Eyewitnesses

The most revealing record of what happened in Stolin during the Holocaust comes from eye-witness accounts. As we continue to translate the yizkor book, we hope to add further perspectives on this catastrophic time in Stolin’s history.

Grigoriy Ovsyanik

An account originally published in Mezuza, No. 7-8, 1997

Towards the beginning of the war, together with refugees from Poland, more than 12,000 Jews gathered in the city. The Germans organized a Judenrat, at the head of which they placed Berger, a Jew from Warsaw. Every month the ghetto population was ordered to pay a tax at the rate of 10 rubles per person. The money was enclosed with a document stating the number of the Jewish population at the end of every month. Under the threat of physical violence, Jews were forced to deliver gold and valuables into the safe of the Gebits Commissar. Continue reading »

A Memoir of Michael Nosanchuk

An account that was originally written as a letter to his brother in Canada, describing what happened to their family.

When the Soviets first took power (in Polesia, in 1939) they initially allowed the Jews to work and run their own businesses. Later, they slowly began to liquidate the big factories and the larger stores. It took some time, but one evening, a few Soviet officials came into our (Nosanchuk’s grain) mill (in Rubel). When I saw them, my heart sank. Continue reading »

Chaya Leiberman

The Chassidim stand, somberly, across from the large tombstone in the clearing of the great forest near Stolin. Their Rebbe is buried there, together with the rest of the martyrs of the town. While they stand there, davening for mercy in the merit of the holy ones who lay there, a woman sits far away in Israel, at her home in Gadera. Her body is at home, but her heart is there in Stolin; one day, a large chunk of her heart was buried there forever. Continue reading »

Klaus Wiegrefe: The Big Killing

An account published in Mirror, No. 50 on Dec. 13, 1999 and posted on Klaus Bölling’s Stolin-Hombergs Partnerstadt in Belarus website. The current translation is courtesy of Google Translate; if you would like to contribute a more accurate translation, please contact us.

Belarus is among the SS and the Wehrmacht suffered more than any other Soviet republic. Because it lacked the Germans on food, the destruction has been accelerated. There were men like Walter Mattner, turned the Belarus into a slaughterhouse. The Vienna police secretary was here in October 1941 than in Mogilev in 2273 Jews were shot. Afterwards he wrote to his wife: “When the first car I had a little shaking the hand of the tenth car I aimed been quietly and shot safely to the many women, children and babies in mind, that I have two babies at home with… where these hordes as if would not make ten times worse.” Continue reading »

Soshnik and Freedman Families

In autumn 1942, when the Germans began the mass murder of the Jews in the villages of the area, the Kasperovich’s home became a way station for Jews fleeing to the forests. At their home, the Kasperoviches provided the Jews with food and clothing and instructed them on how to reach the marshes where the Germans rarely ventured. Among the Jews that were assisted by the Kasperoviches were Osher Soshnik and his father, his uncle Pinkas Feldman and other members of his family. Continue reading »