Damachava

Damachava | Domatschewo
Дамачава | Домачево
( Belarus. ) | ( Russian )
State :	Belarus
Woblasz :	Brest
Coordinates :	51 ° 45 ′  N , 23 ° 36 ′  E Coordinates: 51 ° 45 ′  N , 23 ° 36 ′  E
Residents :	1,200 (2010)
Time zone :	Moscow time ( UTC + 3 )
Telephone code :	(+375) 16
Postal code :	BY - 225021
Website :	www.domachevo.com
Damachava

St. Luke Church in Damachava

Damachava ( Belarusian Дамачава , wis. Translit. Damačava; Russian Домачево , wis. Translit. Domačevo) is an urban-type settlement in Brest Raion in the Breszkaja Woblasz in Belarus . Damachava is the center of the Passavets Damachava - an administrative unit that includes 14 localities. Damachava is located about 52 kilometers south of Brest on the Polish border and forms one of the Belarusian border crossing points with Poland. Since the place is located in the border zone, people who do not have their place of residence in Breszkaja Woblasz are only allowed to visit it with a permit issued by the militia . In 2005 Damachava had 1,299 inhabitants.

history

In 1617 the first Protestant German colony Neudorf / Neubruch was founded in the area between Domatschawa and Slawatycze on the Bug River .

In 1788 a wooden church with a chapel was built in the place that was then part of the Rzeczpospolita . After the third partition of Poland in 1795 Damachava belonged to Russia , first in the Slonim governorate , from 1797 in the Lithuania governorate and from 1801 in the Grodno governorate . In 1861 a peasant uprising was put down by the military, and in 1863 a primary school was opened.

In addition to the Orthodox Church, there is also evidence of a Jewish prayer house for 1886 . At the end of the 19th century, markets were held twice a year in Damachava, there were also 30 shops and two taverns. The orthodox St. Lukas wooden church was built in 1905 in place of the old church building. After the Polish-Soviet war and the Peace of Riga , Damachava came under Polish rule again for a few years in 1921.

In the 1920s, a Jewish welfare organization set up a children's home in several buildings, only two of which have survived, in ul. Novikowa (today's name) . On the basis of the German-Soviet non-aggression pact of August 24, 1939 and as a result of the Soviet invasion of Poland on September 17, 1939, western Belarus came under Soviet rule. In 1940 the place with its strong Jewish majority became the center of the Damachava Rajon, which existed until 1956. Damachava was located in a recreation area, where many tourists traveled during the "Polish period".

German crimes during the Second World War

Damachava is known in Belarus because the German occupiers murdered 54 children in a children's home here. However, the murder of practically the entire population of the village is largely unknown - of the 3,950 living here in 1940, around 3,800 were Jews.

In 1941 there were many cadres sent from the east of the country to build up the Soviet power in Damachava; they were the first victims of the Nazis, their children were sent to the home.

Murder of the local Jews

In 1941 the Germans set up a ghetto in the village, to which the 15 Jewish children from the children's home were also brought. In September 1942 the Jews were forced to dig mass graves. They were then shot. The police and Gestapo shot 1,900 people on September 18, 1942. A total of 3,800 residents of the place were murdered. The Belarusian Anton Sawanyuk , who had lived in England under the name Anthony Sawoniuk since mid-1945, was arrested in 1996 for involvement in this crime and sentenced in 1999 to twice life imprisonment for the murder of 16 Jews. He died in prison in 2005.

54 children in the home are murdered

In 1939 there were around 100 children in the children's home, after the brief Polish-Soviet war in 1939, more orphans came , some of the children from the home were taken in by local residents. The Soviet administration sent the older children to work or study.

In the evening of September 23, 1942, a truck came to the children's home, which was supposed to take the children to Brest for a medical examination. The educator Polina Grocholskaja went with the children. The 54 children and Grocholskaya had to undress in the forest near the village of Dibiza, a few kilometers north of Damachava , and were shot. The murder was observed by residents of the village. Some of the names of those responsible and the murderers can be found in the report of the investigative commission.

