Holocaust Memorial in Bronna Gora
Translated transcript of the footage about Holocaust Memorial in Bronna Gora published on YouTube.
D.M. = Denis Maruk, footage author,
E.M. = Elena Mshar, local Holocaust researcher,
L.S. = Lyudmila Simanko, local historian.
D.M.:
0:12 When in Brest on the eve of the celebration of the millennium,
0:16 the war suddenly reminded of itself with the remains of 1214 people
0:24 in the city center on the construction site.
0:28 The titles of articles about the ghetto constantly
0:31 mentioned Bronnaya Gora in the Beryoza district, illustrated by
0:37 a photograph of a railway station
0:41 with the name of this settlement.
0:42 It was in the forest of Bronnaya Gora that
0:46 prisoners of the Brest ghetto were also shot.
0:50 So what kind of place is Bronnaya Gora?
0:54 Let's go with you to find out.
0:58 A local resident, a teacher by profession Elizaveta Mshar,
1:01 has been studying history for a long time, working to eternize
1:08 the memory of innocent victims.
1:10 For many years she searched and questioned the witnesses of the tragedy,
1:14 worked in the Brest archive, collected much material for the museum room.
1:19 Today, no one better than her can tell about the events
1:22 of 1942 in these places.
1:26 With Elizaveta Borisovna and her documents, I go to the museum room
1:33 and drive to the monuments,
1:35 where a few meters away in the forest runs that very old rusty
1:41 iron track, along which were transported one way
1:45 not only the prisoners of the Brest ghetto.
E.M.:
1:48 In total, over 55,000 people were shot here.
1:57 We are exactly namely at the place
2:03 where the life was cut short of numerous prisoners
2:09 from the ghettos of the Brest region.
2:15 The largest number of dead were prisoners of the Brest ghetto.
L.S.:
2:20 There is another tragic page in the annals of our Bronnaya Gora.
2:23 The Germans set up a concentration camp here during the war.
2:26 In March 1942, near the Bronnaya Gora station,
2:34 people from local villages were gathered to dig pits and trenches.
2:38 There were no special questions, because there were warehouses nearby.
2:43 Well, people thought, the Germans will build something.
2:46 In June 1942, the first 5 trains with
2:49 civilians arrived at the Bronnaya Gora station.
2:52 In the first train there were 16 carriages.
2:56 There were at least 200 people in each carriage.
2:59 The carriages were pulled to a specially built railway line.
3:04 An area of 16,800 square meters was fenced with barbed wire.
3:09 The carriages opened.
3:10 People were driven out, forced to strip naked.
3:14 Money, jewelry, foreign currency were taken away.
3:17 And along the narrow barbed wired passages
3:20 they were driven to the pits with the ladders inside.
3:22 People went down, lay face down close to each other.
3:27 As the row filled up, machine gun bursts rang out.
3:30 The next row lay on top.
3:32 And so on, until the pit was completely filled.
E.M.:
3:34 The track goes further behind this birch grove, there,
3:37 far away, there, this place.
3:39 On this side of the track there were 5 graves,
3:45 pits when they were unearthed.
3:46 On the other side there were 3 graves, pits.
3:49 as the eye witness Nikolayev Ivan Stepanovich told.
3:54 Unfortunately, he died in February this year, he lived then in Bronnaya Gora.
3:59 And he with the boys came here, it was prohibited, everything was fenced off here.
4:06 There were guards everywhere.
4:08 There was no way to get close.
4:11 They were still watching.
4:13 What is going on here?
4:14 And he told us when Boris Movtsyr,
4:18 a professor, screenwriter, director, and an employee
4:25 of the Israeli Yad Vashem Memorial, came to visit us.
4:30 When he met him, he told him a lot
4:35 about how they climbed as boys, how they watched
4:39 how these terrible events happened.
L.S.:
4:41 There were 8 pits in total.
4:44 The longest pit was 68 m, 3 and a half 4 meters deep.
4:48 During the war years, the Germans killed more than 55,000 civilians here,
4:53 citizens of various ages from infants to
4:55 very old people of various nationalities, Jews,
4:59 Gypsies, Russians, Belarusians.
5:00 We must remember this so that we never become
5:02 either victims or executioners, involuntary observers.
