Bronna Góra

Bronna Góra (or Bronna Mount in English, Belarusian: Бронная Гара, Bronnaja Hara) is the name of a secluded area in present-day Belarus where mass killings of Polish Jews were carried out by Nazi Germany during World War II. The location was part of the eastern half of occupied Poland, which had been invaded by the Soviet Union in 1939 in agreement with Germany, and two years later captured by the Wehrmacht in Operation Barbarossa. It is estimated that from May 1942 until November of that year, during the most deadly phase of the Holocaust in Poland, some 50,000 Jews were murdered at Bronna Góra forest in death pits. The victims were transported there in Holocaust trains from Nazi ghettos, including from the Brześć Ghetto and the Pińsk Ghetto, and from the ghettos in the surrounding area, as well as from Reichskommissariat Ostland (present-day West Belarus).[1][2][3]

Bronna Góra
Old train tracks leading to location of forest massacres at Bronna Góra
Location of Bronna Góra in World War II, (northeast of Sobibor death camp)
Bronna Mount
Location of Bronna Góra in modern day Belarus (see above)
LocationBronna Góra, Polesie Voivodeship, occupied Second Polish Republic
52°37′N 25°05′E
DateMay 1942 – November 1942
Incident typeMass killings over execution pits dug in the forest
PerpetratorsSchutzstaffel (SS)
ParticipantsSS-Totenkopfverbände (SS-TV)
GhettoBrześć, Bereza, Janów Poleski, Kobryń, Horodec (pl), Pińsk Ghetto
Victims50,000 Jews
NotesThe Holocaust in Poland

Background

After a century of foreign domination, Second Polish Republic became an independent state at the end of World War I. Bronna Góra was part of the Polesie Voivodeship, and remained there until the Nazi-Soviet invasion of Poland in 1939.[4] With a railway stop at the edge of the woods,[5] Bronna Góra became the location of secluded massacres in 1942, with trainloads of Jews transported and dislodged there from the Ghetto in Brześć, the Pińsk Ghetto,[6] and all other ghettos created by Nazi Germany in the area.[5]

Following the Soviet invasion of 1939, Bronna Góra along with most of Polesie Voivodeship was annexed into the Soviet Belarus after the NKVD-staged elections decided in the atmosphere of terror.[7][8] All citizens previously living but also born in Poland would live in the Byelorussian SSR from then on, as the Soviet subjects, not Polish.[9] However, the Soviet rule was short-lived because the corresponding terms of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact signed earlier in Moscow were broken when the German army crossed the Soviet occupation zone on 22 June 1941. From 1941 to 1943 the province was under the control of Nazi Germany,[10] govern by the collaborationist Belarusian Central Council supported by the Nazi Belarusian battalions of the Home Defence.[11]

Mass killings

The first murder operation took place in June 1942, with 3,500 Jews transported from the Pińsk Ghetto and nearby Kobryń for "processing" (durchschleusen),[lower-alpha 1] at Bronna Góra.[5] According to postwar testimony of Benjamin Wulf, a Polish Jew from Antopol who managed to survive the massacre,[14] the train stop was surrounded by a barbed-wire fence. The prisoners were informed by a translator that washing stations were in the woods behind. They were ordered to leave their outer garments by the train and take only the soap and towel. Those who did not have soap were told not to worry because it had been supplied. The path through the woods, surrounded by barbed wire, was heavily guarded. It became narrower, until the sounds of shooting made it clear what went on at the end of the trail. The Jews who attempted to escape by crossing the fence were shot on the wires. Further up, the path opened to an area with execution pits 4 metres (13 ft) deep and 60 metres (200 ft) long, dug under the gun by hundreds of local labourers. Explosive materials were used to speed up the digging process.[14] The fresh new victims were brought into the trenches and were shot one by one over the bodies of others.[14] According to a witness interviewed by Yahad-In Unum, 52,000 people were killed in Bronna Góra, including Jews and people who were believed to be linked to partisans.[15]

"In memory of the 50,000 citizens of Jewish nationality from the Soviet Union and West Europe", reads the inscription on the monument at Bronnaja Gora (be)

