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Holocaust in Klintsy

A photo catalog of the burials of this cemetery is available at the LINK

According to the census of 1897, about 2 thousand Jews lived in Klintsy. By 1939, the number of Klintsy Jews increased to 6.5 thousand. By the time of the occupation of the city in August 1941, some Jews had been drafted into the Red Army, some were evacuated.

As in other settlements of the USSR, not all Jews believed in rumors of Nazi atrocities, and official Soviet propaganda ignored the fact of genocide. Therefore, part of the Jewish population refused to evacuate. As a result, at the time of the entry of German troops into the city, about 5 thousand Jews remained in it.

The first measures of the occupation authorities were the registration of the Jewish population, the order on the mandatory wearing of decals on the back and prohibition on communication with the non-Jewish population. In addition to the general accounting of Jews, the occupiers kept records of occupations. So, in the archive of the Bryansk region, documents of the Klintsy district administration with lists of Jewish doctors were preserved.

In September 1941, the Nazis executed 165 male Jews, who, in their opinion, were able to resist.

The lists of those executed by the invaders were partially preserved in the Bryansk Regional Archive.

On the territory of Klintsy, the Nazis organized two ghettos. One was in the village of Banny, the other was in the hostel of the factory of the October Revolution. Residents were fed with waste from soldiers' canteens and used for heavy work.

In early December 1941, the Nazis carried out actions of mass destruction. About 3 thousand people were shot in the forest outside the city, in the area of ​​the military unit. The Nazis did not use bullets to kill children. The children were smashed by the weapon butt. Since the soil was frozen, the bodies were stacked in trenches, which were formed from explosions of shells and bombs and sprinkled with ground.

In the spring of 1942, the last prisoners - artisans, whom the Nazis did not destroy with the main population of the ghetto - were shot.

In total, according to official statistics, during the occupation, the Nazis killed 3.2 thousand Jews. In the Bryansk Regional Archive, a book has been preserved to record the personal losses of Jewish residents, compiled from an investigation into the crimes of the invaders. Local historians call a different number of victims. According to them, more than 4 thousand Jews were killed in Klintsy.

After the war, a brick monument was erected on the site of the deaths of victims on Nogin Street. In 1954, it was replaced by a permanent monument dedicated to the memory of the dead.