Petrovichi | Smolensk

Petrovichi is located 90 km (56 mi) south of Smolensk and 16 km (10 mi) east of the border between Belarus and Russia. The first records about the Jewish community in the village go back to the late 17^th century.  By 1897, the Jewish community represented almost 74% of the total population (1,065 Jews). Isaac Asimov, a famous American science-fiction author, was born in the village in 1920. By 1920, 930 Jews lived in the village. They had their own synagogue, Jewish cemetery and Yiddish school. On the eve of the war, a little bit more than 400 Jews remained in the village.

Petrovichi was occupied by the Germans on August 2, 1941. Shortly after their arrival, a ghetto was established on the street where the Jews resided before. Those who didn’t live there were forced to move in. This created the overcrowding conditions in the ghetto. The Jewish inmates, the majority of whom were children, teens and women, were subjected to forced labor, robberies and different forms of humiliation. According to historian Martin Dean, Jewish girls were systematically raped by Germans and local police.

The Jewish community of Petrovichi was exterminated in two aktions. The first one was carried out on May 31, 1942. During this mass execution, 100 to 170 Jews, aged from 16 to 50, were rounded-up and taken to the Roslavl Gestapo where they were shot. The shooting was conducted by the members of Sonderkommando 7c. The remaining Jews, about 230, were murdered on July 22 (according to the Soviet archives on June 2), 1942. Before being shot, the Jews were forced to undress and were lined up at the edge of the pit. The last ones to be killed were the specialists who remained for a while in the ghetto after the second aktion.