Bronnaya Gora extermination camp

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The extermination camp Bronnaja Gora ( Russian : Бронная Гора; Belarusian : Бронная Гара, Bronnaja Hara) was an extermination site set up by the Germans in 1942 near the village of Bronnaja Gora in the Bjarosa district of Breszkaya Woblasz in Belarus . More than 50,000 people were murdered here.

History of the camp

The railroad track that led to the shooting site now runs through a grove of birch trees. The trees were planted to cover up the traces of the crime. On the left the newer monument. (2007)

On June 24, 1941, two days after the German invasion of the Soviet Union , German troops occupied the village of Bronnaya Gora. In May and June 1942, German authorities set up an extermination site about 400 meters northwest of the Bronnaya Gora train station.

The information on this extermination camp is sparse, as there are apparently no survivors and hardly any German sources. A few testimonies were recorded in 1944 by the “Special Commission to Investigate the Crimes of the German-Fascist Conquerors in the Brest Region”. Duplicates of these documents can be viewed in the Breszkaya Woblasz State Archives in Fond No. 514. The originals are believed to be in Moscow archives.

Eight pits, each 12 to 63 meters long, 4.5 to 6.5 meters wide and 3.5 to 4 meters deep, were dug on either side of a siding leading to a former military supply store of the Red Army . In June and September 1942, up to 600 civilians from the surrounding villages were conscripted for this purpose . It has not yet been clarified which German agency actually initiated this work. As of mid-June 1942 trains arrived here with the murder of certain civilians - mostly Jews - at. These came from camps , ghettos and prisons in the area. The first to be killed here in June 1942 were the Jews interned in "Ghetto B" in Beresa , around 3,500 people.

Roman Stanislawowitsch Nowis, who was station master of Bronnaya Gora before the German occupation and then worked as a switchman, described the events in a detailed testimony. He was able to observe what was going on very closely, as the railroader's hut and the switch he was in charge of were only about 250 meters away from the pits. According to his information, a total of five transports arrived in Bronnaya Gora in June 1942. The second train with 46 wagons was from the stations Drogitschin , Janowo and Gorodez come. The wagons were again loaded with more than 200 people of different nationalities, the absolute majority of whom were Jews. According to Nowis, the third train with 40 wagons came from Brest. These vehicles were extremely overcrowded. The fourth transport with 18 wagons came from the Pinsk and Kobryn stations , the fifth train again from Brest. Nowis says that he learned that the people brought to Bronnaya Gora in 13 wagons were inmates of the Brest prison. These were Belarusians , Poles and Jews. In September a sixth transport from Beresa with 25 wagons arrived, and at the beginning of October another train with 28 wagons came from Brest. Since the Brest ghetto was dissolved in the days from October 15 to 18, 1942 and 15,000 to 20,000 Jews from Brest near Bronnaya Gora were shot, it must be assumed that Nowis' sparse times are not exactly accurate. All the trains also brought the dead who were apparently crushed or suffocated during the journey.

In the literature there is sometimes the statement that the Germans shot the entire population of the village of Bronnaya Gora, around 1,000 people, in order to get rid of unwanted witnesses. The Komsomolskaya Pravda on October 12, 1944 reported it. The high number, which corresponds so little with the population of 1940 (175 inhabitants), could possibly be explained by the influx of refugees from the villages and towns in the area devastated by the war . In fact, this information goes back to the testimony of Nowis, who reports that in June 1942 around 800 people who lived in the barracks and other buildings of a former Red Army supply camp not far from the extermination site were shot and in the vicinity been buried in a mass grave .

The course of the shootings is relatively well documented by the testimony of witnesses. The people were transported to the shooting site near Bronnaya Gora by freight trains , which were guarded by members of the military in SS and SD uniforms. They were unloaded wagon by car on a place fenced with barbed wire and forced to completely undress. A small group of death row inmates had to collect the clothes and put them back in the car. The clothes were later loaded onto trucks and transported to a German barracks. After undressing, the people were driven to the prepared pits through corridors bordered by barbed wire. They climbed down over ladders, where they had to lie face down in rows on those who had already been shot and were then shot as well. The firing squads in German military uniforms were brought up in motor vehicles and then driven off again after the murders. From mid-June to late November 1942, more than 50,000 people were killed in this way.

When the defeat of the German Reich became apparent and the Red Army threatened to reach the crime scene , around 100 people were forced to excavate the mass graves for around two weeks in March 1944 and the remains of the murdered victims were to be found in them burn. A combustible liquid and the wood from 48 Soviet storage buildings and military barracks that were located nearby were used as fuel; the fires burned day and night. These people were kept under close guard in a camp at the Bronnaya Gora train station. After this work was completed, they too were killed and burned. Young trees were planted to cover up the crimes on the site of the mass graves and cremation sites. The resulting grove still exists today. The investigative commission found charred remains of bones, remains of women's hair, children's shoes and a child's arm about 18 cm long. The chief physician of the Rajon Hospital in Beresa, Wasilij Demidowitsch Zhukowskij, found on September 15, 1944 at the location of the shootings that many human bones were in the ground at a depth of 3.5 meters and the ground was soaked with corpse mass.

