Szczebra | Podlaskie Voivodeship

/ Mieczysław M., born in 1933: "I saw columns of 50 to 80 people crossing my village, Nowinka, on the road from Suwałki to Szczebra. Several groups passed through in the summer." ©Piotr Malec/Yahad – In Unum Mieczysław M., born in 1933: "I then heard machine gun fire and single shots. The columns included men, women, and children. The bodies of those who died along the way were carried in a cart preceding the column." ©Piotr Malec/Yahad – In Unum Mieczysław M., born in 1933: "The columns went to Szczebra, where the shootings occurred. Today there is a cross and a memorial; before, it was just a field. Later, the pits were opened and the bodies burned." ©Piotr Malec/Yahad – In Unum Irena M., born in 1935: "I saw columns marching from Suwałki through Nowinka. I remember men in long coats. There were about 100 people per group, guarded by Germans on all sides." ©Piotr Malec/Yahad – In Unum Marian U., born in 1930: "Before the war, a third of Augustów was Jewish. I had Jewish neighbors, including Baśkun, who owned a grocery and bakery. There were three synagogues, and the community was religious." ©Piotr Malec/Yahad – In Unum Marian U., born in 1930: "Persecution of the Jews began right after the Germans arrived. The ghetto was created. A number of Jews were shot in Szczebra, but I don’t know how many." ©Piotr Malec/Yahad – In Unum Marian U., born in 1930: "I know a group of 50 Jews was later forced to exhume and burn the bodies. Germans amused themselves by making them jump in specific positions, inventing other ’games’ as well." ©Piotr Malec/Yahad – In Unum Bronisława K., born in 1926: "Pits were dug in advance at Szczebra. I heard submachine gun fire. One person managed to escape from a transport going to Szczebra: it was Polonka Racisow." ©Piotr Malec/Yahad – In Unum The killing site of approximately 8,000 victims, including Jews, Poles and POWs, in Szczebra. The site is located 1 km east of the Augustów–Suwałki road, in the village of Szczebra, on the edge of a forest. ©Piotr Malec/Yahad – In Unum Today there is a monument: a cross and a stone with the following inscription: ’Here about 8,000 people from the Augustów and Suwałki districts were executed, murdered by the German occupier in 1941–1944. Honor their memory.’ ©Piotr Malec/Yahad – In Unum

Destruction of Jews and non-Jews in Szczebra

1 Killing site(s)

Kind of place before:
Field
Memorials:
Yes
Period of occupation:
1941-1944
Number of victims:
8.000

Witness interview

Irena M., born in 1935: "I was born and raised in Nowinka, a village located just three kilometers from Szczebra. Before the war, there were no Jewish people living in my village; the community was entirely made up of Catholics and Orthodox Christians. The Jews lived in Augustów.

During the German occupation, I saw columns of people marching from Suwałki. They passed directly through Nowinka, as our village was on the road leading from Suwałki to Szczebra. I vividly remember seeing men dressed in a kind of long coat. There were roughly 100 people in each group, and they were heavily guarded by Germans on all sides. Anyone who was no longer able to keep walking was shot on the spot, and their bodies were loaded into cars. These columns kept passing through for at least a week.

Some time after the executions took place, the bodies were dug up and burned. I distinctly remember the smell of the burning bodies. From my village, we could also see the smoke rising into the air. This terrible process lasted for at least a week. I only visited this killing site years later, after the war had ended." (Witness N°YIU1142P, interviewed in Nowinka, on September 17, 2020)

Polish Archives

1. Date and place of execution: September 1941 in Szczebra, 1942 in Podnowinka (5 hangings) and in Serwy (16 people shot).

2. Type of execution / shooting, hanging, or other types: Shooting.

3. Data concerning the executed victims:

• Poles, Jews, foreigners: Poles, Jews, foreigners, and Russian slaves [Soviet prisoners of war/forced laborers];

• Number of people executed: 8,000 in Szczebra and 21 in Podnowinka and Serwy;

• Where the victims came from: From the direction of Suwałki, Augustów, and Sejny;

• Name, age, profession, and address: Unknown, because German firefighters prohibited anyone from approaching the corpses;

4. Is it known what the victims were accused of, or was the execution a reprisal order or other? No.

5. Who carried out the execution? The Gendarmerie, the Gestapo, the SS, the police, the Wehrmacht? In Serwy: the Gendarmerie / In Podnowinka: the Gestapo;

6. Are the names of the perpetrators of the crimes known? Provide names:

• Village of Szczebra: Wili Szlig [Willi Schlig] from ?? participated in the execution.

• Village of Serwy: The Suwałki Gestapo.

• Village of Podnowinka: The Suwałki Gendarmerie and the Gatno I Gestapo.