E.M.:
5:05 And there are even memories of one German officer
5:18 who participated in these executions here.
5:21 In Berlin, the archives were found.
5:27 Christian Ganzer came here.
5:30 He is a historian. He is very interested in history.
5:36 So he came here to me.
5:37 He brought me these documents, the memories of that officer,
5:40 and we made a translation from German into Russian.
5:44 There he narrates how it happened here and what.
5:47 And even he told how one girl managed to escape.
5:52 But nevertheless they caught up with her and shot her
5:56 and also threw her into a pit.
5:58 Well, we see, there is this railway line
6:03 that leads to the territory of a military unit.
6:08 And along this line carriages were pulled here up.
6:15 people were forced to undress.
6:18 And there were deep pits of different size and width.
6:25 Most of them, according to the witnesses, were 3.5 - 4 meters deep.
6:35 They set down a ladder and forced the people to descend into this pit.
6:40 They all laid down in rows and shots, shots, shots.
6:45 And then one day, when one of the executions was carried out,
6:50 a German soldier wanted to grab a baby from his mother,
6:55 but she did not give it and pulled him down with her into this pit.
7:00 And it turned out that that soldier also got under fire and was shot.
7:08 After this incident, they spared cartridges on children,
7:16 they just took children under 3 years old by the legs
7:19 and head against a tree.
7:20 The head was smashed and thrown into the pit.
7:24 When the pit was full, the next pit was filled.
L.S.:
7:32 In order to hide the traces of crimes, in March 1944,
7:39 100 prisoners of war were brought here
7:43 to excavate and burn corpses.
7:47 they dug up 7 graves, and dismantled 48 barracks.
7:51 One grave still exists on the territory of the military unit.
7:54 They piled like this, the remains of people, logs, boards, poured liquid
7:59 that burned with a blue flame and set all this on fire at night.
8:01 It was burning for 15 days. Stench, soot,
8:03 everything went down around.
8:06 it was impossible to take hold of the doorknob, it was impossible
8:08 to put anything on the table.
8:10 After the burning of the corpses, this place was all leveled with a bulldozer.
E.M.:
8:16 An Extraordinary State commission for the establishment of atrocities worked here.
8:20 An act was drawn up, and it states that
8:26 more than 51,000 people were killed in the Bronnaya Gora forest,
8:32 but also there is other data.
8:36 It is said that more than 55,000 people were killed here.
8:40 There is the black memorial book in our museum.
L.S.:
8:45 There is nothing hidden that will not be revealed.
8:47 Immediately after the liberation of Belarus,
8:50 a State commission was created to investigate all these atrocities.
8:54 This commission in the course of work drew up an act.
8:57 We have a copy of this act here.
8:59 You can see it in this folder.
9:01 These are testimonies that tell about those events.
9:07 In 1994, a monument was erected, the Bell, rails going into the sky.
9:14 We have the scale model of this monument.
9:20 here it is.
9:22 Just before the war, the Ost plan was put on Hitler's table ,
9:24 which involved the destruction of 75% of the Slavic nationality,
9:29 25% would be used as draft animals.
9:31 The Germans would be offered to move to the vacated territory.
9:35 If the number of Germans were not enough, an offer would be to the peoples who
9:38 are close to the Aryan race.
9:41 And here on this wall are posters with photographs of how this
9:46 plan was implemented. How people were driven into the ghetto,
9:52 shot. They killed small children.
9:58 These are color photographs, more modern.
10:05 6 kilometers from Bronnaya Gora, near the village of Smolyarka
10:12 Soviet citizens, civilians, were also shot.
10:17 And there were 4 graves.
10:19 When the gas pipeline was built in the late 1960s,
10:26 all this was unearthed, buried in one grave, and in 2005 the
10:34 52nd special battalion, which is engaged in the reburial
10:39 of citizens, the remains, opened these graves.
10:43 That's why these photos are in color.
10:46 This place has been refurbished, a monument has been erected.
E.M.:
10:53 For about 40 years I worked here at the secondary school,
10:57 now it is a basic school,
10:59 as a Belarusian language and literature teacher.
11:02 But I have been dealing with the theme of the Holocaust since 2002.
11:08 even earlier, I did this,
11:13 but specifically I had a local history circle.