During the German occupation, the prisoner-of-war company 228 c with a capacity of 150 people was temporarily stationed in Bronnaya Gora . This prisoner-of-war camp for soldiers of the Red Army was subordinate to the Minsk-based German Central Railway Directorate. Whether the camp is identical to the camp of those who were forced to dig up the bodies of those shot in March 1944 is likely but has not yet been conclusively determined. There is also apparently no information about the duration of the camp.

Monuments

Memorial to the victims of the Bronnaya Gora extermination camp near the platform. (2012)

Two memorials commemorate the people murdered near Bronnaya Gora . In 1978, an obelisk was erected in the immediate vicinity of the track, which still exists but has obviously not been used for a long time and which was once used to bring people to the shooting site. The monument was renewed in 1994. It now takes up the symbolism of the track: A narrowing track begins at ground level, but then straightens up towards the sky and rises about five meters into the air. A bell is attached high up between the two rails . A stainless steel plaque with a menorah depicted in the upper area explains the meaning of the monument in Belarusian, Hebrew, Yiddish and English: “In memory of the more than 50,000 Soviet citizens and citizens from countries of Western Europe, mostly of Jewish nationality, who lived in were brutally murdered by the fascists in the years of the Great Patriotic War 1941-1945 . "

Second memorial to the victims of the Bronnaya Gora extermination camp. (2012)

The second monument is about 100 meters away. There are two stones with a total of three panels on a fenced area about six by six meters. The low wrought iron fence is decorated with stars of David . The Belarusian-language text of a plaque attached to a boulder reads: "At this place the Hitler fascists destroyed more than 50,000 Soviet citizens and citizens of other countries." The other two plaques can be found on a tombstone-like granite slab. The upper one shows the last wagon of a freight train with a brakeman's cab and in the lower left corner a symbolized eternal flame . On the right there is a Yiddish inscription calling for remembrance (Yiskor) and the names of the places from which the majority of the murdered came. The lower panel shows a star of David and a menorah. Those killed by the National Socialists are blessed in Hebrew and Yiddish. The text ends with the year 5755 and the name Shlomo ben Ascher Weinstein.

literature

  • Christopher Browning : murder of Jews. Nazi politics, forced labor and the behavior of the perpetrators. Frankfurt 2001.
  • Wolfgang Curilla : The German Ordnungspolizei and the Holocaust in the Baltic States and in Belarus 1941-1944 . 2nd edition, Schöningh, Paderborn 2006, ISBN 3-506-71787-1 .
  • Christian Gerlach : Calculated murders. The German economic and extermination policy in Belarus 1941 to 1944. Hamburg 1999.
  • Harada i vëski Belarusi. Bresckaja voblasc '. Kniha I. Minsk 2006 (Harada i vëski Belarusi. Encyklapedija. Vol. 3).
  • Lagerja sovetskich voennoplennych v Belarusi. 1941-1944. Spravočnik. Soviet prisoner of war camp in Belarus. A reference work. Minsk 2004. (Bilingual Russian and German.)
  • Svod Pamjatnikov istorii i kultury Belorussii. Brestskaya oblast '. Minsk 1990 (Svod Pamjatnikov istorii i kultury narodov SSSR).

