# Khomsk Ghetto

Khomsk Ghetto (July 1941 - August 1941) was a Jewish ghetto, a place of forced relocation for Jews from the village of Khomsk, Drahichyn District, Brest Region, and nearby settlements during the persecution and extermination of Jews during the occupation of Belarus by Nazi Germany during World War II.

## Occupation of Khomsk and the Creation of the Ghetto

Before the war, at least 1000 Jews lived in the town of Khomsk. The village was captured by German troops on June 25, 1941, and almost none of the Jews in the village managed to evacuate. By the end of July 1941, the Germans, implementing the Nazi program of exterminating Jews, organized a ghetto in the town and forced the Jews to organize a Judenrat.

## Destruction of the Ghetto

The ghetto in Khomsk existed for a short time, 3–4 weeks, and was destroyed during the Nazi punitive operation "Pripyat Swamps" (Pripiatsee) or "Pripyat March," which involved the execution and conduct of the first mass killings of Jews by SS troops on the territory of Belarus. On August 14, 1941, an SS cavalry unit, stationed in Bialystok, entered the village from the east - a total of more than 150 executioners. The next day, the Jews were separated from the local residents, the buttons were cut off their trousers, and their belts were taken away. About 40 non-Jews were taken to the northern outskirts of the town and forced to dig a trench. A fat German with crosses measured 30 meters with his steps and said that the pit should be 30 meters long and 4 meters deep.
On August 16, 1941, the Jews of Khomsk were ordered to take all their valuables and go to the outskirts of the village. The doomed people had their belongings taken away, women with children were separated from men, after which the men were led away, forced to undress, and shot at the edge of the pit. After killing each group of Jews, the Germans drank a shot of schnapps and laughed merrily. The local men were forced to go down into the pit and lay the bodies of the dead evenly. On the second day, the rabbi's beard was cut off, and he was mockingly ordered to hand over a "contribution" - a bag of gold and a bag of dollars. After that, the women were ordered to take their children and the most valuable things (a few kilograms each) supposedly for relocation to Palestine. They were lined up in a column and taken to the edge of the village to an old cemetery in a ravine. When the column stopped at the ravine, the people were shot with a machine gun. By the end of the day, all the Jews of Khomsk were killed, and their mass grave was only slightly covered with earth. Those who were forced to lay the dead and bury the grave were given water by the Germans to wash the blood off their hands and were ordered under threat of death not to tell anyone about what had happened. The ground in the mass grave moved, and the groans of people buried alive could be heard. The Germans forced the locals to dig them up and finished off the wounded. One Jewish youth, who had not been in the town the day before, came the next day and asked to be shot as well. A German took out a pistol and killed the boy.
Some time later, the Germans brought a small group of Jews from Shereshevo to Khomsk, used them for hard labor, and soon killed them as well. A total of about 2000 Jews were killed in Khomsk - both local and from nearby settlements.

## Memory

Two monuments have been erected in Khomsk to the local victims of the Jewish genocide. One is on the mass grave of women and children, and the other is on the mass grave of Jewish men. Incomplete lists of Jews killed in Khomsk have been published.
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