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Baranowicze

Community
Baranowicze
Poland
Students of Epsztejn's Gymnasium, 1935
Students of Epsztejn's Gymnasium, 1935
YVA, Photo Collection, 6853
Baranowicze emerged as a town after 1871, following the opening of a railway station on a new line near a small village of the same name. By the late 1870s, Baranovichi (Baranowicze) was already a key railway hub in western Belorussia, and a settlement had sprung up around it. The new town attracted Jewish settlers, and in 1897 it had 2,171 Jewish residents, who comprised 46.3 precent of the total population. A Jewish cemetery was opened there as early as the 1880s. In the early 1900s, the town had a cell of the leftist Bund party, and some Zionist circles. In 1910, Baranowicze was home to two misnagdic yeshivas affiliated with the Mussar movement, Ohel Torah and Toras Hesed.

In the final period of World War I, and especially after the Polish-Soviet War of 1919-20, when Baranowicze became part of independent Poland, some Jewish religious leaders made the town their home. In 1918, the admor (spiritual leader) of the Slonim Hassids, Avrom (Avraham) Weinberg, reopened the Toras Hesed yeshiva in Baranowicze. In 1921, the 6th admor of the Koidanov Hasids left Soviet Russia and settled in Polish Baranowicze. That same year, R. Elchonon (Elchanan) Wasserman also left Russia for Baranowicze, where he headed the misnagdic Ohel Torah.

In 1921, Baranowicze was home to 7,796 Jews, who made up 67.9 percent of the total population. Ten years later, the local Jewish community had 9,680 members, making up 42.4 percent of the total population. It seems likely that, by 1939, there were approximately 10,000 Jews in the town, comprising about 40 percent of the total population. Local Jewish children had access to a wide range of schools, from the Polish-language szabasówka (which did not work on Saturdays), through the Yiddishist leftist TsYSHO school and the Hebrew-language school of the Tarbut network, to the strictly Orthodox Yesodei Torah school for boys and the Beit Yaakov school for girls. The Zionist movement in Baranowicze and the surrounding region was represented by the HeHalutz movement, the leftist Poale Zion and Hashomer Hatzair (the latter had some 1,000 followers in Baranowicze and its vicinity), the religious HaMizrachi, and, from the late 1920s, by the rightist Beitar. Six Yiddish newspapers were published in the town in the period 1928-1939.

In September 1939, World War II broke out, and Baranowicze was occupied by the Red Army. The Soviets nationalized the industry and trade, and disbanded the non-communist organizations, including the Bund and the Zionist groups. They secularized the Jewish educational institutions in the town, making Yiddish the sole language of instruction. Thousands of Jewish refugees from the German-occupied areas of Poland arrived in Baranowicze in those months. Although the Soviet authorities tried to move the refugees eastward (mainly to eastern Belorussia) and put them to some work, there were at least 3,000 refugees, mostly Jews, remaining in Baranowicze in mid-1940. The Soviet regime offered the refugees Soviet citizenship; many of them declined. As a result, in 1940 alone some 2,500 of them were deported to the Russian North and to Siberia. On the eve of the German invasion of the USSR, there were some 12,000 Jews in the town.

German troops entered Baranowicze on June 27, 1941, the sixth day of the Soviet-German War. As early as June 30, a Jewish council was set up. That same day, the Nazis carried out the first murder operation in the town, killing thirty-six Jewish physicians. A week later, seventy-three Jews were shot as alleged Communists. Small-scale killings of Jews continued throughout 1941, with at least 400 Jews dying at the hands of the Nazis and their collaborators in late June and July 1941 alone. The Jews were required to perform forced labor and subjected to various prohibitions – e.g., on having contacts with non-Jews, leaving the town, and using the sidewalks. Following the establishment of Generalkommissariat Weissruthenien on September 1, 1941, Baranowicze was made the center of a Gebiet (district) within it; thus, it became the seat of the Gebietskommissar and his staff, and of two battalions of the Wehrmacht’s 707th Security Division. It was also the headquarters of the German SiPo (Security Police) and SD, and of the Latvian and Lithuanian auxiliary police units.

Various “contributions” and “ransom payments” were periodically imposed on the Jews of Baranowicze – in money, valuables, securities, clothing, utensils, and even soap. On at least two occasions, in July and September 1941, the Nazi demand for payment was accompanied by the taking of Jewish hostages. Upon receiving the ransom payment, the Germans declared that the hostages had been killed. In December 1941, a ghetto was established in the southern section of the town. It was surrounded with a 2.5-meter-tall barbed wire fence. A number of Jews from nearby villages were moved into the ghetto. Remarkably, Jewish medical personnel were allowed to live outside the ghetto and continue their medical practice among non-Jews.

On March 4-5, 1942, two days after the Purim holiday, the Nazis carried out the first mass murder of local Jews, killing some 2,000 of them. They then ordered the Jewish police to cover the mass graves of the victims with soil. This done, the Germans shot the policemen themselves, along with Ovsey Izykson, chairman of the Jewish Council, and his secretary. After the first massacre, the Jews of Baranowicze, anticipating additional Nazi murder operations, began to build bunkers, hoping to hide in them. Some of the young started procuring weapons, intending to offer resistance. Several of the medical workers living outside the ghetto fence were moved into the ghetto. On July 4, 1942, thirteen physicians were shot.

After the March massacre, the Germans brought some Jews from elsewhere to the Baranowicze Ghetto. The new arrivals came from Mołczadź, Horodiszcze, Nowa Mysz, Nowojelnia, other nearby townlets and villages, and even from much more remote settlements, such as Kleck and Stołpce. Conversely, 654 Jewish workers from Baranowicze were moved to Mołodeczno in August 1942.

On July 31, 1942, 999 Jews from the Theresienstadt Ghetto were murdered in Baranowicze, in the Gai Forest.

On September 22-October 2, 1942, the Germans carried out the second mass murder of Jews in Baranowicze. The operation was planned for September 22, the day after Yom Kippur. However, the Jews of Baranowicze were able to hide in the bunkers they had constructed after the first massacre, and the police spent eleven days, until October 2, searching for these shelters. Some Jews offered resistance, and, according to survivors' accounts, the perpetrators sustained losses. Some of the Jews rounded up on September 22 were loaded into gas vans and killed in them; the rest were escorted south of Baranowicze and shot near the village of Grabowiec (Hrabavets). According to various estimates, 5,000-6,000 people were buried in the vicinity of Grabowiec.

On December 17, 1942, the final massacre took place, resulting in the liquidation of the Baranowicze Ghetto. All of its inmates, except for a small group of workers, were killed in the area of Grabowiec. The clearing of the ghetto took several weeks, because, just like in September, many Jews had gone into hiding. Most probably, some 3,000 Jews were killed in December 1942-January 1943, although some estimates of the number of victims run higher. The Jewish workers who had been spared by the Nazis in December 1942 were killed in the fall of 1943.

Supposedly, 750 Jews managed to escape from the Baranowicze Ghetto. Some 250 local Jews survived until the end of the war.

Baranowicze was liberated by the Red Army on July 8, 1944.

Baranowicze
Baranowicze District
Nowogrodek Region
Poland (today Belarus)
53.132;26.025
Students of Epsztejn's Gymnasium, 1935
YVA, Photo Collection, 6853
A Jewish House in Baranowicze
Center for Jewish Art, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Copy YVA 15043223