Murder Story of Bogushevsk Jews at the Bogushevsk Dairy

…The first shooting of innocent residents of Bogushevsk took place on September 5, 1941. On that night members of the underground and partisans planned an operation. The partisans launched an attack at a junction on the road from Vitebsk to Bogushevsk. At the same time the members of the underground threw a grenade at the office of the [Nazi] commandant.... Two German trucks were hit but two others that were still intact and were carrying German soldiers repelled the attack of the partisans. Then the policemen ordered a trench to be dug. They collected whatever residents they could find on a square on the outskirts of Bogushevsk and the German commander Haufman said that if they didn't hand over the partisans, then every tenth or fifth one of the local residents there on the square would be shot. No one stepped out to denounce them. Then they [the Germans] selected the Jews in the group. Before the war Bogushevsk was a shtetl and many Jews lived there. They took 87 Jews from the group, 10 of them were children from nursing infants to the age of ten. First they shot them and then they killed those whom they suspected of being in contact with the partisans. On that day 115 people were killed. It was Germans and policemen who did the shooting. Then policemen were left to guard the pit. They covered the pit with earth and a tank was used to flatten it but the pit still heaved for three days. There were still some Jews left in the town. Some had gone to join the partisans. Boris Abramovich Bolotin was the commissar of a partisan unit. The Krivosheevs youngest son, Iashka, was a partisan. He was captured in 1943 and shot behind the bakery. Iashka's mother was Belarusian and his father, who was then no longer alive, was Jewish. Iashka's sisters (except for Sonia) were already grown up and had moved away. Behind the bakery they [also] shot other people, including Mikhail Zaitsev, who had been chairman of the kolkhoz before the war, for being in contact with the partisans. In the center of town there was a two-story school, the building had been brought [to the town] between 1928 and 1930 from the estate of Pan Bogushvsky from the village of Koronino (or Korovino). The school was surrounded by three rings of barbed wire. Policemen were stationed there. That is where people were tortured and interrogated and from there taken by truck to the forest on the outskirts of the village. To the swamp at Osetki. The swamp was a deep one. Some people were shot there, others were simply drowned. They killed very many people there. I was told about these murders by Auntie Daria, my neighbor, who died long ago; in fact her grandchildren have already died. She lived not far from the school and heard the cries of the victims and the noise of the trucks. She saw how truckloads of prisoners were taken by policemen. Residents of nearby villages also saw something. There were Jews there and also non-Jews who were suspected of being in contact with the partisans. During the war it was forbidden to speak about this and after the war no one wanted to. … …In 1957 a Party district committee office was built. The pit that was dug for the construction was 40 meters deep. At that time they decided to rebury the victims. The opened the graves and put their remains into wooden boxes. The Jews were reburied in the Jewish cemetery and a monument was erected. The Russians and Belarusians who could be identified were buried in the [local] park, together with the soldiers who liberated the town. Some people could be identified by their clothes…. When the [Soviet] artillery retreated in 1941, one of them was Senior Lieutenant Pavel Semenovich Blyakhman, a native son of Bogushevsk. His mother had remained in the town and was killed with the other Jews. His brother fought in Ukraine with the tank forces. After the war he learned that his mother had been killed and he did not visit the town until 1975. In 1975 he came and visited the cemetery, where there was a common grave. At that time there was already a monument at the site. Blyakhman constructed a fence (he had brought the material from Novogrudok, where he was living). From that time until the end of his life he visited the cemetery every year, painting, repairing, and keeping it clean…. …. Before the war Abram Khatskelevich was head of the [local] machine and tractor station. He succeeded in evacuating everything possible, down to the last screw. Close to Smolensk, from where he was supposed to travel [further] to escape the Germans, a German attack cut off the road. Movshovich had to return. He arrived there in early September. He spent the night in the entry of his home. A neighbor caught sight of him and reported him right away to the Germans. He and [the Jews] Shkolnik and Eidlin, an old woman who had hid in the cabbage plot in her yard, were shot to death after the mass murder near the house of culture. After the war Movshovich's son, Mikhail Abramovich, a pilot, found their grave. He said to some [local] peasants "I didn't have 10 fathers, look for his body, guys." They wrapped up the three bodies and buried them. …. A memorial was dedicated on August 18, 2007. On that day we had had a festival of ethnic culture. Members of various ethnic groups took part. There was a large concert and even ethnic foods. At that time we issued a guide to the Jewish cemetery, even two editions of it. Children from the [local] school take care of the graves and keep them clean. We had photographed all this. We showed an album with the photos. The initiator of the erection of the monument and the organizer of its preparation and installation was Liubov Emelianovna Rubeko, who was then head of the executive committee of the council of our settlement. The monument was designed by Mikhail Alexandrovich Beliavskii, who worked as an artist in our house of culture. The monument was dedicated by Shulman. On the 5th of September every year the school children visit the shooting site and bring flowers, but we [Jews] no longer bring flowers to the reburial site but rather small stones. We learned that this is the Jewish custom.

The shooting of the Jews in Bogushevsk took place on August 9, 1941 in the very center of town, on the square, opposite the former office of the raikom (county committee), which now houses a hospital…. …The Germans and policemen began to force the people, both Russians and Jews, to the square in front of the department store, near the raikom. The executioners arrived….. All [of the victims] were forced into a single line. The Germans began to check people's identity papers: Russians to one side, Jews to the other…. … The Russian women and children were released immediately; the [Russian] men and all the Jews were shot to death…..A total of 86 Jews were shot….The policemen were ordered to bury the Jews. They were buried in the space between the department store and the next building. They didn't have time to confiscate the possessions of the Jews so when they buried them the police tore the gold [rings] from the Jews' fingers...