Railroad Area in Postawy Related Communities
Postawy Related Murder Sites
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Murder story of Postawy Jews in the Railroad Area in Postawy
Murder Site
Railroad Area in Postawy
Poland
The liquidation of the Postawy Ghetto (and of the nearby Duniłowicze Ghetto) took place on November 21-24, 1942, as part of the Nazi anti-partisan Operation Nuremberg. Remarkably, the Soviet partisan movement was not active in this area in 1942. Thus, the "operation" seems more like a pretext for a massacre of Jews. Its main perpetrator was the anti-partisan Kampfgruppe von Gottberg, which was reinforced by local Wehrmacht servicemen, as well as by Ukrainian, Baltic, and Belorussian police units. The police raided the ghetto houses, herded the inmates into adjacent streets, and escorted some of the Jews northward along Bazylianska Street, to pits that had been dug beyond the railway. Other Jews were led along Brasławska Street, northwest of the town center, to pits that had been dug near the railway crossing. The international Postawy community maintains that 4,000 Jews were murdered in November 1942. This figure may include the Jews from nearby Duniłowicze who were killed on the same day.
Related Resources
ChGK Soviet Reports
Mariya Vitkovskaya, who was born in 1893 in Postawy and lived there during the war, testifies:
…The Jews were locked up in a ghetto, and the Germans shot them all later in 1942, both in the ghetto itself (on Brasławska Street and Bazylianska Street) and in the fields near the railway station, and also at the site where the Jews had been arrested.
GARF, MOSCOW R-7021-89-13 copy YVA M.33 / JM/20015
Victor Adamovich, who was born in 1896 in Postawy and lived there during the war, testifies:
The shooting took place both in the ghetto itself and – subsequently – outside the town, beyond the railway tracks adjacent to the [name unclear] in the northern part of town.… Apart from the Jewish cemetery, there are graves both in the park and beyond it, in the southern and southwestern sections of the town of Postawy.
GARF, MOSCOW R-7021-89-13 copy YVA M.33 / JM/20015
Yanina Adamkovich, who was born in 1928 in Postawy and lived there during the war, testifies:
…One day in November 1942, at dawn (about 3-4 AM), the Germans surrounded the ghetto, and the mass extermination of the Jews began. While passing through Brasławska Street, I, too, saw the bodies of murdered women and children, both in the street itself and on the fences. One woman had been shot on the roof of a house…. The bodies of the Jews were buried by the Germans in a field adjoining the railway, 250 meters to the west.
GARF, MOSCOW R-7021-89-13 copy YVA M.33 / JM/20015
Railroad Area in Postawy
railroad
Murder Site
Poland
55.114;26.840