Sources and Notes

  1. ↑ The place can hardly be called a camp - the people were not held in one place here, but only brought here to be killed immediately. There was also no infrastructure typical of the camp.
  2. ↑ According to Browning, the archive sources used in this article are practically the only information available about Bronnaya Gora. He wrongly gives the name of the place as “Brona-Gora”, Browning, p. 203. Gerlach quotes Ainsztein, according to which some Jews managed to flee from here to Białystok (Gerlach, p. 710). Curilla quotes from German files, although it remains unclear whether the shooting site Bronnaya Gora is mentioned by name in them (Curilla, p. 683).
  3. ↑ The track is not shown on the most accurate map of this area available in Belarus: Karta. Berezovsky rajon. 1: 100000. Minsk 2007.
  4. ↑ Testimony of Gavriil Grigorjewitsch Jazkewitsch, b. 1902, from the village of Saretsche from September 14, 1944. State Archives of the Brest Oblast, f. 514, op. 1, d. 289, p. 6.
  5. ↑ Testimony of Iwan Stepanowitsch Gejz, b. 1908, from the village of Smoljarka from September 15, 1944. State Archives of the Brest Oblast, f. 514, op. 1, d. 289, sheet 8.
  6. ↑ Gerlach, Kalkulierte Morde, p. 710.
  7. ↑ Act o swerstwach, isdewatelstwach, grabeshach i rasruschenijach pritschinennych nemezko-fascistskimi sachwatschikami w rajone Bronnaja Gora, Beresovskogo rajona, Brestskoj Oblasti BSSR of September 15, 1944. State Archives of the Brest Oblast, f. 514, op. 1, d. 273, p. 2. The "act" represents the final report of the special commission. Also: testimony of Iwan Wasilewitsch Gowin, b. 1897, from Novosokolowe, from September 18, 1944. State Archives of the Brest Oblast, f. 514, op. 1, d. 289, p. 12f. Gowin worked as a switchman at the Bronnaya Gora train station during the German occupation. Among other things, he reports that the wagons were overloaded with men, women, children and old people, that screams and tears could be heard from them.
  8. ↑ Harada i vëski Belarusi, p. 165. Also: testimony of Iosif Pawlowitsch Schidlowskij, b. 1920, from the city of Beresa on October 3, 1944. Schidlowskij worked for the Beloruthenian auxiliary police made up of locals for the occupying power and, according to his own statements, took part in cordon measures during the shooting of the Jews from Beresa. However, he states that this action took place in May 1942. A senior member of the SD, Pitschmann , organized and carried it out together with the chief of the gendarmerie in Beresa, Lieutenant Gerdes and the chief of the local police, Nikolaj Stepanowitsch Otlschewskij (spelling mistake in the name in the source?). State Archives of the Brest Oblast, f. 514, op. 1, d. 289, pp. 14-15. See also: Testimony from Roman Stanislawowitsch Nowis, b. 1891 in Warsaw , residing in 1944 in Bronnaja Gora, from September 12, 1944. State Archives of the Brest Oblast, f. 514, op. 1, d. 273, sheet 8 (reverse). According to him, the Jews from Beresa arrived in Bronnaya Gora in June 1942 in 16 wagons , each completely overcrowded with around 200 people. This was the first train to the shooting site. In his memoirs, Moshe Tuchman states July 15, 1942 as the day of the murder of the Jews from "Ghetto B": http://stevemorse.org/bereza-and-antopol/ber-hist3.htm .
  9. ^ State Archives of the Brest Oblast, f. 514, op. 1, d. 273, fol. 8–11 (with a total of 7 pages on the reverse).
  10. ↑ Testimony from RS Nowis, p. 9 (back).
  11. ↑ Testimony from RS Nowis, p. 2.
  12. ↑ Testimony from RS Nowis, p. 9 (back).
  13. ^ Curilla, p. 683.
  14. ↑ Testimony from RS Nowis, p. 9 and testimony from BM Shetinsky, p. 17.
  15. ↑ For example in Harada i vëski Belarusi, p. 165.
  16. ↑ I. Breshowskij: Eto sdelali nemzy! Fabrika smerti na Bronnoj Gore. In: Komsomolskaya Pravda, No. 26, October 12, 1944. (The newspaper is located in the Brest Oblast Museum of Local History under inventory number KP 1882. )
  17. ↑ Testimony from RS Nowis, p. 9 (back). Apparently there is a mistake here with regard to the location of the storage facility: Nowis states that they were located south of the station. Everyone else who mentions this camp stated that it was to the north, on the siding leading to the shooting site. This is also more conclusive, because otherwise these people would not have had to be regarded as witnesses because of the great distance to the location of the shootings: Testimony from BM Shetinsky, sheet 17 (back), GG Jazkewitsch, sheet 6 and back. Cf. Akt o swerstwach ..., p. 3. However, this document speaks of 1,000 murdered people.
  18. ↑ Act o swerstwach ..., p. 2.
  19. ^ Testimony of IP Schidlowskij. IW Gowin also noticed the clothes on the trains returning from the shooting site. See his testimony. Also: testimony from RS Nowis, p. 9. Nowis adds that the hands were checked for rings after undressing. The railroad worker BM Shetinsky, who once came to the shooting site with his German superior, where he would have almost been killed himself without the intervention of this superior, saw the piles of clothes beside the pits. Testimony from BM Schetinsky, p. 17 and reverse.
  20. ↑ Testimony of RS Nowis, p. 9. Act o swerstwach ..., p. 2.
  21. ↑ Testimony from IW Gowin and RS Nowis, p. 10 (back).
  22. ↑ Act o swerstwach ..., p. 3.
  23. ↑ Testimony of IW Gowin and RS Nowis, p. 10. Also: Swod Pamjatnikow, p. 118.
  24. ↑ Akt o swerstwach ..., p. 4. Also: I. Breshowskij: Eto sdelali nemzy! Fabrika smerti na Bronnoj Gore. In: Komsomolskaya Pravda, No. 26, October 12, 1944.
  25. ↑ Act o swerstwach ..., p. 4.
  26. ↑ Medizinskoe sakljutschenie. State Archives of the Brest Oblast, f. 514, op. 1, d. 273, p. 33.
  27. ↑ Lagerja sovetskich woennoplennych, p. 166f.
  28. ↑ Harada i vëski Belarusi, p. 166.
  29. ^ Translation of the Belarusian text: Christian Ganzer. The English and Yiddish versions only - not predominantly - speak of Jews. The Yiddish text also refers to the contribution of Jews to the defense of “the homeland”.
  30. ^ Translation from Belarusian: Christian Ganzer.
  31. ↑ 1994 according to the Gregorian calendar.

Coordinates: 52 ° 37 '  N , 25 ° 5'  E