German forces occupied Stolpce on June 29, 1941. Some Jews tried to flee, but most were turned back by Soviet officials at the old Soviet border or were overtaken by the rapidly advancing German army. A large number of houses were destroyed during the bombardment of the town. Jews who lost their homes had to find shelter with others who had been more fortunate. Within a few days of their arrival, the German military authorities introduced a regime of forced labor for Jews ages 12 to 60 repairing roads and railways, or cleaning German offices. A local police unit was established, which enforced the anti-Jewish regulations.2 After a week, the Germans shot around 200 Jews together with several dozen non-Jews, allegedly as a reprisal for sniper fire directed at German soldiers. A few days later, a number of Jews were assembled at the local stadium. Several were murdered, and the rest were taken to the customs office and forced to perform humiliating labor tasks while being beaten. SS forces arrived in Stolpce and conducted a further action in July 1941. Local Belorussians assisted them, pointing out where the wealthy Jews lived. The Germans then arrested 76 people and shot them in a nearby forest.
About three weeks into the occupation, the German authorities established a Jewish Council (Judenrat). Members of the Judenrat included Wolf Pras, Tunik Boruchanski, and Wajnrach (all from Stolpce), and Witenberg, Kibelski, and Kinerski (refugees from Lodz). The Judenrat was ordered to collect a large financial contribution and also to surrender valuable items and furs. Subsequently the council encountered difficulties in meeting the unceasing German demands for furniture, clothing, linens, and foodstuffs. A Jewish police force was established to assist the Judenrat in carrying out its duties.
From August 1941 until February 1942, the military commandants office (Ortskommandantur) in Stolpce comprised men of the 8th Company, 727th Infantry Regiment, under the command of Lieutenant Gobel.5 In late August or September 1941, the German Ortskommandant established a ghetto in Stolpce.6 The ghetto was located in the worst part of town, and conditions were very overcrowded (up to 30 people sharing a room). The Germans surrounded it with thick barbed wire, and there was only one large gate, guarded by the local police and the Germans. There were no schools in the ghetto, and the rabbis went into hiding, fearing persecution.
In November 1941, men of the 8th Company, 727th Regiment, assisted by the local police, conducted large-scale massacres of the Jews in Nowy Swierzen, Mir, and other nearby places. However, no large-scale action was conducted in Stolpce. From mid-November 1941, German Gendarmerie posts were established in Gebiet Baranowitsche, which assumed control over the local Belorussian police. However, the Gendarmerie outpost in Stolpce was not established until 1942, still remaining subordinated to the larger post in Mir. Among the leaders of the local police in Rayon Stolpce was Jan Szczekalo.
The Jewish survivor, Rochelle Sutin, has described conditions in the ghetto. Initially she was housed in an old meeting hall formerly belonging to the Baptists. Dozens of families were crammed together with only enough room to sleep. There were two wood stoves for cooking and keeping warm, but there was not much to cook, as food rations were limited to stale bread or worse. Sleeping was almost impossible due to the bedbugs in the mattresses, and during the day lice caused her skin to itch and rashes to break out. Those capable of work left the ghetto every day for the sawmill and other places in town, but the many unfit Jews remained behind in the ghetto. Rochelle brought back scraps of bark from the sawmill to be used for heating.
In response to an enquiry made via the Red Cross, the Gendarmerie in Gebiet Baranowitsche reported that three members of the Kapuszczewski family, Israel, Minja, and Nechama, were all Jews living in the Stolpce ghetto in June 1942.10 In the summer of 1942, as news arrived of the uprising in the nearby Nieswie ghetto in July, young Jews in Stolpce prepared to offer armed resistance, secretly gathering weapons and German uniforms. However, in late July or early August 1942, at least 500 able-bodied Jews from the ghetto were selected for work, including some of those in the underground. They were sent to labor camps run by the Organisation Todt in Baranowicze and Minsk. As this selection was not an extermination action, no uprising was staged; the underground feared for the fate of the women and children. Following this selection, about 2,000 Jews remained in the ghetto.
The Gendarmerie in Stolpce planned to carry out a large action against the ghetto on September 23, 1942, ordering the concentration of all local policemen from throughout the Rayon, as well as members of the Latvian Police Battalion based in the town. These forces surrounded the ghetto early in the morning. A squad of the Security Police and SD from Minsk, including non-German auxiliaries, arrived in Stolpce to direct the action. Some 450 Jews were sent to their workplaces, and 750 Jews, most of them women, were shot, while another 850 either managed to flee or remained in hiding in the ghetto. The Gendarmerie post commander, Hauptwachtmeister Wilhelm Schultz, reported that over the following days up to October 2 another 488 Jews, composed mostly of women and children, were brought in and shot under his supervision. Another 350 Jews were killed on October 11, including many more who had attempted to hide among the work Jews living in the reconstituted ghetto. Schultz concluded that after this action there were no children or unfit people remaining.
