Damachava Ghetto

Damachava Ghetto (Гетто в Домачево) (November 1, 1941 – September 20, 1942) was a Jewish ghetto, a place of forced relocation for Jews from the village of Damachava in the Brest district of the Brest region and nearby settlements during the persecution and extermination of Jews during the occupation of Belarus by Nazi Germany during World War II.

Occupation of Damachava and the Murder of Jews
Before the war, more than 3,000 Jews lived in Damachava, comprising almost the entire population of the village, with a total of 3,316 Jews living in the district. The village was captured by German troops on the first day of the war, at 7 a.m. on June 22, 1941, and the occupation lasted more than three years, until July 23, 1944. In the fall of 1941, Damachava received the status of a district center as part of the Brest-Litovsk Gebit.

Immediately after the occupation, the Germans began killing Jews. On July 23, 1941, seven Jews were shot. On June 24, 36 Jews were ordered to accompany carts with valuables looted by the Germans to the other side of the Bug River; upon their return, they were shot. According to other testimonies, 40 Jews were shot in Damachava and nearby villages immediately after the arrival of the Nazis. The Russian Jewish Encyclopedia reports that on July 25, 29 Jews were killed, among whom were community leaders. After occupying Damachava, the Germans immediately began killing Jewish children in the orphanage, and on September 23, 1942, they killed the remaining children.

Creation of the Ghetto
In August 1941, a Judenrat was established in Damachava. On November 1, 1941, the Germans, implementing Hitler's program for the extermination of Jews, organized a ghetto in Damachava, covering an area of 1 km² and confining about 2,000 people. The ghetto was surrounded by a double wall of barbed wire, cordoned off by guards, and entry and exit without special permission were prohibited. Prisoners, dying of hunger, were constantly beaten with rifle butts, whips, and sticks.

Destruction of the Ghetto
On September 18, 1942, the Germans ordered the Jews from the ghetto to dig pits on a sandy hill half a kilometer east of the village, near the so-called "Shilov Swamp." As people began to scatter, they were caught and shot on the spot, resulting in the deaths of 42 people. The ghetto was completely destroyed on September 20, 1942, when the cavalry squadron of the gendarmerie stationed in Damachava, the police, the SD Sonderkommando, and collaborators killed 2,700 or 2,900 Jews. During this mass murder, about 250 Jews managed to escape, but most of them were later caught and killed by local policemen. Ten surviving Jewish specialists were shot in August 1943. By the time Damachava was liberated, only ten Jews remained alive.

Organizers and Perpetrators of the Murders
The names of the Nazi leaders of the Brest district, on whose orders the children were shot, are known: SD district chief Pichman, SD deputy chiefs Zibel and Gerik, district commissioner Franz Burat, gendarmerie chief at the district commissioner Dluzrleyn, district police bureau chiefs Major Roda and Wiener, Prokopchuk (Ukrainian) – head of the Damachava district, Fedor Khae – mayor of Damachava, and criminal police chief Zavadsky. The names of some of the perpetrators who carried out the shooting of children are also known: Max, the senior of the group of Germans who carried out the shooting; Kametsglyats, a German from the group that carried out the shooting; Friks, a policeman who shot children; Vogel, from the Volga Germans, a native of the city of Engels; and Lieutenant Ogiz, from the city of Brest, who participated in the shooting of children. Policeman Anthony Sawoniuk from Damachava was found guilty of Nazi war crimes by a British court in 1999 and died in prison.

Memory
The remains of the murdered children were reburied after the war near the Damachava-Brest road junction, and a monument was erected. In 1987, a new monument "Protest" was erected near the highway from Brest to Tomashovka, before the turn to Damachava – bronze statues of children with hands raised in prayer.

A total of about 2,000 Jews were tortured and killed in the Damachava ghetto. Their incomplete list is published in the chronicle-documentary book "Memory. Brest District."

A monument is erected at the mass grave of the victims of the Jewish genocide in the forest 500 meters east of Damachava.