Ushachi

Jews first settled in Ushachi in the mid-17th century. During the early Soviet period Ushachi had a Yiddish school. Some of the town's Jews worked on a local kolkhoz; others were artisans. In 1923 Ushachi's 861 Jews comprised 63 percent of the total population. In the late 1930s about 500 Jews remained in the town. After World War II began Jewish refugees from Poland arrived in Ushachi with reports of German brutality toward Polish Jews. The Germans occupied Ushachi on July 3, 1941. Only ten Jewish families, most of them headed by white-collar workers in Party or state-owned institutions, are known to have evacuated to the east. After their arrival, the Germans subjected the local Jews to abuse and required them to wear a yellow Star of David on their chests and backs. Jews were forbidden to shop, including at the market, and were made to carry out grueling labor. In October 1941 the 460 Jews in Ushachi were concentrated in a ghetto established on the street where the synagogue was located. About a month later the ghetto was surrounded with barbed wire and placed under Belarusian police guard. Living conditions in the ghetto were appalling: the buildings were little more than hovels and some inmates starved or froze to death. The Germans appointed a man named Azriel Nemtsov to be the "elder" or head of the Jews. When several Belarusians warned the inhabitants that pits were being readied during the days preceding the liquidation of the ghetto, a few Jews managed to escape. The remaining Jews were murdered on January 12, 1942, near the local Russian Orthodox cemetery. Several days after the operation about 200 Jews from Kublichi were brought to the Ushachi ghetto. They set fire to a house in the ghetto and tried to escape. Some perished in the fire while others were shot to death. Ushachi was liberated by the Red Army on June 29, 1944.