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JewishHistoryעברית

Destruction of the Jews of Pinsk

Date
6 August 1941 – 23 December 1942Hebrew date: 13th of Av, 5701 – 15th of Tevet, 5703
Location
PinskBelarus
Then part of
Reichskommissariat Ukraine
Perpetrators
  • SS Cavalry Brigade (Military)
  • German Order Police (State)
  • German Order Police (State)
  • SD (State)
  • Local militia (Militia / auxiliaries)
Killed (estimate)
14,500 – 21,000[2]Jews of Pinsk murdered in the August 1941 shooting of men and in the October–December 1942 ghetto liquidation. For August, a West German court in the Magill trial put the figure at about 4,500; YIVO gives about 11,000; Yad Vashem historian Tikva Fatal-Knaani estimates 7,000–8,000. For 29 October 1942 both YIVO and Fatal-Knaani give about 10,000 shot; remaining craftsmen were killed on 23 December.
Locality

56% – 100% of the Jewish population of Pinsk[2]The killed estimate is higher than the population estimate.

Country

0.95% – 1.4% of the Jewish population of Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic (c. 1939)[8]

Worldwide

0.087% – 0.13% of the worldwide Jewish population (c. 1939)[3]

Category
Massacre, Genocide
Confidence
DisputedThe August 1941 death toll is disputed: the Magill trial gave about 4,500, YIVO about 11,000, and Fatal-Knaani 7,000–8,000. The October 1942 liquidation is given as about 10,000 by both YIVO and Fatal-Knaani. Combined, the sourced range for both actions is about 14,500–21,000, not counting ghetto deaths from starvation and disease (Fatal-Knaani: 843 recorded deaths in 1942 before liquidation).

Summary

German forces reached Pinsk on 4 July 1941. On 6–8 August, cavalry companies 1 and 4 of the SS Cavalry Brigade, under Franz Magill, shot Jewish men on an order forwarded from Himmler. Estimates of that Aktion range from about 4,500 (Magill trial) to about 11,000 (YIVO); Fatal-Knaani concludes about 7,000–8,000, leaving some 18,000 Jews, mostly women and children. A ghetto was established on 1 May 1942 (Fatal-Knaani: order of 30 April). On 27 October 1942 Himmler ordered Higher SS and Police Leader Hans-Adolf Prützmann to liquidate the ghetto. On 29 October police units surrounded it and about 10,000 people were marched to pits at an abandoned airfield and shot; combing continued through 1 November. YIVO records that fewer than 200 remaining workers in a "mini-ghetto" in Karlin were murdered on 23 December. When Soviet forces liberated Pinsk on 14 July 1944, they found 17 Jews surviving in hiding.

Sources

  1. Moshe Rosman, Pinsk. YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe
  2. Tikva Fatal-Knaani, The Jews of Pinsk, 1939-1943, Through the Prism of New Documentation. Yad Vashem Studies (2001)

Jewish population (estimates)

  • Worldwide: 16,500,000 – 16,633,675[3]c. 1939DellaPergola's revised core estimate for 1 January 1939 is 16.5 million. The American Jewish Year Book 1948–49 compiled 16,633,675 at the end of 1939.
  • Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic: 1,532,776[8]c. 1939Jewish nationality in the Ukrainian SSR in the 17 January 1939 All-Union census (5.0% of the republic).
  • Pinsk: 20,200 – 26,000[2]Jews in Pinsk. Tikva Fatal-Knaani (Yad Vashem) estimates 20,200 shortly before the Second World War and 26,000 when the German occupation began in July 1941, a month before the August shootings. She notes that other authors give 30,000 before the war and concludes that the documentation does not support that higher figure. YIVO gives 28,000 on the eve of the First World War, not a 1941 total.

Sources for population estimates

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  3. Jewish Population of Europe in 1933. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Holocaust Encyclopedia
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