Following the killings in October, Schultz ordered for the remaining smaller part of the ghetto to be sealed off by a 2.5-meter-high (8-feet-high) wooden fence. Local peasants came to salvage any property of value from the emptied area of the ghetto. The remaining 210 Jews, roughly half men and half women, were employed at the Stohr Company Army Base, at the Luftwaffe Supply Office, and at the Zentrale Handelsgesellschaft Ost (Central Trade Society East, ZHO).13 In November 1942, the Jewish partisan Abraham Zaretski sneaked into the ghetto with the aim of leading out a group of Jews to join the Zhukov partisan detachment in the forest. However, the head of the Judenrat betrayed Zaretski to the Germans, who killed him, as the chairman feared the consequences of such an escape for those Jews who remained.
In December 1942, about 60 Jews fled to the forest after hearing that Schultz was planning a further action; 30 of them returned shortly afterwards, however, when they were offered amnesty. In late January 1943, around 200 Jewish laborers remained in the Stolpce ghetto and about 250 in the sawmill labor camp (former ghetto) in nearby Nowy Swierzen. On Friday, January 29, 1943, about 200 Jews fled from the Nowy Swierzen labor camp run by the Luftwaffe, as they had learned that non-Jewish laborers would soon replace them. In response, Gendarmerie Captain Max Eibner in Baranowicze ordered the shooting of all the Jews in the Stolpce ghetto and all but 12 specialists at the sawmill. On January 31, the Gendarmerie shot 254 Jews, including those brought in from Nowy Swierzen. Subsequently, another 18 found hiding in the ghetto were shot, and guards killed 6 more as they attempted to flee from the ghetto area at night. Over the following days, Wehrmacht patrols handed over another 15 Jews captured in the surrounding area, such that 293 Jews had been shot by February 4, 1943.16 Some of the Jews who fled the Stolpce ghetto survived by joining the Bielski partisan unit in the nearby Nalibok Forest or by serving with other Soviet partisan units in the region.
SOURCES
Information on the Stolpce ghetto can be found in the following publications:
Nahum Hinits, ed., Sefer zikhron Stoyebts-Sverzno veha-ayarot ha-semukhot Rubezevits, Derevno, Nalibok (Tel Aviv Irgun yotse Stoyebts be-Yisrael, 1964); and Jack Sutin and Rochelle Sutin, Jack and Rochelle.
A Holocaust Story of Love and Resistance (Saint Paul, MN Graywolf, 1995).
Documentation on the fate of the Jews of Stolpce during the Holocaust can be found in the following archives:
AYIH (e.g., 301/554, 564, and 569); BA-L (202 AR-Z 16/67); GABO (995-1-4 and 7); GARF (7021-81-102; and 7021-148-316); IPN (SAOl 14; SWGd 27; and SWOl 50-55 and 75); NARB (8451-6 and 389-1-4); Sta. Mu I (117 Js 2/72, investigation against F. Gobel); Sta. Oldenbourg (2 Js 138/68); USHMM (e.g., RG02.214; RG-53.002M; and ITS (VCC-Ordner Nr. 6); VHF (e.g., # 11623 and 13957); and YVA (e.g., O-3/3569).
NOTES
1. AYIH, 301/564, testimony of Berko Berkowicz; and Sutin and Sutin, Jack and Rochelle, pp. 25_26.
2. AYIH, 301/564.
3. Ibid.; Hinits, Sefer zikhron Stoyebts-Sverzno, p. xv; Sutin and Sutin, Jack and Rochelle, pp. 33_37; and NARA, T-175, reel 233, Ereignismeldung UdSSR no. 50, August 12, 1941.
4. AYIH, 301/564.
5. Sta. Mü I, 117 Js 2/72 (investigation in the case of Friedrich Gobel), pp. 1228_1230, statement of Fritz Mühlemeyer on September 6, 1972. The investigation concluded that Gobel was probably deceased, and no other persons were indicted.
6. AYIH, 301/564. Sutin and Sutin, Jack and Rochelle, p. 39; here Rochelle states that the ghetto was created two months after the Germans arrived (i.e., in August_September). The Nowy Swierzen ghetto was established on October 25, 1941; see YVA, O-3/3569, testimony of Yisrael Celkowicz.
7. AYIH, 301/564; and Sutin and Sutin, Jack and Rochelle, p. 40.
8. GABO, 995-1-4, p. 297; and IPN, SWOl, trial of Jan Szczekało, who was sentenced to 10 years in prison.
9. Sutin and Sutin, Jack and Rochelle, pp. 41_42.
10. USHMM, ITS collection, VCC-Ordner Nr. 6, p. 70.
11. AYIH, 301/564 and 301/554, testimony of Lejzer Zarecki; VHF, # 11623, testimony of Isaac Haskell, who was among those sent to the labor camp in Minsk; Hinits, Sefer zikhron Stoyebts-Sverzno, pp. xvii, 140.
12. GABO,995-1-4,p.304,and995-1-7,reportsof Gend.Postenführer in Stolpce, Schultz, to Gend.-Gebietsführer in Baranowitsche, October 3 and 18, 1942. AYIH, 301/569, tes
d 18, 1942. AYIH, 301/569, tes