Koldychevo Concentration Camp
In March 1942, on the territory of Baranovichi district, not far from the village of Koldychevo, 20 km from Baranovichi a concentration camp was built.
To this end, the Koldychevo estate formerly belonging to the Shalevich family was converted.
The camp territory was fenced in several rows of barbed wire and equipped with machine-gun nests. At night, the security was strengthened by additional weapon emplacements and patrol detachments around the camp. Around 10 thousand prisoners could be kept there simultaneously.
Administratively, the camp was subordinated directly to the head of the security police in Minsk. Before the autumn of 1943, Sergey Bobko was commandant of the camp following which he was replaced in this position by Franaz Jorn, an SS – Sturmbannfuhrer.
The camp prisoners were housed in barracks and farm buildings. A specially built prison contained 12 cells.
Among the camp inmates there were guerrillas, members of the Polish Resistance, Jews, and those evading labour service.
pon arriving at the camp, the prisoners were to sew on their clothes special signs differentiating them according to the degree of danger to the occupation authorities. The signs were worn on the back and front, besides, men wore them on the right side of the trousers. The degree of danger was determined by the number of light strips on a 10- square centimetre black cloth. In the first place, the prisoners having 3 strips on the square were exterminated.
Time for getting up was 6 in the morning followed by a check-up of the inmates’ presence. All in all, there were no fewer than 6 check-ups during the day, all of which were, as a rule, accompanied by beatings and abuse of prisoners.
For the slightest offense, often contrived, camp prisoners were clubbed, set the dogs on or simply killed.
The inmates of the Koldychevo camp worked at the brick works, the soap and barrel factories and other works, as well as in the fields and peat extraction. They also did loading and unloading of metal and building materials. The camp set up such workshops as a tailor’s, a shoemaker’s, a joiner’s, a tanning shop, a forge shop, a watchmaker’s and a jeweller’s where the work of skilled prisoners was used.
The working day at Koldychevo lasted 10-12 hours. The output norms were high, for example, in peat extraction a man was to deliver to the camp 1,550 slabs of peat during the day, and the woman – 1,150 slabs.
The inmates had three meals a day. As a rule, it was some soup, “skilly” - rye flour boiled in water with some additives of beetroot, potatoe, nettle and orach. For a day, the prisoners were given 140-15- grams of ersatz bread.
Undernourishment, harrassing labour and a lack of medical care inevitably resulted in epidemics of infectious diseases and death.
To exterminate the prisoners the nazis used “Gasenwagenen” (mobile gas-chambers). In November 1942, an incinerator was built in Koldychevo.
Despite the considerable measures taken to guard the Koldychevo concentration camp, it wasn’t fully isolated from the outside world. Some prisoners were allowed to receive parcels from their relatives. There were cases when prisoners were bought out from the guards for money or valuable things. Prisoner escapes were not uncommon either. The largest of them were the New Year’s escape of 1944 and the escape of a group of prisoners - Jews on March 24, 1944 organized by the partisans of the Jewish unit headed by Tuvia Bielsky.
Before the German army’s retreat on the night of June 27, 1944, liquidation of the camp began. Most buildings in the camp were blown up, and the camp documentaion was destroyed. The mass graves of the murdered inmates were covered.
During the years of occupation, 22 thousand people - Jews, Poles, Belarusians, Russians and Gypsies were murdered and tortured to death in the Koldychevo concentration camp.
Geographic coordinates: N 53° 16' 51,73" E 26° 03' 43,30"
Foto: Владимира ЗУЕВА, Андрея ПОНОМАРЕВА
