1 Execution site(s)
Raisa C.: “There were Jewish women and children at the site. But there were other gathering points in the town. After that, the Jews were placed under guard in the Jewish school. They stayed in the school for a while. Then, the day of the shooting they took them in a column to the execution site. I didn’t go to the site after the shooting”. (Witness N°631, interviewed in Khotimsk, on June 12, 2013).
“During the temporary occupation of Khotimsk, district of Khotimsk, from August 1941 to September 1943, the German fascist invaders carried out the systematic mass shootings of innocent Soviet civilians and Red Army POWs. According to the lists of witness depositions and obtained information, 860 people were shot, among them 293 women, 287 children, while 223 other people were deported to Germany.” [Act drawn by the Soviet Extraordinary Commission, in May 1944, RG22.022M/7021-88/33].
Khotimsk is located about 168km east southeast of Mogilev. The Jewish population in 1939 was 786. Many of them lived on Sadovaya Street. They were tailors or bakers. The Germans occupied the village on August 15, 1941.
On July 12, 1942, the Germans gathered the Jews of Khotimsk in a Jewish school in order to register them. They tortured them and shot 24 of them. The Jews were then held in the school for two months. The school had become a ghetto. During this period, some Jews were requisitioned to prepare large pits. On September 3-5, 1942, a detachment of Einsatzkommando 8 assisted by men from the Reserve Police Battalion 91 shot more than 300 Jews at the flax mill. According to different sources, somewhere between 300 and 800 Jews were shot.
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