Nevel

The Jewish community of Nevel dates back to the eighteenth century. The town was part of the Pale of Settlement. In 1925, the unofficial Committee of Rabbis in the USSR established the Nevel Seminary for rabbis and ritual slaughters; Soviet authorities shut the institution down in 1928. Altogether, 3,178 Jews lived in Nevel in January 1939, accounting for 20 percent of the total population. The Germans occupied Nevel on July 15, 1941. A number of Nevel’s Jews managed to evacuate the town, along with refugees who had fled from other localities. On August 7, 1941, the Germans and local policemen transferred the remaining Jews two kilometers away, along the Leningrad Road, to Golubaya Dacha, where a ghetto had been set up in several buildings. All of Nevel’s Jews were murdered in 1941, some in Golubaya Dacha; another 200 were gathered on one of the hills in Petino and shot into an anti-tank trench. No further details concerning the latter incident are known. The Red Army liberated Nevel on October 6, 1943.