1 Execution site(s)
Olga V. recalls: “The column passed near our house. It was before lunch. The Jews were wearing summer clothes, it wasn’t cold yet. They were escorted by armed policemen in uniforms. The Jews weren’t lined up, they were in a rambling crowd and they were walking slowly. The shooting took place near a mill. The Jewish houses were later plundered by the neighbours”. (Witness N°658, interviewed in Cherikov, on June 24th 2013).
“In the district of Cherikov, the German monsters tortured to death, shot or hanged 1,118 people. According to testimonies and documents, 465 people were shot and 653 were deported to forced labour camps. The German monsters applied a very inhuman method to exterminate the Soviet population of Cherikov.” [Deposition of Maria Vasilievna K., 19.12.1944; RG22.022M/ 7021-88/49].
Cherikov is located 77km from Mogilev. According to the 1939 census, 949 Jews were living in Cherikov. The Jews were merchants and there was a Jewish school in the village. German armed forces occupied the town on July 17th 1941
The first Aktion was carried out in the town in August 1941. A detachment of Sonderkommando 7b shot a group of Jews. According to different sources, the German security forces and the local police gathered the Jews in a club in the town in late October or early November 1941 to inform them that we would be resettled. The Jews were then escorted on foot to a site about 1km north of the town near the mill, where a ditch had been prepared. Two Germans shot the Jews in the ditch in small groups. Six local Belarusians were ordered to fill in the ditch afterwards. According to the Soviet Extraordinary State Commission report, the mass shooting took place on November 7th 1941. It was perpetrated by a detachment of Einsatzkommando 9 conducted by units of Security Division 221. Einsatzgruppe B reported later in December that 786 Jews of both sexes had been shot in Cherikov and Klimovichi.
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