Summary of the research trip to Russia
Smolensk Region
November 27, 2009 to December 8, 2009

Staff :

Patrick DESBOIS – chef d’équipe
David GRINBERG - cameraman
Alexis KOSAREVSKYI - interprète
Svetlana BIRIOULOVA - interprète
Nicolas TKATCHOUK - photographe
Johanna LEHR - scripte et rédactrice du compte rendu
Mikhaïl STROUTINSKI – expert en balistique
Denis MOURAVITSKI - enquêteur

In 12 days of research, the Yahad - In Unum team investigated in seven cities including the major city of Smolensk and its surroundings. It identified 10 mass graves, three previously unknown. One aspect specific to Yahad - In Unum’s research in Russia is the multiplicity of categories of victims included in the investigation: Soviet prisoners of war, partisans, Vlassovians, Roma and Jews.

Due to the specific characteristics of Yahad - In Unum’s investigation in Russia, we are choosing to tell the story of our field experience, particularly since we focused this trip on the city of Smolensk, and to highlight the testimony collected by the team containing historical information that was most unusual, both in terms of Yahad - In Unum’s overall research during the last five years as well as from a general historical perspective.

The successful experience of fieldwork in the city of Smolensk

During this research trip, the team decided to investigate the city of Smolensk. Research in densely populated urban areas is increasingly difficult to conduct compared with villages and hamlets as the search for eyewitnesses to the killings of Jews and Roma is complicated by the disappearance and / or renovation of old neighborhoods dating from the war that accompanies shifts in the population.

We discovered the existence of ‘raids’ conducted by the Germans in the villages around Smolensk to find escaped prisoners and Jews suspected of hiding among the local population. The hamlets of Issakovo and Sinkovo were thus completely emptied of their inhabitants who were driven from their homes by the police and sent in columns outside the city, probably to be shot. Meanwhile, the Germans carried out thorough searches of the premises.

The identification of execution venues in the urban zones demanded rigorous coordination by the team’s investigators and the crew (cameraman, photographer, interviewer, translators and script editor): indeed, we searched simultaneously to identify the graves, find witnesses and analyze the topography of the German occupation in the city. The proximity of the front had consequences for the German occupation of Smolensk. During the period of occupation, the Germans did not put in place a civil administration in Smolensk as was the case in Ukraine and Belarus: it was Wehrmacht troops that administered the territory beginning in July / August 1941. We therefore were able to investigate the camp of Soviet prisoners of war that the German army installed in Smolensk, which accounts for 45,000 people buried in pits adjacent to the camp. In addition, the team was able to put in context the choice of the location of the headquarters in Smolensk of Einsatzgruppe B, arriving from Minsk in August 1941.  In fact, the headquarters was located on the heights of Smolensk, located outside the perimeter of the city, bounded by the home defense of Smolensk. Another, smaller operational center was located in the heart of Smolensk, providing quick access to the city center.

Home defense of Smolensk, bounding the headquarters of the Einsatzgruppe B. (photo © Yahad In Unum / Nicolas Tkatchouk)

After a long search, we found probably one of the last eyewitnesses to the execution of 3,000 Jews in the ghetto of Sadki, located northeast of Smolensk. According to Varvara I., who was tending cows every day near the site of the pit, the Jews were killed in the following way: they were taken in covered trucks to a pit that was the width of a man’s height, that already had been dug the day before by nine Soviet prisoners of war. A German in the truck had them take off their jewelry and ordered them to jump into the pit, four by four, hands behind their back, and they were shot by three snipers located on the other side of the pit. The pit was filled in the day after the execution by prisoners of war.

An eyewitness to the execution of 174 Roma from the hamlet of Aleksandrovka

Sergei attended the execution of Roma in Alexandrovka. (photo © Yahad In Unum / Nicolas Tkatchouk)

For the first time since the first research by Yahad - In Unum, we were able to reconstruct the entire course of the shooting of Roma. An eyewitness guided us through all stages of the killing. We were able to interview the witness on the spot of the assassination which led to a full reconstruction of the event based on the witness’ memories that resurfaced as a result of our questions.
Thus, the 174 Gypsies were killed in the hamlet of Aleksandrovka in the outskirts of Smolensk, where they had their own collective farm known as “Stalinskaya Konstitoutsia.” On April 24, 1942, Sergei G., watching from his house, saw them gathered on a spot near the lake by a special detachment of 400 SS troops. He heard the roll call made by a German speaking Russian from a list drawn up the day before and saw the victims undress.  Three Germans even entered his home to collect three shovels. The SS then selected 13 strong men among the Roma to dig the pit. All the Roma were taken to a barn located in the cemetery, where a table and chairs had been installed for the Germans who were guarding them. The grave was located 50 m from the barn. The witness saw the shooting from the roof of his house.
Also for the first time since the first research by Yahad - In Unum in the East, we found a memorial erected on the site of the pit in memory of the 174 Roma of Aleksandrovka who were shot. This memorial does not indicate, however, that the Roma were victims of the Nazis.

Irina and Yahad - In Unum's staff in front of the memorial dedicated to Roma victims. (photo © Yahad In Unum / Nicolas Tkatchouk)

The movement of the Russian population to camps in Germany to the West

Valentina S., aged ten, and living in Drogobouj during the war with her parents, told us how her family fled the city with the second arrival of the Germans in the summer of 1942 (they had already occupied the city in 1941, which was liberated by the Red Army the following winter). Hiding in a nearby village, she was captured in the summer of 1942 by the “Russians” (her words) as she fled by wagon on the road to Minsk.
Her forced removal to the West had begun. She was first imprisoned in a camp near Yartsevo, northeast of Smolensk. At the entrance to the camp, she had to undress and was disinfected, while a loudspeaker broadcast songs with anti-Semitic lyrics in German and Russian. In the autumn, she was taken by wagon to the railway station and sent by cattle car to Belarus. In the Vitebsk region, at Drissa, she was held captive in a school. She was then transferred to Postavy to a camp surrounded by small lakes. In both cities, residents told her not to drink the water because the Germans had thrown into the wells the bodies of murdered Jews. Finally, she was moved to Miory where she lived in a camp surrounded by barbed wire, from which the Germans sent prisoners selected for forced labor in Germany. Valentina succeeded in escaping from the camp with her mother with the help of a young Belarusian boy belonging to the partisans.