A total of four children escaped the murderers: the nine-year-old (born 1933) Tosja Shachmetowa and the twelve-year-old Viktor Abramov jumped from the truck when the guard was distracted and hid, Tosja lived in the village of Sławatycze on the other side of the city during the war Bug, where she was found after being liberated by her father. Lucina Funk, the child of a Polish officer who was probably shot by the NKVD and a nurse from Brest who had died in the fighting in 1939, was walking when the other children were picked up. She lives in Gdańsk (autumn 2007). A Jewish girl, Anja (according to other information: Olga) Kowalerowa fled the ghetto and survived. At the time the report of the investigative commission was drawn up, she was “for upbringing” (“na vospitanii”) with the Polish priest Stanisław Nowak. Her further fate is unknown.

The reason for the murder in Belarus is the German endeavor to get rid of superfluous eaters after the home management asked for food. More recent source studies, on the other hand, have shown that a building for an ethnic German kindergarten was needed when ethnic Germans were supposed to move to closed settlements because of the growing risk of partisans . The children were "handed over to the SD".

Commemoration

Memorial for the 54 murdered children in care near the village of Leplewka on the road to Damachava.

A memorial in the Damachava cemetery commemorates the murdered Jews . The Soviet memorial, erected in 1956, did not mention the Jewish background of the dead, but after the collapse of the Soviet Union it was supplemented with marble tablets bearing the names of a few dozen victims and explaining that the dead were prisoners of the Jewish ghetto.

In 1956/57 a memorial was erected on the main street leading to Damachava to commemorate the murdered children in the home. In 1987 it was replaced by the monument by the artist A. Soljatyzki "Protest". The impressive monument shows four naked, desperate children practically floating in the air.

In 2005, a new memorial replaced an older facility at the site of the shooting in the forest near the village of Dubiza. A 15-year-old pupil from the local school won the competition for the design of the monument. In addition to information about the location, it also bears the names and ages of the 30 children who were shot and killed by name. This monument, to which a forest path leads, can hardly be found without a local guide.

Two of the buildings that were once used by the children's home have been preserved to the present day and are now used as residential buildings. However, there are no memorial plaques here.

In Damachava two other monuments commemorate the time of the Second World War: an obelisk erected in 1951 on the grave of 77 Soviet soldiers and the sculpture of a soldier with a submachine gun are dedicated to the Red Army soldiers who fell in July 1944 (communisticheskaya street). A memorial plaque has been hanging on the supermarket building since 1983 in memory of Aleksej Aleksandrovitsch Novikow, who is said to have inflicted heavy losses on the Germans who attacked on June 22, 1941 before he was killed on June 23, hidden in a hollow oak tree.

Economy, culture and social issues

Due to the wooded environment, forestry is practiced in and around Damachava . There is a furniture business in the village, there is also a mill and a bread factory. Damachava has a kindergarten, a middle school, a library , a “House of Culture” and a cinema. A smaller hospital, sanatoriums and a home for the elderly and disabled are available to the population.

traffic

Diesel trains run from Brest to Damachawa (direction Tamaschouka ), which are regularly checked by members of the border troops, as well as regular taxis . For the purchase of tickets by foreigners, the submission of the police permit to enter the area is required.

Population development

• 1860-1104
• 1876-1,789
• 1886-636
• 1897 - 1,029
• 1905 - 1,163
• 1921 - 1,504
• 1940 - 3,950
• 1959 - 4,266
• 2005 - 1,299