11:18 I had a senior class, and together with them we worked
11:24 in the archives, and met with eyewitnesses of the executions,
11:30 and with a lot of witnesses.
11:34 And I was also lucky to get to the state of Israel
11:47 to the city of Jerusalem.
11:49 There is a memorial there, it is called Yad Vashem.
11:56 This is Hebrew for name and memory.
12:03 There is an educational center there, and this educational center
12:07 organizes special seminars especially for teachers
12:10 from all over the world, instructing how to teach the theme of Holocaust.
12:17 We call this room the hall of the Holocaust, and here it is written,
12:22 the Holocaust, warning and memory.
12:25 Why this name?
12:27 Here during the Second World War,
12:32 over 55,000 people were shot in the forest of Bronnaya Gora.
12:37 And most of all they were Jews.
12:43 Numerous ghettos that were located on the territory of our Brest region.
12:49 One minute.
12:54 Here is the Brest region.
12:57 And you can see on it, how many
13:00 ghettos we had in various towns throughout the Brest region
13:06 I'll start, when the Germans came to Beryoza.
13:20 Already on June 27, German troops were in Beryoza
13:28 and Beryoza Kartuzskaya ghetto was created there.
13:32 And one of the prisoners of this ghetto was Israel Berestitsky.
13:44 Here you can take a picture of him.
13:49 As a small boy, he managed to escape.
13:53 He hid in a cesspool.
13:56 And the next day, on October 15, the ghetto
14:02 was liquidated in 1942, and on October 17, he got out of
14:09 this cesspool and went to his relatives in Pruzhany,
14:13 he got there on foot, but alas, when he arrived there,
14:18 there were no survivors there.
14:20 He moved to Israel, lived in Tel Aviv.
14:24 Together with his wife, he is in this photo, moved to Israel, lived in Tel Aviv.
14:33 Marie is her name, and his name is Israel Berestitsky.
14:36 He was one of the veterans of the Great Patriotic War,
14:43 namely those Jews who participated in the battles.
14:47 Next from Pruzhany he came to a partisan detachment, named after Kirov
14:59 and there the representatives of the NKVD were very surprised why
15:08 he was the only one who survived.
15:11 So, it turns out that all his relatives, and
15:13 there were 46 of them, died, but he remained alive, which means
15:19 he is a traitor and he was sent to Siberia, and he was there for
15:24 over 8 years in the labor camps.
15:28 Later, when he returned to Baranovichi,
15:33 he had relatives there.
15:35 There he met his wife.
15:38 Mania he affectionately called her all the time, and they left for Israel.
15:43 And there they lived for a long time,
15:46 but last year, unfortunately, he had passed away.
15:49 They came to visit us here to Bronnaya Gora.
15:51 He presented our school a medal.
15:55 It was 60 anniversary since the execution of the Warsaw ghetto.
16:00 He presented us this medal.
16:01 It was made in memory of those events that took place then.
16:14 you can even take a picture of it.
16:26 Later, as I said, ghettos were created.
16:30 When, on January 21, 1942, Hitler signed a decree on the total
16:42 extermination of the entire Jewish population that was
16:45 in Europe, that is, both Belarus and the former Soviet Union.
16:50 People were loaded into freight wagons like those, and they were
17:00 all deported to the place of execution.
17:02 Someone was taken to a concentration camp, where they were shot and burned,
17:06 or simply applied a special poison, and people died.
17:14 On this wall there are posters that were given to us
17:21 during the seminar at Yad Vashem.
17:25 It is written here how it was carried out
17:29 in Germany before the events of Kristallnacht.
17:34 A very big number of Jews used to live in Germany.
17:41 In these photographs you can see how the head was measured,
17:47 what kind of nose each representative of the Jewish nationality had.
17:53 Then they were either shot or deported.
18:03 Here we see on these posters how the ghettos were liquidated.
18:10 after January 1942.
18:15 Do you see these freight wagons?
18:17 There was a guard in this small booth, but here
18:22 the most numerous ghettos are written in Hebrew.
18:26 And Beryoza Kartuzskaya is mentioned here, and Kobrin, and Drogichin.
18:34 Brisk is written in Hebrew at the top.
18:39 That is translated from Hebrew into Russian as the name of the city of Brest.
18:46 In order to be more reliable and more efficient,
18:52 the Nazis in each ghetto kept record books.
