Title

Censored Postcard From Bialystock to Palestine

Authors

Object ID

2014.1.272

Object Name

Postcard

Date

1-12-1941

Files

Description

Front: Tan postcard with red printed postcard lines and text. Includes writing in black ink, one purple and two black hand stamps.Back: Message written in black ink.

Information Provided by Michael D. Bulmash:

A postcard sent months before the German invasion of Belarus in June 1941. The sender appears to live in Horodyszcze, close to Minsk and Lida, and in the general vicinity of the Bielski family in the Western Belarus. Germany invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941. By the end of August 1941, they were in control of both Eastern and Western Belorussia. Communists and intellectuals were killed, and close to 400,000 young people were forced into slave labor. Homes were requisitioned, and many starved due to food shortages. The Nazis launched a series of actions in which Einsatzgruppen units, with help from the Belorussian police battalions, as well as units of Lithuanian and Ukrainian police, murdered forty per cent of the Belorussian Jews. Shot over pits, they were buried in mass graves. There were two waves of these actions; the first lasted from July to December of 1941, and the second from the spring through winter of 1942. In Eastern Belorussia, Germans conquered Minsk, Vitebsk, and Smolensk by July 1941. Again, Jews were murdered en masse and by the end of 1942 the Jews of 35 ghettos had been exterminated. While 30,000 Jews were murdered over a three-day period in July 1942, Minsk Ghetto, one of the largest ghettos in WWII, lasted until October 1943. The Bielski brothers, who came from Stankiewicze near Lida and Nowogrodek, built a family camp in the forests of Western Belarus, saving the lives of more than 1200 Jews. The group spent more than two years in the forests.

Dimensions

4 x 5 3/4"

Keywords

Horodyszcze, Minsk, Lida, Bielski family, Western Belarus, Palestine

Subcollection

Ghettos

Recommended Citation

"Censored Postcard From Bialystock to Palestine" (1941). Bulmash Family Holocaust Collection. 2014.1.272.
https://digital.kenyon.edu/bulmash/531