literature

• Browning, Christopher: murder of Jews. Nazi politics, forced labor and the behavior of the perpetrators. Frankfurt 2001.
• Christian Ganzer: "" Revolution "in the Brest Heimatmuseum." In: Olga Kurilo (ed.): The Second World War in the Museum: Continuity and Change , Berlin 2007, pp. 149–157. ISBN 978-3-930064-82-3
• Christian Gerlach : Calculated murders. The German economic and extermination policy in Belarus 1941 to 1944. Hamburg 1999.
• Harada i vëski Belarusi. Bresckaja woblasc. Kniha I. Minsk 2006 (Harada i vëski Belarusi. Encyklapedija. Vol. 3).
• Pamjac '. Brėscki Raën. Minsk 1999.
• Saryčev, Vasilij: V poiskach utračënnogo vremini. Ljucinka, doč '"špitalja" In: Večernyj Brest, January 12, 2007.
• Svod Pamjatnikov istorii i kultury Belorussii. Brestskaya oblast '. Minsk 1990 (Svod Pamjatnikov istorii i kultury narodov SSSR).
• Witowski, Kazimierz: Kresy - Ocalona pamięć. Konin 2004.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Harada i vëski, p. 107.
2. ↑ Harada i vëski, p. 107f.
3. ↑ Harada i vëski, p. 107f.
4. ↑ The incomplete list with the names of these children in Witowski: Kresy, p. 108.
5. ↑ Act o zlodejanijach nemecko-fašistskich zachvatčikov v Domačevskom rajone Brestskoj oblasti , from February 28, 1945. State Archives of the Brest Oblast ', fund no. 51, Opis' No. 1, ed. chr. No. 195, Bl. 1-7, here Bl. 6.
6. ↑ Gerlach: Morde, p. 716. Browning: Judenmord, p. 202. Svod Pamjatnikov, p. 134 gives the number of 2,700 Jews murdered that day. The manual of detention centers for civilians ..., p. 12 and p. 88 makes reference to sources in the Brest State Archives (f. 514, op. 1, d. 195, p. 11 (back), p. 51-56 ) the statement that a total of 20,000 people were killed in this ghetto. Furthermore, a file from the State Archives of the Russian Federation is referred to: f. 7021, op.83, d. 14, p. 8. It is unclear exactly where this number comes from. It is not found in the Brest sources cited.
7. ↑ Harada i vëski, p. 108.
8. ↑ "Sawoniuk - a hidden life exposed." In: BBC News , April 1, 1999 and: Valer Kalinoŭski: "Oŭld Bėjli sudzic 'Antona Savanjuka." In: Naša Niva ( Memento of the original from April 7, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , April 13, 1999 
9. ^ State Archives of the Brest Oblast, Fond No. 51, Opis' No. 1, ed. chr. No. 195, p. 77. The testimonies are also available in the archive sources (p. 79-96).
10. ^ State Archives of the Brest Oblast, Fond No. 51, Opis' No. 1, ed. chr. No. 195, pp. 77f.
11. ↑ She later married and took the name Chludzińska. She lives in Gdańsk. Witowski: Kresy, p. 124.
12. ↑ Saryčev, V poiskach ...
13. ↑ Act No. 1 o zverstvach nemecko-fašistskich merzavcev v rajonom center Domačevo, Brestkoj oblasti. S. 1. State Archives of the Brest Oblast ', Fond No. 51, Opis' No. 1, ed. chr. No. 195, Bl. 51-74, here Bl. 51 and Bl. 54. Here the girl is called "Anja". A list of children on p. 69. Act o izdevatel'stvach i rasstrele detej Domačevskogo detskogo doma, Brestskoj oblasti, BSSR, from November 25, 1944. p. 2. State Archives of the Brest Oblast ', fund no. 51, Opis' No. 1, ed. chr. No. 195, p. 75-78, here p. 76. Here you can find the name "Olja".
14. ^ State Archives of the Brest Oblast ', Fond No. 51, Opis' No. 1, ed. chr. No. 195, p. 54.
15. ↑ Gerlach: Morde, p. 126 and p. 1075.
16. ↑ Svod Pamjatnikov, p. 134.
17. ↑ Ganzer, 'Revolution', pp. 149f.
18. ^ Photo of the memorial plaque for Aleksej Aleksandrovitsch Novikow
19. ↑ Svod Pamjatnikov, p. 134.
20. ↑ Harada i vëski, p. 107f.
21. ↑ Harada i vëski, p. 107f.

Web links

• Damachava information portal