In March 1944, as the Soviet Red Army advanced, the Germans attempted to erase the evidence of the massacres. A special Sonderaktion 1005 was brought in from outside,[16] consisting of 100 slave workers. For the next two weeks they exhumed mass graves and burned the bodies on pyres. When they were finished, trees were planted, and all of the prisoners were shot.[1] After the war, at the 1945 Potsdam Conference, Poland's borders were redrawn and Bronna Góra became part of the Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic. A memorial was erected at the site commemorating the perished Jewish citizens of the Soviet Union.[5]

Notes
  1. The term durchgeschleust or "processed" to describe the annihilation of Jews in the occupied Eastern territories appeared in the Korherr Report,[12] by personal request of Heinrich Himmler, who objected to the word Sonderbehandlung or "special treatment" synonymous with death in the Nazi phraseology already since 1939 (per September 20, 1939 Heydrich's telegram to Gestapo).[13]

References
  1. AŻIH (2014). "Bronna Góra (Bronnaja Gora) - location of mass executions" [Bronna Góra - miejsce masowych egzekucji]. Virtual Shtetl (in Polish). Museum of the History of Polish Jews. Archived from the original on 2014-06-07.
  2. The Brest Ghetto Passport Archive (former Soviet Union). JewishGen 2014.
  3. IAJGS (2014). "Antopal: Brest". International Jewish Cemetery Project with links to resources. See: Ghetto liquidation "Aktion" (Bronna Gora), four days beginning October 15, 1942. Retrieved January 17, 2018.
  4. Echa Polesia 3 (39) 2013, Miejsca Pamięci Narodowej, Obwód Brzeski (Places of National Memory, Brest Oblast). Kresy24.pl – Wschodnia Gazeta Codzienna (daily) 2014.
  5. Virtual Shtetl (2015). "Pińsk" (in Polish). Elektroniczna Encyklopedia Żydowska. Archived from the original on 2015-09-24.
  6. Krawcowicz, Barbara (2014). "The Holocaust in Poland. Timeline" [Holocaust w Polsce – kalendarium]. Forum Żydów Polskich. Archived from the original on 2014-04-27 – via Internet Archive.
  7. Wegner, Bernd (1997). From peace to war: Germany, Soviet Russia, and the world, 1939–1941. The period of Soviet-German partnership. Berghahn Books. pp. 74–. ISBN 1571818820.
  8. Sword, Keith (1991). The Soviet Takeover of the Polish Eastern Provinces, 1939–41. The mass deportations of the Polish population to the USSR. Springer. pp. 64, 224. ISBN 1349213799.
  9. Davies, Norman (2005). God's Playground. A History of Poland: Volume II. OUP Oxford. p. 327. ISBN 0199253404.
  10. Eberhardt, Piotr; Owsinski, Jan (2003). Ethnic Groups and Population Changes in Twentieth-century Central-Eastern Europe: History, Data, Analysis. M.E. Sharpe. pp. 199–201. ISBN 9780765606655.
  11. Andrew Wilson, Belarus: The Last European Dictatorship, Yale University Press 2011. Page 109.
  12. Korherr, Richard (April 10, 1943). "Anweisung Himmler an Korherr". Der Reichsführer-SS, Feld-Kommandostelle. Retrieved 2 September 2014.
  13. Himmler, Heinrich (2014). ""Special treatment" (Sonderbehandlung)". Holocaust history.org. Archived from the original on 28 May 2013. Retrieved 2 September 2014. September 20th, 1939 telegram to Gestapo regional and subregional headquarters on the "basic principles of internal security during the war".
  14. Testimony of B. Wulf, Docket nr 301/2212, Archives of the Jewish Historical Institute in Warsaw, Bronna Góra (Bronnaja Gora) webpage. Archived 2017-08-03 at the Wayback Machine Virtual Shtetl 2014 (ibidem, print Archived 2015-09-24 at the Wayback Machine). Retrieved June 3, 2014.
  15. "Testimony of Victor K." Yahad Map. Retrieved 23 December 2014.
  16. Arad, Yitzhak (1984), "Operation Reinhard: Extermination Camps of Belzec, Sobibor and Treblinka" (PDF), Yad Vashem Studies XVI (PDF), pp. 205–239, archived from the original (PDF) on 18 March 2009
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