Testimony of Mikhail Minkovicz, born in Polotsk, Belarus, 1927, regarding his experiences in Polotsk, Borovukha, Osveya, Svolno and the region

Testimony of Mikhail Minkovicz, born in Polotsk, Belarus, 1927, regarding his experiences in Polotsk, Borovukha, Osveya, Svolno and the region Testimony of a tradition-keeping family in Polotsk; his parents work in a wine factory; his father's visits to a synagogue; studies in a Russian elementary school; closure of a Jewish school in the city, 1938. The outbreak of war, June 1941; the bombings; family escape to Sukhoy Bor; German occupation of the area; back to Polotsk; arrest of his brother by German soldiers and his murder with other Jews in the Borovukha area; establishment of a ghetto in the city; deportation with parents to the ghetto; yellow badges; transfer to a wire-fenced closed ghetto in a brick factory, September 1941; hunting; confiscation of valuables; Belarusian collaborators; deportation to Borovukha, November 1941; execution of his parents and all the Jews of the ghetto; escape alone to the forest; back to Polotsk; hiding places with families of acquaintances of the Belarusian father; wandering; arrival of a Jewish family in Osveya; typhoid; escape to Svolno for the Yulia Sobolevskaya family, spring 1942; escape to the forests; joining the partisans. Liberation by the Red Army, the summer of 1944; aliya to Israel in 1992.