THE HOLOCAUST AND THE REVOLT
IN PINSK 1941-1942
by Nahum Boneh (Mular)
From the book
Pinsk
, Volume II
Tel Aviv, 1977
The Holocaust and the Revolt in Pinsk, 1941-1942
INTRODUCTION
The fate of the Jews of Pinsk, like that of most of the Jews of Europe, was
almost total extermination. In addition to the loss of life and property, all
the documents that might have helped us to perpetuate the last chapters of the
life of the Jews in the community of Pinsk were also lost. No trace was left of
the archives of the
Judenrat
, and no list or account was written at the end of the Nazi occupation of what
remained of the town, as was the case in some other ghettos.
We possess only two accounts from those days:
-
The letter written by Dr. Elhanan Einbinder on the 12th of October 1942 –
that is, seventeen days before the destruction of the ghetto.
[1]
-
Seventeen pages, containing thousands of names of Jews in the ghetto of Pinsk
with details of their places of employment, the number of their dependents, and
their addresses.
[2]
All the Jews who received work permits in the month of June 1942 are inscribed
in this list with a serial number.
All the other evidence in our possession was taken and written down after the
war, and only two of the statements, about one year after the war. In November
1945 testimony was taken from Yehoshua Gurevich
[3]
in Linz, Austria, and in September 1946 Aryeh Dolinko completed his memoirs
which were printed by the Association of Jews from Pinsk in Israel in
mimeograph form.
[4]
Four additional statements were taken and put down in writing in Tel Aviv in
1955, from the following survivors of the Holocaust Yehoshua Neidich, Tamar
Garbuz Kobrinchuk, and Chayah Sherman.
In addition, the following people wrote down their recollections:
-
Motl (Max) Shukhman, 1961 in Montreal, Canada. He is the only survivor among
the officials of the
Judenrat
.
-
David Globe-Gleibman, 1962 in New York, U.S.A. He maintains that he has based
his material on notes he took during the Nazi occupation and which he has kept
to this day.
-
Tsila Feldman Dolinko, from
The Small Ghetto.
-
Milya Ratnovski Cohen wrote down her memoirs 20 years later.
-
Aharon Kalivach and Fani Solomian Lotz submitted written testimony. [Later,
Fani Solomian Lotz published an autobiography in Hebrew, also translated to
English, entitled
A Young Woman Facing the Gallows.]
As additional source material we used their testimony given in 1962 at the
headquarters of the Israeli Police in Tel Aviv, the Tel Aviv District Court,
and the Magistrate's Court in Haifa, against Nazi war criminals who were
arrested for having taken part in the murder of the Jews of Pinsk. Besides the
survivors mentioned above, the following persons testified there:
-
Manya Finkel Shenberg
-
Avraham Perchik.
In the archives of Yad Vashem in Jerusalem we have found two memoirs in which
Pinsk is mentioned: evidence no. 1790, taken in Germany in 1946 from Hershl
Turkan; [5]
and evidence no. 297/139 recorded in Germany in 1946 from Yosef Hofman, a
Hungarian Jew who had been brought to Pinsk in the year 1943 as a forced
laborer to build a bridge. Nowhere does he mention in his evidence anything
about meeting Jews, not even among the partisans who visited them during their
work in the town.
As auxiliary material we also used the final concluding report of the
Prosecuting Attorney, Dr. Arzt, at the Center for Legal Services in Ludwigsburg
near Stuttgart, who prepared the trial of the Nazi criminals involved in the
extermination of the Jews of Pinsk.
[6]
On the basis of this material and on the basis of additional conversations with
survivors, I have written with awe and reverence of the fate of the Jews at the
time of the Holocaust and of the Revolt in Pinsk, our native town.
Kibbutz Shaar Hagolan, 1965.
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