Koldychevo | Brest

/ The former camp at Koldychevo. ©Nicolas Tkatchouk/Yahad - In Unum Inside the Koldychevo camp. ©Nicolas Tkatchouk/Yahad - In Unum Oak trees in the camp were used as gallows. ©Nicolas Tkatchouk/Yahad - In Unum Diagram of the Koldychevo camp: 1.Prison; 2. Kitchen for prisoners; 3. Execution site of 2,000 prisoners; 5. SD building; 6. Basement where prisoners were tortured; 8. Workshop, where Jewish artisans produced bricks; 9. Prisoner’s shed; 14. Oak-gallows Entrance to the Koldychevo camp. Interview taking place near the masse grave of 2,000 prisoners. ©Nicolas Tkatchouk/Yahad - In Unum Yosif G. leading the Yahad team to the site. ©Nicolas Tkatchouk/Yahad - In Unum Yosif G. recalled how he was requisitioned to bring clay to the Jews who made bricks in the camp and to deliver food provisions. ©Nicolas Tkatchouk/Yahad - In Unum Maria A., born in1921, was imprisoned in the camp with her 2 month old baby because her husband had joined the partisans. She stayed there from November to January. ©Nicolas Tkatchouk/Yahad - In Unum Valentina M., born 1928, saw the shooting from a distance and remembered that the camp prisoners were shot in groups of two, facing the shooters. ©Nicolas Tkatchouk/Yahad - In Unum

Execution of Jews in Koldychevo

1 Killing site(s)

Kind of place before:
Woods
Memorials:
Yes
Period of occupation:
1941-1944

Witness interview

Nina D.: "I saw the Koldychevo concentration camp from the outside when I went to visit a family member. It was well guarded. I saw a mass shooting take place. A pit was dug and the Jews were shot down on the edge it, men and women." (Witness N° 251, interviewed in March 2010)

Soviet archives

"In 1942, 18km from Baranovichi, on the road from Baranovichi to Novogrudok, on the Koldychevo property, a concentration camp for Soviet Slavic civilians was established. 10,000 people (men, women and children) were confined there.The newly created camp didn’t have enough space. The buildings were meant for the summer, and didn’t have any stoves or cement boards to sleep on. They couldn’t fit in more than 30-40% of the detainees. The camp was fenced in with several rows of the barbed wire. The territory was under tight surveillance, with watchtowers, blockhouses, projectors, specially trained dogs and even tanks everywhere. It was forbidden for the detainees to have any contact with the outside word. It was also forbidden for them to receive any food. Anyone who try to get some food or clothing was shot dead." [Act drawn up on January 1st,1945, by the Soviet Regional Commission; RG 53.002M : Fond 845, opis1, delo 6]

Historical note

Koldychevo is a small village to the north of the city of Baranovichi. The village was under German occupation from 1941 to 1944.

Holocaust by bullets in figures

Koldychevo was the site of a Nazi concentration camp. Approximately 22,000 people, mostly Jews, are thought to have been killed in the camp between 1942 and 1944. The camp was also used to imprison Soviet POWs, as well as Polish and Belarusian partisans. In March 1944, the surviving population of about 100 Jews, led by Shlomo Kushnir, drilled a hole in the wall of their barracks, cut through the electrical fence surrounding the camp, and escaped into the night. 24 prisoners were recaptured, including Kushnir, who committed suicide. Many of the rest joined up with the Bielsky partisans in the Naliboki forest. On June 29, 1944, with Soviet troops approaching as part of Operation Bagration, the Koldychevo camp was liquidated. 2,000 of the remaining prisoners were shot in a pit beneath a mound. Another 300 were evacuated to Germany.

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