Translated transcript of the footage about Holocaust Memorial in Bronna Gora published on YouTube.


Denis Maruk, footage author,
Elena Mshar, local Holocaust researcher,
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.