18:58 A protocol was drawn up for each prisoner of the ghetto.
19:03 The Germans managed to destroy a lot of the records, but in 1996 in Brest,
19:20 when the archive was moving to a new location on Engels Str. 8,
19:27 large blue boxes were found.
19:33 When they looked inside, these boxes appeared to contain the protocols
19:39 that were drawn up for residents of Jewish nationality.
19:43 In total, 12,260 protocols were found.
19:53 We see these protocols here at the stand.
19:56 In each protocol, if there were children under 14 in the family,
20:01 they were written into this protocol by the hand of their parents.
20:05 When the children and I studied such protocols,
20:13 at our circle sessions, we counted 4,200 people with the guys.
20:19 These were precisely the children who were shot here on Bronnaya Gora.
20:23 For a long time, relatives could not come here,
20:25 they did not allow anyone in, no one.
20:27 But now, of course, it's a completely different matter.
20:32 I want to say that for a long time the schoolchildren, I headed the school
20:43 circle of local history. It's called "Search".
20:47 We came here with the children, painted the fence,
20:51 put things in order, swept everything.
20:53 According to the tradition of the Jews,
20:58 when you come to a burial place, although in fact
21:04 there is no burial here.
21:06 In March 1944, everything was burned here.
21:12 Only when the extraordinary state commission was working did they
21:14 discovered the remains of human bones.
21:18 Burnt bones.
21:22 This is a place of memory, later this monument was erected
21:28 on October 15, 1992.
21:34 People come here and remember the dead.
21:39 In 2019, when digging a foundation pit for a residential building in Brest,
21:47 a large number of bones were found on Kuibyshev Street.
21:52 And, as it turned out, they were prisoners of the Brest ghetto.
21:59 Later Boris Mendelevich Bruk, chairman of the community, told me
22:05 that most of the children's skulls were found there.
22:12 During the reburial, the well-known actress from Russia
22:18 Elena Vorobey, née Lebenbaum spoke at the ceremony.
22:24 In a huge pit 120 coffins were buried with
22:41 the unearthed remains of the 1214 people.
22:47 I approached Elena and said that during her speech
22:52 she mentioned that her relatives also died in Bronnaya Gora.
22:56 I showed her these protocols.
22:59 She said, “I didn't know they exist.
23:03 Or maybe my relatives can be found?"
23:06 I worked in the archive and found her relatives Lebenbaums
23:14 9 people and the Permut family on the maternal side 7 people.
23:22 These are the protocols that were drawn up for her relatives,
23:26 they are all here in these folders.
23:31 In this protocol, mandatory records were written, the date it was issued,
23:34 name, surname, and a photograph.
23:41 father, mother.
23:44 If there are children, as I said, up to 14 years old, were written here.
23:49 And to everyone such a passport was issued,
23:55 and it was written on the passport Jude.
23:57 In the 201 Fund of the Brest Regional Archive there is a register of these protocols.
24:11 and on the reverse side they wrote the person
24:20 the protocol was drawn up for, where this person resided,
24:25 his address, the date the passport was issued.
24:29 The person had to sign.
24:32 And here you see a photograph of one
24:36 of Elena's relatives and a mandatory fingerprint under the photograph.
24:42 but they did not even trust the children.
24:52 Here in the photo is Shloma Weinstein, on the right side.
25:01 When he visited us, he told us that even the imprint of the child's palm,
25:12 on the protocol of the father, there was a
25:16 complete imprint of the palm of his sister Golda.
25:21 With a passports a person could go out of the ghetto.
25:27 Here, too, all the relatives of Elena Vorobey.
25:34 the Jews do not lay wreaths and flowers,
25:39 they lay a pebble traditionally.
25:41 Here Elena is photographed when she lays stones.
25:46 I contributed this article to Mayak, our local newspaper.
25:51 When Elena visited us, she said that she would definitely
25:57 come to us with a charity concert.
26:00 and she wants the memorial site to be more or less in a better state.
26:06 because there is no good road there, nothing.
26:09 She wants asphalt to be laid.
26:13 This coronavirus infection prevented her coming,
26:20 but I am in contact with her.
26:23 Sometimes we call each other up, she promised
26:26 that she would come to us anyway.
