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The Holocaust in Zhlobin District was the systematic persecution and extermination of Jews in the territory ofZhlobin District ofGomel Region by the occupation authorities ofNazi Germany and their collaborators in 1941–1944 duringWorld War II, as part of the policy of the "Final Solution of the Jewish Question". It was a component ofthe Holocaust in Belarus and the Holocaust of European Jewry.
The Zhlobin district was fully occupied by German troops in August 1941, and the occupation lasted more than three years until July 1944.[1] The Nazis incorporated the Zhlobin district into the territory administratively assigned to the rear area of Army Group Center. The field commandant's offices (Feldkommandanturen) and local commandant's offices (Ortskommandanturen) held full authority in the district.[1]
To implement the policy of genocide and carry out punitive operations, immediately following the troops, punitive units of theSS,Einsatzgruppen,Secret Field Police (Geheime Feldpolizei) andGestapo arrived in the district.
In all the major villages of the district, district (volost) administrations and police garrisons composed of collaborators were established. Simultaneously with the occupation, the Nazis and their accomplices began the total extermination of the Jews. "Actions" (the euphemism used by the Hitlerites for the organized mass murders they carried out) were repeated many times in many locations. In those settlements where the Jews were not killed immediately, they were held in ghetto conditions until their complete annihilation, forced to perform heavy and dirty compulsory labor, from which many prisoners died due to unbearable workloads under conditions of constant starvation and lack of medical care. During the occupation, virtually all the Jews of the Zhlobin district were killed, while the few who survived mostly went on to fight inpartisan units afterward.[2][3]