7. Were the bodies burned? Or destroyed in some other way? In what location? In Szczebra, the victims were killed by submachine gun fire and buried in a mass grave. After two years, the bodies were exhumed and burned on piles of wood doused with gasoline. In the villages of Serwy and Podnowinka, the bodies have still not been exhumed.

8. Where were the corpses buried? Exact location: The graves are located 1 km from the Augustów/Suwałki road; heading East;

9. Description of the grave(s) / dimensions, probable number of victims per grave:

• In Szczebra: 8 graves, 3 meters wide and 25 meters long;

• In Podnowinka: One grave;

• In Serwy: One grave;

10. Was an exhumation of the bodies carried out? Was an official report (protocol) made at the site of the grave?

• In Szczebra: The victims came from all directions; they were killed along the way and on-site;

• In Podnowinka: The victims were brought by car from Suwałki and shot and hanged on-site;

• In Serwy: The victims were shot;

11. Are there reasons to request a near-future exhumation?

• In Szczebra: The bodies were burned;

• In Podnowinka: The bodies remain buried;

• In Serwy: Yes.

[RG-15.019M Reel #1 (p. 530-527 in the PDF) Questionnaire on Mass Executions and Mass Graves; Białystok Voivodeship, Augustów Powiat [County], Village of Szczebra; Deposition of K. Inarski, a resident of the village of Nowinka, Szczebra-Olszanka commune, profession unknown, dated October 3, 1945. He bases his testimony on his own observations as well as those of the residents of the commune.]

Historical note

Szczebra is a village in the administrative district of Gmina Nowinka, within Augustów County, Podlaskie Voivodeship, in north-eastern Poland. While witness testimonies indicate that no Jewish people lived in Szczebra itself, in 1939, the nearby districts of Suwałki and Augustów held significant Jewish populations. Within the town of Suwałki, the Jewish population stood at approximately 6,000 individuals, representing roughly one quarter of the total municipal population, while the broader Suwałki district contained between 7,000 and 8,000 Jewish residents. In the neighboring town of Augustów, the prewar Jewish population reached approximately 4,000 residents. However, the subsequent division of these territories led to drastically different demographic outcomes. By September 1940, due to early wartime disruptions under Soviet rule, including refugee flight across newly established borders, initial Soviet deportations to the interior, and forced labor conscription, official records documented only 2,906 Jewish individuals settled within the broader Augustów district.

Holocaust by bullets in figures

In September 1939, the Suwałki district was invaded by both German and Soviet forces. Following the establishment of the demarcation line on October 12, 1939, Szczebra was split between Germany and the Soviet Union, with the Blizna River serving as the border. Following the German invasion of the USSR, the entire village of Szczebra was occupied by German forces on June 22, 1941.

During World War II, the fields near Szczebra became the mass killing site of Jewish residents from the nearby Suwałki and Augustów areas, alongside prisoners of war and Polish individuals. Mass killings near Szczebra commenced in the summer of 1941 and persisted throughout the entire occupation period, reaching their peak intensity between 1941 and 1942. The Aktions carried out in the summer of 1941 were orchestrated by the Tilsit State Police personnel and Einsatzkommando units under commanders such as Hans-Joachim Böhme. In late June 1941, immediately following the invasion, German forces swept the border zones and captured displaced Suwałki refugees along with Soviet prisoners of war, murdering them in the early summer shootings. Another devastating wave occurred in August 1941, when between 800 and 1,650 Jewish men aged 13 to 65 from Augustów were taken to the fields near Szczebra and shot. Following these initial shootings, the forest became a recurrent killing site for the entire Suwałki and Augustów districts. Historical sources estimate that approximately 8,000 individuals were ultimately murdered and buried in seven or eight pits at the site.

Many residents of the surrounding villages witnessed the victims being marched through their communities toward the killing site near Szczebra. In 2020, an investigative team from Yahad-In Unum retraced the routes of these prisoner columns and interviewed several local witnesses who observed these final marches. According to their testimonies, during the marches originating in Suwałki, individuals who collapsed from exhaustion or were shot along the road were loaded onto vehicles and transported to the killing site alongside those still marching. Upon arrival at the killing site, the Germans lined up small groups at the edge of pits dug in advance and killed them using machine guns.

As Soviet forces advanced in May 1944, the Germans initiated a cover up operation to eliminate evidence of the massacres as part of Sonderaktion 1005. Directed by SS Hauptsturmführer Waldemar Macholl, the operation forced Jewish prisoners to exhume the remains from the pits at the killing site. The victims’ bodies were subsequently incinerated on pyres using wood and petroleum, after which the remaining ashes were scattered across the neighboring fields.

Today, Szczebra is documented as one of the largest killing sites in the Suwałki area. Memorial plaques have been established in the forest near Szczebra to honor the estimated 8,000 people, primarily Jews, who were murdered there.

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