26:28 Later this monument was made. It was opened on July 17, 1994.
26:37 The monument was made by Mlynets Vitaly Viktorovich,
26:41 Barushka Viktor Petrovich and Barkovsky Vladimir.
26:43 It was the spring of 1994.
26:46 In July, this monument was unveiled. It is quite peculiar, symbolic.
26:52 We mentioned there that the Jews were transported by rail.
26:59 That's how it's done here.
27:00 Here rises a peculiar stele, which is crowned with a symbolic bell.
27:09 I want to tell you that the school took care of this
27:12 monument, no one had to do anything with this.
27:14 The village council only brought paint there,
27:17 Here rust started, and we painted it over.
27:20 The said Mlynets Vitaly Viktorovich comes here,
27:23 he is also a native of our village Bronnaya Gora,
27:26 he says, “What have you done?
27:28 You painted over the most symbolic.
27:32 Those are the rails.
27:34 a train is running over them.
27:37 You saw how polished they are.”
27:40 He brought a whole team here, and they cleaned off all this paint,
27:44 and now the monument has become completely different.
27:52 I think many visited Khatyn.
27:56 Maybe someone had a chance to stay in Buchenwald.
28:00 And everyone knows the poem by Robert Rozhdestvensky
28:04 "Buchenwald Alarm Bell".
28:07 Just like that there, this bell is symbolic.
28:14 Actually it doesn’t ring, it was made like a symbol,
28:21 that unities the earth with the sky, with those who are now
28:25 in the heaven, whose souls are up there.
28:28 Roman Levin. This is his little book.
28:29 For more than 12 years he participated in international seminars
28:39 for schoolchildren of the former USSR.
28:41 And he visited also our school, in Bronnaya Gora,
28:47 presented us this little book.
28:49 He is one of the few survivors from the Brest ghetto.
29:01 For a long time he did not know about the ghetto protocols.
29:05 One was drawn up for his mother and he found in it her photograph.
29:09 Here is the protocol.
29:12 And here it is written Levin Roma 1931.
29:19 Here is his surname.
29:23 Tamara, his sister, was older than him, she worked at a garment
29:28 factory called Komsomolka right after school.
29:32 I worked in the cutting room, preparing fabric for cutting.
29:40 And I worked in tandem with Mshar Maria Nikolaevna,
29:47 she was 20 years old, we came here to mark her birthday
29:50 and I met her brother and got married.
29:56 And on January 13, 1980, I came here.
30:01 In February, my daughter was born.
30:04 A year later, a son was born.
30:05 When my children grew up a little, I entered the
30:12 Pushkin Pedagogical Institute in Brest.
30:16 When I was at school, we had a very good teacher
30:19 of the Belarusian language of literature, Rabytskaya Faina Ivanovna.
30:23 She was an honored teacher of the Republic of Belarus.
30:29 Well, then that was still the BSSR.
30:32 I really liked the works of Belarusian writers.
30:36 I was fond of reading them.
30:39 So she brought me love for Belarus and in general I
30:43 liked everything here so much compared to the region
30:46 where we had minus 60 outdoors, living in Yakutia.
30:53 So I got married and stayed here.
30:56 Now I am retired to immense joy.
31:03 it is quite difficult now to work at school.
31:06 The schoolchildren are different now.
31:07 When Beryoza Kartuzka ghetto was shot,
31:12 an enormous number, a very big number
31:14 Lyudmila Vasilievna has already shown you, this is how you drive
31:18 from Beryoza, there were 4 pits 6 kilometers from Beryoza.
31:29 When the gas pipeline was laid in 1967, they unearthed this burial, these graves,
31:39 and they were all reburied in one grave, and on November 28, 2008,
31:52 thanks to the sponsorship of the Lazarus family
31:56 from Great Britain, a monument was erected to all the dead.
32:02 At that time, they erected here about 18 such monuments
32:08 plus a very large number of monuments
32:13 they erected in the Novogrudok District.
32:16 There was also a ghetto in Novogrudok.
32:20 The special battalion excavated these graves, I saw this.
32:26 It was June 22, 2006,
32:38 these remains were discovered, a very large number of remains,
32:43 The pit measured 12 by 15 meters.
32:45 Exploring shafts were dug, and the remains were found there.
32:53 This is what eyewitnesses and witnesses told.
