1 Execution site(s)
“The German executioners turned the half-built stone building of the school into a Gestapo prison where Soviet prisoners were executed. In January 1942, the Germans gathered all the Jews who were on the district’s territory in this building and shot them. Among them was the family of the hairdresser Pavlin, his wife Basia Naumovna, his 14-year-old daughter Zina, his 11-year-old son Naum and a newborn that the Germans killed in his mother’s arms with the butt of their rifles. The massacre took place in the evening and, early the next morning, like ravens, the murderers secretly took away their victims in a ravine and buried them. In total, 65 people were murdered.
[…] The walls of the school building were covered in the blood of the Soviet citizens who fell victim to Hitler’s “new” order in Europe. When they retreated, the Germans blew up the building to hide their crime with another crime. But the liberated Soviet people will neither forget nor forgive the German invaders for their acts.” [Act drawn up by Soviet State Extraordinary Commission (ChGK), on March 27, 1944; GARF 7021-44-622]
Glinka is a village in the Smolensk region, western Russia. It is located about 60 km (37mi) southwest of Smolensk. It was founded in 1898 to serve as a settlement near a railway station, and named in honour of the composer Mikhail Glinka. Jews settled in Glinka at the beginning of the 20th century. In 1919 there was a pogrom conducted in town. Several Jews were killed and their houses looted. Not many Jews stayed in Glinka after that. In 1939, there were 41 Jews living in Glinka, making up about 6% of the town’s total population.
German forces occupied Glinka in mid-July 1941. There were Jews from neighbouring districts in town in addition to those living in Glinka; about 65 Jews in town during the occupation. They were all gathered in a school building used by the Gestapo in January 1942 and then shot there by the Germans. Their bodies were then taken to be buried in a ravine the next morning. Soviet partisans and POWs were also shot in Glinka according to some sources. Today, there is a memorial dedicated to the victims near the ravine where they are buried.
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