| Zhabinka Ghetto | |
|---|---|
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| Location | Zhabinka |
| Date | 1941 — October 21, 1942 |
Zhabinka Ghetto (1941 — October 21, 1942) was aNazi Jewish ghetto and a place of forced relocation for the Jews of the town ofZhabinka in theZhabinka district of theBrest region during the persecution and extermination of Jews under theNazi occupation of Belarus duringWorld War II.
Before the war, there were 820 Jews in the town of Zhabinka, making up 57.8% of the population. The town was captured by German troops on June 23, 1941, and remained under occupation for over three years, until July 21, 1944.[1] Upon occupying the town, the Nazis destroyed thesynagogue with atank on the same day. ImplementingHitler's plan for the "Final Solution" tothe Jewish question, the Germans immediately began killing Jews.[2] The head of the police in Zhabinka, appointed by the Germans, was "Gudyma", a former officer of theRed Army. The Nazis then herded 1,500 Jews (locals and refugees from other places) into the Zhabinka ghetto. The territory of the Zhabinka ghetto was an area fenced with barbed wire near a swamp on Kobrin Street (now Communist Street), where there were two old synagogues and several semi-destroyed houses without windows and doors.[2]
P. K. Ponomarenko, the party leader ofBelarus, reported on the situation in the occupied regions of Belarus on August 19, 1941, informing the Soviet leadership: "The Jewish population is being mercilessly exterminated... In Zhabinka, 16 Jews were harnessed to a gun and, driven with whips, forced to drag the gun along a sandy road... Such facts are numerous."[3] The Germans and police killed almost all the inmates of the Zhabinka ghetto. 339 Jews were taken and exterminated in theMalorita ghetto, and some Jews were killed in the village of Otechizna (now the settlement ofLeninsky).[2] On October 21, 1942, the last approximately 100 Jews of Zhabinka were shot in the Mukhina Yama tract on the outskirts of the town. Among the Jews killed in Zhabinka was Malka Shliomovna Vysotskaya (married name Duksina), the sister ofVladimir Vysotsky's paternal grandfather.[4]
Local resident, Polish woman Floria Budishevskaya, hid two Jews in her house for almost two years — 12-year-old Roma Levin and her friend Sonia Fefer. In 1944, on the eve of the liberation of the town from the occupiers, a policeman discovered Sonia and killed her. The boy managed to escape and survived. Floria was shot after brutal torture for hiding Jews. She was awarded the honorary title "Righteous Among the Nations" by the Israeli memorial instituteYad Vashem "in deepest gratitude for the help given to the Jewish people during World War II."[5][6]
The Grinberg family, from the moment the Zhabinka ghetto was established, managed to hide in the basement of a school. They made an arrangement with a neighbor that she would supply them with food for a fee. When the Grinbergs ran out of valuables, the neighbor began adding arsenic to the food she brought to get rid of the now "useless" and dangerous burden. Grinberg's wife, a pharmacist by profession, realized this, and her son Jack, then a teenager, slapped the woman. The "savior" was warned that if she betrayed them, she would also have to die for helping Jews. Many years later, after the war, Jack visited Zhabinka and met the woman, who, recalling the incident, said that the slap "still burns."[7][8]
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In total, about 800 Jews were killed in Zhabinka during theHolocaust. A monument was erected for them in 1956.[9]