32:59 the ghetto was destroyed on October 15, 1942, the next day
33:03 the policemen and Germans carried out a cleansing of the ghetto.
33:08 That is, in different hides, in different cesspools,
33:13 in lavatories, somewhere in the loft, somewhere in the attic.
33:19 Small children were found there, because the parents
33:22 wanted the children to stay alive.
33:25 When they unearthed the remains, many of the skulls had hair, but there were no bones.
33:37 Even combs were found in the hair.
33:40 When, as I mentioned, on September 15, 16, 1944,
33:53 the Extraordinary State Commission worked here, which drew up an act.
33:57 That is in Fund 514 of the Brest State Archives and fund 7021,
34:06 these are the documents in the state archives in Russia.
34:08 Here is the act.
34:10 And this is the photo that was found.
34:17 Victor Ozerov photographed everything that was found from
34:23 over 55,000 killed and burned people.
34:28 Here is a banknote, a watch, a burnt forearm bone
34:33 of a teenager of 11-14 years old and a shaft of a high boot.
34:39 Here's what was found.
34:40 Well, for a long time, due to the fact that there was
34:47 a military unit on the territory of Bronnaya Gora,
34:49 they did not allow to erect any monuments,
34:52 relatives could not come.
34:54 Nevertheless, in the 1990s, when
34:58 perestroika began, the attitude became more loyal,
35:03 and the leaders of the Tarbut community, which was in Brest,
35:08 the Jewish community, headed by this Shloma Weinstein,
35:12 they appealed to the authorities, and the authorities
35:16 allowed to put here this stone as a monument.
35:20 and each year on October 15, according to tradition,
35:27 the Brest community organizes a visit here. Representatives of the
35:32 community come, representatives of diplomatic missions come,
35:36 and a mourning meeting is held without fail,
35:39 and also a kaddish, memorial prayer is read.
35:43 A family of 18 persons from America visited the place.
35:49 The oldest grandmother was 97 years old,
35:53 and she brought with her children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren.
35:57 In the picture is the exact place where people were shot.
36:01 The entire site of 16875 square meters is symbolically marked with these posts,
36:13 with these white painted low posts.
36:16 These are symbolic rail spikes, used
36:22 to fasten the rail sleepers.
36:24 When a delegation comes here, everyone asks me.
36:31 I tell everyone that this is such a symbolic place.
36:38 Putting a stone is from the religion of the Jews.
36:47 When I was in Israel, we were taken to the grave of Oskar Schindler.
36:54 You know, the Schindler's list, he rescued 1200
37:00 people from the Krakow ghetto.
37:04 They took us to his grave, showed us the cemetery,
37:07 and we also laid stones.
37:08 And they don’t put flowers in their cemeteries there, mostly stones,
37:14 because a person dies there today, and today the body
37:17 should be buried, because it’s very, very hot there.
37:21 When I was there in July, it was 56 degrees of heat.
37:26 This is simply horror.
37:27 So here is the story about the events that happened here.
37:34 Well, as already I mentioned, that now they are going
37:42 to bring even greater order here.
37:50 Steven Greenberg, his father is an oil magnate, came here in 2015.
37:59 He provided a substantial sponsorship.
38:06 Arthur Livshits came here, he is a lawyer, a representative
38:12 of one of the law firms.
38:14 So he came, they also took information from me,
38:18 and they want that signs should be made, pointers, just to show
38:24 how you can get here to this monument.
38:28 because there is no information anywhere.
38:30 I asked this question for a long time both in the regional
38:34 executive committee and in the district executive committee.
38:37 Oh, we need a lot of money, we need a lot of approvals,
38:40 we need, we need, you need it.
38:42 But now, thank God, this place has turned out, a
38:50 terrible place, of course, which was during the war,
38:54 as Professor Ioffe recalls, this is one of the lecturers
39:01 of the Maxim Tank University in Minsk, that Bronnaya
39:05 Gora was on the 4th, is 4th place
39:10 in terms of the number of people shot during the Second World War,
39:14 that is a very big number, because when we were at seminars
39:17 this professor spoke to us.
39:23 He told us about it.
39:25 He is engaged in all these Jewish affairs, he also
39:27 told us a lot of stories, he knows a lot.
39:33 That's that.