Antonovka Ghetto

The Ghetto in Antonovka (Krichev District) (summer 1941 - December 1941) was a Jewish ghetto, a place of forced resettlement of Jews from the village of Antonovka in the Molyatichi village council of the Krychaw District of the Mogilev region and nearby settlements, during the persecution and destruction of Jews during the Nazi German occupation of the territory of Belarus in World War II.

A monument to the residents of Antonovka (mainly Jews) who were killed in 1941–1943. The monument was erected in 2004 by the local secondary school at the site of the former Jewish cemetery. The Jews were killed at another location.

Occupation of Antonovka and creation of the ghetto

The village of Antonovka was located between the villages of Shayevka and Molyatichi. Before the war, there was a Jewish kolkhoz there and Jews made up the majority of the population. The village was captured by German troops on July 16, 1941.

Most of the military-aged men of Antonovka, including Jews, were mobilized into the Red Army in June 1941. In addition to local Jews who did not or could not evacuate, there were also some of their relatives who had come with children to visit for the summer in Antonovka. After the occupation, the Germans, implementing the Nazi program of extermination of Jews, organized a ghetto in the town.

Jews were forbidden from leaving without wearing six-pointed stars sewn onto their outer clothing, under threat of death. They were deprived of all food supplies, livestock and poultry. Local non-Jews were warned that assisting or sheltering Jews would be punishable by death. Several Jews tried to flee and hide in the forest, but they were found and killed.

Destruction of the ghetto

The ghetto in Antonovka was destroyed as a result of several "actions" (a euphemism the Nazis used for the organized mass killings they carried out). Here are the ones about which there is testimony:

• On November 14, 1941, the Germans and police selected 18 local Jews, among whom was a 90-year-old old man, the rest were women and children, including infants. They were all taken to a pit on the bank of one of the branches of the Chernaya Natopa River and shot.
• Three days later, on November 17, another 12 Jews were taken, led to a swamp, forced to undress and killed.
• On December 19, 1941, the Germans took a girl, Zinaida Vertlib, from Antonovka, led her to the village of Shayevka, where they completely undressed her at the kolkhoz threshing floor and shot her.

Cases of rescue and "Righteous Among the Nations"

Shefrent Yakov and his 13-year-old son hid in the forest for over a year and a half, but were still caught and shot. Five Jewish girls aged 16–17 fled to the village of Bayevka, but they were caught there and killed.

In Antonovka, five people were honored with the title of "Righteous Among the Nations" by the Israeli memorial institute Yad Vashem "in profound gratitude for the assistance rendered to the Jewish people during the Holocaust": Viktor Larin, Liliya Vasina (Larina), Maria Pisareva, Raisa Pisareva and Fekla Veselina-Tkacheva - who rescued Elena Feygina (Vertlib) and Mira Neznanskaya.

Memory

The village of Antonovka was burned down in 1941 and not rebuilt. After the war, the murdered Jews of Antonovka were reburied in the former Jewish cemetery. In 2004, students from the Molyatichi secondary school erected a monument in the shape of a tree with broken branches and an inscription stating it is a monument to all the dead civilians of the village.

In 2017, a monument to the Jews of Antonovka murdered on November 14, 1941, was erected in the village of Molyatichi near the village council building.

Incomplete lists of victims of the genocide of Jews in Antonovka have been published.