Special State Commission for the Investigation of Nazi Crimes

This commission conducted a investigation of crimes committed by the Germans during their occupation of Soviet areas in 1943-1945, and documented atrocities committed against the civilian population, including Soviet Jews. Most of its findings were relegated to archives, however, and not made public until the fall of the Soviet Union. A small number of documents devoted to Porozow on microfilm at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum are reproduced below, together with summary translations. Due to the poor quality of the microfilmed images, some of the material is barely legible. The tiny number of Jews mentioned as having been killed by the Nazis indicates that this is not a complete list; it probably does not take into account the vast bulk of the Jews - as many as 1,000 by some accounts - who were expelled from Porozow, marched to Volkovysk and later sent to their deaths at Treblinka and elsewhere. [Translations courtesy of Natasha Sorokina].

Cover page. It denotes the Special State Commission for the Investigation of Nazi Crimes and damage caused to citizens, collective farms, public organizations and state enterprises of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.

Page Two. Materials on investigations of Nazi crimes in the  Porozovo region of Grodno province, dated February – May 1995, contains 58 pages. The document bears the stamp of the Central State Archive.

Page Three. This page is difficult to decipher, but it relates that the Jewish population was kept in ghettos, behind barbed wire. Later it was taken into concentration camps near Volkovysk and then sent in the direction of Bialystok [?] and then killed. In addition to killing Soviet citizens, the Nazis bound a total of 1,032 Belarussians into slavery during their occupation.

Page Four. This page is also hard to read. It relates that the Nazis murdered one person per family, e.g., in Sobolki the following were murdered: Shabat, Praskovya Pavlovna, b.1875; Anna Stepanova, b.1900; Alexandra, b.1880. On March 3 of that year.......townsman [?] Andreyevitch, b.1880, his daughter Emilia, b.1910; son Iosif, b.1929; son Ivan, b.1930; son Mikhail, b.1938 were murdered. [Translation of this item courtesy of Olga Pavlovna Cooper].

Approximately 354 were killed. The whole Jewish population was put into a ghetto guarded by Nazis like a concentration camp. Afterwards, they were moved into a ghetto/camp near Volkovysk, then moved towards Bialystok. They were murdered on that journey, the precise spot unknown. Many people from Belarus were sent to forced and slave labor. During the occupation in 1932 people from there were forced to work for the Nazis. Signed: Chief of Commission: Reb [?]; Secretary of Commission: Khrenovsky; Members of Commission: [?].

Page Five. This page lists the list of towns and villages of the Porozovo region of Grodno province with the number of victims in each. It specifies name of the city/village, the number of people shot, the total number of people killed and the number of people taken into Nazi slavery. In the case of Porozovo, the total for each column is 25.

Page Six. This page is illegible.

Page Seven. This page lists Nazi victims (those who were shot, hung or tortured to death) from Porozovo, specifying the name, date of birth, gender and nationality of each. They are shown in the table below: