The beginning of the German occupation marked the start of the persecution of Mozyr’s Jews. In September 1941, German soldiers gathered approximately 200 Jews in groups of thirty to forty, took them to the Jewish cemetery on Pushkin Street, forced them to dig graves, and then killed them all. After the war, five mass graves with dozens of bodies in each were discovered in the Mozyr Jewish cemetery.
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Written Testimonies
Soviet Reports
The Story of Basya Pikman:
I went back upstairs. Golda Bobrovsky was praying. Toward evening the Germans and policemen came. They asked me: ”Where are the Jews here?” I answered that I did not know, because I was not from this area. Just then they spotted old Golda. They attacked and beat her with rifle butts. I ran out and hid in the corn. The landlady came and said: “Stay here. They’re looking for you.” It was a very brilliant sunset. I waited for them to come…But they left. I changed clothes and stole out of the town. I decided to make my way through the front. In the village of Kozenki I met a plumber who had come from Mozyr. I had seen him in the Bobrovsky apartment. He said that Golda had been bayoneted and that her body had been discarded near the cemetery.
Ehrenburg, Ilya and Grossman, Wassili. The black book : the ruthless murder of Jews by German-Fascist invaders throughout the temporarily-occupied regions of the Soviet Union and in the death camps of Poland during the war of 1941-1945 . New York : Holocaust Library, 1981, pp. 204-205.
Mozyr
Jewish cemetery
Murder Site
Belorussia (USSR)
52.049;29.266
Videos
Photos
Basya Ganeles (Pikman) was born in 1916 in Mozyr, and visited the town during the war years. (Interview in Russian)