5. The Majority of the Town's Jews are Transported to Their Deaths

26 October 1941

Events followed rapidly in succession. On October 26, 1941, all the Jews were ordered to register in the Labour Office. Rumours spread that a ghetto was going to be set up in the barracks area, near the sandpits, where the murders took place. People arranged to protect their meagre belongings. Many sold their remaining valuables to their Christian neighbours in the hope that a time would come when they would be returned. In the midst of this, they paid almost no attention to the activities of the Germans who were secretly preparing pits for mass slaughter.

29 October 1941

On October 29, at sunset, an order was published that ordered all the Jews, young and old, women and children, to appear the next day at 6 a.m. empty-handed in the market square. All those outside of town, in villages, estates and their workplaces, were required to return to town at the specified time. Even though rumours of this action had circulated in the town for some days, it came as a surprise and aroused panic. The conclusion was drawn in all its horror. People ran in panic and fear - some to say goodbye to relatives, and some to give their goods to Christian acquaintances, or to conceal them in secret places.

[Coordinator's note: The white space below corresponds to what appears to be an extended quotation from the Kletsk Yizkor Book, Pinkas Kletsk. Under JewishGen rules, such material is reserved to the Yizkor Translation Project.]

In the market square, a representative of the Labour Board of the Jewish Council met the arrivals and placed them in alphabetical order. There were no Germans to be seen and the mood gradually calmed. Not all Jews presented themselves. A few hundred were absent, who took the risk and did not appear, despite the threat of death. These people hid in secret places or fled to fields and towns. Some of the Labour Board's officers searched for the missing and found a few families and placed them in separate lines.

[Coordinator's note: The white space below corresponds to what appears to be an extended quotation from the Kletsk Yizkor Book, Pinkas Kletsk. Under JewishGen rules, such material is reserved to the Yizkor Translation Project.]h

Those imprisoned in the great synagogue knew nothing of what transpired. They despaired and waited for the end. Suddenly the door burst open and in rushed Isaac Tsiook and his wife. Commander Koch had him taken out of the pit. Koch was angry that they were about to kill a skilled professional, an expert mechanic whom he needed. Tsiook and his wife, after they recovered a little, related all they had seen in the sandpits and described all that had happened to most of the Jews who had remained in the market.

In the German documents uncovered after the war, the action was documented isolated words in the Belorussian commander's monthly report to the Reichskommander of the "Ostland" in Riga, in this language: "In the purification operation (Sauberungsaktion) in the Slutsk-Kletsk area, 5,900 Jews were shot to death by a police battalion of reserves. " [See Wehrmacht document]