 1943 German units, supported by local accomplices, murdered almost all of the approximately 3,000 remaining inhabitants of the ghetto. Thereafter no Jews lived in Glubokaye. All in all about 7,000 Jews passed through the ghetto in Glubokaye. Only a few of them survived by fleeing and joining Jewish or Soviet partisans. Between 1941 and 1944 the POW camp Stalag 351, from 1942 Stalag 342/Z Glebokie was located in Glubokaye. In 1941 tens of thousands of Soviet prisoners of war were hold captive in the open under miserable conditions. Mortality was extremely high. After Italy's surrender in 1943, Italian soldiers, so-called military internees, were deported here. At least 27,000 soldiers died in these camps, among them approximately 200 Italians.

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 Glubokaye on July 3, 1944. Only a few surviving Jews returned to the city afterwards. The first memorial was erected after the war at one of the mass shooting sites in today's Chkalova Street. The Russian inscription on the obelisk recalls »4,500 peaceful citizens of Jewish nationality« who are said to be buried here.
After the war, several memorials and memorial stones were erected in the Borok forest further north. Borok is located west of the lakes Velikoye and Podlushnoye and is crossed by Krasnoarmeyskaya Street. To the left of the street are three monuments remembering the approximately 2,500 Jews from the ghetto who were murdered at this site in May 1942. Further north, next to Lake Podlushnoye, is another mass shooting site and other memorials commemorating the approximately 27,000 Soviet and Italian prisoners of war who were killed in the area. The POW camp itself was located 500 metres to the east on the site of a former monastery which is now used as a prison. At the entrance gate of the unused Jewish cemetery next to Lake Velikoye there are two memorials and an information board. The latter bears the English and Russian inscription: »Old Jewish cemetery. Destroyed by fascists 1941-1945«. There are only a few gravestones left in the cemetery. Today, relatives of the victims work together with the local authorities to preserve the memorials. Every year in August there is a memorial service, which is regularly attended by survivors and their relatives and descendants travelling there from abroad.

Glubokoye, undated, Memorial from 2001 in the Borok grove, Aleksandr Iofik

Open

The memorials are accessible at all times.

Contact

http://www.eilatgordinlevitan.com/glubokoye/glubokoye.html

kotz@k-techav.com

Ulitsa Krasnoarmejskaja
211800 Hlubokoje

Glubokoye, 2013, Memorial from 1964 in Borok, avner

Glubokoye, 2013, Borok with mass graves on both sides, avner

Glubokoye, 2013, Mass graves of murdered Jews in Borok, avner

Glubokoye, 2010, Memorial in Tschkalowa Street, Aleksandr Iofik

Glubokoye, 1941-1943, Jewish women ironing German uniforms in the ghetto, www.jewishgen.org

Glubokoye, 1941-1943, Jewish children folding boxes in the ghetto, www.jewishgen.org

Glubokoye, 2015, Entrance to the old Jewish cemetery, Aljaksandr Dsechzjaronak

Glubokoye, 2013, Memorial complex for the victims of the prisoner-of-war camps, avner

Near Glubokoye, Autumn 1941, Soviet POWs of Stalag 351, Hamburger Institut für Sozialforschung

Glubokoye, undated, Memorial inaugurated in 2001 in the Borok forest, Aleksandr Iofik

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