| Brześć Ghetto | |
|---|---|
_2b.jpg) Preserved house with a commemorative plaque at the former ul. Długa street of Brześć ghetto | |
  Brześć location north ofSobibor in World War II | |
| Also known as | Brześć Litewski Ghetto |
| Location | Brześć,German-occupied Poland |
| Date | December 16, 1941 toOctober 15, 1942 |
| Incident type | Imprisonment, starvation, mass shootings |
| Organizations | Nazi SS |
| Victims | 18,000 Polish Jews |
TheBrześć Ghetto or theGhetto in Brest on the Bug, also: Brześć nad Bugiem Ghetto, and Brest-Litovsk Ghetto (Polish:getto w Brześciu nad Bugiem,Yiddish:בריסק or בריסק-ד׳ליטע) was aNazi ghetto created in German occupied Poland (Western Belarus) in December 1941, six months after the German troops had invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941.[1] Less than a year after the creation of the ghetto, aroundOctober 15–18, 1942, most of approximately 20,000 Jewish inhabitants ofBrest (Brześć) were murdered; over 5,000 were executed locally at theBrest Fortress on the orders ofKarl Eberhard Schöngarth;[2] the rest in the secluded forest of theBronna Góra extermination site (the Bronna Mount,Belarusian:Бронная гара), sent there aboardHolocaust trains under the guise of 'resettlement'.[3]
Before World War II, Brześć nad Bugiem (known as Brześć Litewski beforethe partitions, nowBrest, Belarus)[4] was the capital ofPolesie Voivodeship in theSecond Polish Republic (1918–39) with the most visible Jewish presence. In the twenty years of Poland's sovereignty, of the total of 36 brand new schools established in the city, there were ten public, and five private Jewish schools inaugurated, withYiddish and Hebrew as the language of instruction. The first ever Jewish school in Brześć history opened in 1920, almost immediately after Poland's return to independence. In 1936 Jews constituted 41.3% of the Brześć population, or 21,518 citizens. Some 80.3% of private enterprises were owned by Jews. BeforeWorld War I, Brześć (then known as Brest-Litovsk) was controlled by theRussian Empire for a hundred years following thepartitions of Poland,[5] and all commercial activity was largely neglected.[6][7]
Brest-Litovsk was renamed as Brześć nad Bugiem (Brest on the Bug) in theSecond Polish Republic on March 20, 1923.[8] Just before the outbreak of World War II, there was an anti-Jewish riot at thebazaar in Brześć on May 15, 1939. Some Jewish sources categorize it asPolish although ethnic Belarusians constituted 17.8% of the population,[6] andpreached militant nationalism among its youth similar to local Ukrainians and Russians, under systematic indoctrination by Soviet emissaries.[9][10]
_WITH_SISTER_RACHEL_AND_LATE_BROTHER_HERZL_WITH_THEIR_PARENTS_IN_THEIR_HOME_TOWN_IN_POLAND._%25D7%25AA%25D7%25A6%25D7%259C%25D7%2595%25D7%259D_%25D7%259E%25D7%25A9%25D7%25A4%25D7%2597%25D7%25AA%25D7%2599_%25D7%25A9%25D7%259C_%25D7%259E%25D7%25A0%25D7%2597D690-049.jpg)
In September 1939 during the German andSoviet invasion of Poland, the town of Brześć (Brest) was overrun by the German troops and handed over to the Russians during theGerman–Soviet military parade in Brest-Litovsk on September 22, 1939. The whole province was soonannexed by the Soviet Union followingmock elections by theNKVD secret police, conducted among the locals in the atmosphere of fear and terror.[11] The mass deportations of Poles and Jews toSiberia followed.[12]
The German armed forces launchedOperation Barbarossa against the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941, and Brześć was captured the same day.[13] On 24 June 1941, a 15-manSicherheitspolizei detachment, commanded by SS-Untersturmführer Schmidt, arrived in Brześć.[13] On December 16, 1941, the Germans placed Brest under the administration of theReichskommissariat Ukraine and established aNazi ghetto in the city for some 18,000Polish Jews,[2][14] who still resided there after months of deportations andad hoc mass executions. On July 10–12, 1941 the GermanEinsatzgruppe underSS-ObergruppenführerKarl Eberhard Schöngarth massacred 5,000 Jews including 13-year-old boys and 70-year-old men in a single night.[2] TheOrder Police battalions passing through Brześć and Białystok carried out significantly larger shooting actions.[12] "The first massacre of Brest Jews – wroteChristopher Browning – was perpetrated not by the notoriousEinsatzgruppen but rather byPolice Battalion 307 with Wehrmacht support, in mid-July, on the orders of Himmler's chief of Order Police,Kurt Daluege.".[15]
In August 1941 the Germans extracted a payment of some 26 million rubles worth of cash and valuables from the Jews of Brześć.[13]
On 15 October 1942, Jews were rounded up for "relocation", and murdered over execution pits north-east of the city at the Bronna Mount (Bronna Góra) forest. A few hundred Jews: infirm, Jewish police, hospital personnel, children at the children's home, and elderly at the home for the retired were killed in the ghetto itself. In the course of 2 days, some 16,000 were killed. Resistance organizations formed by Jews in the camp, "Liberation" and "Revenge", planned on attacking the Germans during the liquidation to create a diversion allowing Jews to escape. These plans were foiled by the Germans who were informed of these plans.[13]
Some Jews managed to avoid the liquidation by going into hiding. The local police, consisting of Poles as well as Belarusians and Ukrainians, conducted regular searches for hiding Jews. Captured Jews were either shot by the police, or sent to prison. Some 300 to 400 Jews captured and held in the prison were subsequently transported by train to Baranowicze.[13]
Members of the communist underground acquired identification cards, at the end of 1941, for several individuals preventing their expulsion. Several families were hidden by the family of the head of the local communist underground P. Zhulikov (who perished himself in 1943). Following the recapture of the city by the Red Army in July 1944, only some 20 Jews are known to have survived in Brześć.[13] Recognized rescuers from the Brześć area include P. Grigoriewicz, Maria i Ignacy Kurianowiczowie, W. Niesterenko, A. Łabasiuk, A. Stelmaszuk. P. Makaren (for saving a young boy named M. Engelman and sisters Maria and Szulamit Kacaf) and Sofia and Piotr Gołowczenko (for saving Izrael, Nechemii and Lii Mankierów).[16][17][better source needed] A Polish priest, Father Jan Urbanowicz,Dean of the Holy Cross Parish in Brześć, was also executed by the Germans in June 1943 for aiding Jews.[18][need quotation to verify]
In February 2019, a mass grave — 40 meters in length and 2 meters deep — was discovered at a construction site located in the former ghetto. By March 2019, over 1,214 human bodies had been recovered from the mass grave, along with shoes, clothes, and other personal items. The Jewish community of Brest, and theSimon Wiesenthal Center requested that the site become an official Holocaust memorial.[19][20]
Another manhunt took place on 12 July 1941. Germans stormed homes at night and took out and killed over 5,000 people, including children and the elderly. The July massacre was organised and carried out in full by the Krakow SD team commanded by SSOberführer Schongart.[11.4] According to a testimony by Heinrich, who served in the 107th police battalion, the mass shooting of Brześć Jews took place on 10 July 1941.
{{cite book}}:|work= ignored (help)...in grossen Massen, die in die mehrere Tausend gehen, sind der Aufwieglung verdächtigte Juden erschossen worden. — General Wiegand(SS-Oberführer Arpad Wiegand)
{{cite book}}:ISBN / Date incompatibility (help)52°6′N23°42′E / 52.100°N 23.700°E /52.100; 23.700
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