Remembrance of the murdered Jews of Vileyka

Память убитых евреев города Вилейка / Памяць забітых яўрэяў горада Вілейка

In the Belarusian city of Vileyka, three memorials commemorate the Jews murdered in the city between 1941 and 1944.

History

Prior to the First World War, the small town of Vileyka, about 100 kilometers northwest of Minsk, belonged to the Russian Empire. Polish during the interwar period, Vileyka passed to the Soviet Union in 1939 in the course of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. At the end of the 19th century, about 1,330 of the city's 3,600 inhabitants were Jews. On the eve of the Second World War, about 1,000 Jews still lived in the city.
The German Wehrmacht occupied Vileyka on June 26, 1941. Anti-Jewish measures came into force immediately: Jews had to wear identifying badges, form a »Jewish Council« to implement German orders and conduct forced labour. On July 12, 1941 all Jewish men between the age of 15 and 60 were called upon to register in the synagogue. The Germans let all the skilled workers go, all others were detained on the pretext that they were supporters of Soviet power. Subsequently, members of Sonderkommando (sub-group of Einsatzgruppe) 7a of Einsatzgruppe (mobile killing squad) B, supported by local auxiliaries, drove the Jews to the village of Stavki two kilometres away and shot them there. In addition to the 140 Jews, the unit also shot 13 non-Jewish men. A few days later, men from Einsatzkommando 9 drove a total of 400 Jewish children, women and men to a piece of forest near the village of Porsa called »Lisaja Gora« and shot them there. By December 1941, the occupation authorities had set up several ghettos and labour camps in Vileyka. On March 3, 1942 members of the Security Service of the SS (SD) shot and killed all residents of the so-called children's ghetto in the prison yard and burned their bodies on the premises. At the beginning of November 1942, the Security Service of the SS (SD) imprisoned hundreds of Jews in various houses and then set them on fire. On March 28, 1943 more Jews who were considered incapable of work were shot dead. Thereafter only a few Jews were still alive in Vileyka. Shortly before their retreat, the Germans shot all the Jews still living in Vileyka together with all the prisoners.

Vileyka, undated, Old town view, public domain

Vileyka, 2011, Jewish cemetery, Vadim Akopyan

Victims

Members of Sonderkommando 7a shot about 140 Jewish men and up to 13 Belarusians during the first »Aktion«. On July 20, 1941 Einsatzkommando 9 shot about 400 Jewish children, women and men. At the beginning of February 1942, the Security Service of the SS (SD) set up a local branch in Vileyka. Its members shot up to 29 Jews in the first weeks. Again and again Jews from the surrounding villages were deported to Vileyka. In September 1942, several hundred Jews were deported from Szczuczyn to Vileyka. Those who were unable to work were shot. On March 3, 1942 the SD, supported by Belarusian and Latvian auxiliaries, shot about 300 Jews. At the beginning of November 1942, during a »Großaktion«, the Security Service of the SS (SD) shot all residents of the initial central ghetto, some residents of another ghetto and Jews who had just arrived in the city. The number of victims is between 100 and 400 according to contemporary witnesses accounts. The total number of victims is estimated at more than 1,500 Jews.

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 the town on July 2, 1944. After the war almost no Jews lived in Vileyjka. The Jewish cemetery in the south of Vileyka, existing since the 18th century, is still standing as a reminder of the Jewish community today. In the 1990s a memorial made of black granite was erected there, which remembers the city's murdered Jews in Hebrew and English. A Star of David is engraved on the upper half. Beside the memorial about 150 gravestones are still preserved, about half of which are in decay. Another memorial is located on the left side of the road leading from Makovye district to Porsa village and marks the memorial place »Lisaya Gora«. It was built in 1972 and commemorates the »peaceful Soviet citizens« who were murdered there by the Germans. The Jewish identity of the victims is not mentioned. Two years later the city erected another memorial made of black granite near the village of Stavki. On it the following inscription is engraved: »To the Soviet citizens, shot by the German-Fascist occupiers in 1941«. The synagogue was located in Partisanskaya Street. The building was misappropriated during the Soviet era.

Vileyka, undated, Memorial near the village of Stavki, eilatgordinlevitan.com

Vileyka, about 1930, A family at the Jewish cemetery, Photo: Boris Berman

Open

The memorials are accessible at all times.

Contact

http://vilmuseum.by/

vil_museum@mail.ru

Vileyka, 2011, Memorial at the Jewish cemetery, Vadim Akopyan

Vileyka, undated, Memorial near the village of Porsa, vilmuseum.by

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