Map of the ghettos in occupied Europe, 1939-45, showing the location of Lakhva (south of Minsk, east of Pinsk)

Einsatzgruppen massacres in the Soviet Union

Lakhva (or Lachva, Lachwa) (Belarusian: Лахва) (Polish:Łachwa) (Russian:Лахва) (Hebrew:לחווא) (Yiddish:לאַכװע) is a small town in southern Belarus, in Brest voblast, approximately 80 kilometres to the east of Pinsk and 200 kilometres south of Minsk. The population is approximately 2100. Image File history File links Ghettos. ... Image File history File links Ghettos. ... Minsk or Miensk (Belarusian: ; Russian: ; Polish: ) is the capital and largest city in Belarus with a population of 1,780,000 (2006 estimate}. Minsk is also a headquarters of the Commonwealth of Independent States. ... Pinsk (Belarusian: , Russian: ), a town in Belarus, in the Polesia region, travesed by the river Prypiać, at the confluence of the Strumen and Pina rivers. ... Image File history File links Ukraine_massacres. ... Image File history File links Ukraine_massacres. ... Hebrew (עִבְרִית ‘Ivrit) is a Semitic language of the Afro-Asiatic language family spoken by more than seven million people in Israel and Jewish communities around the world. ... Yiddish (Yid. ... Brest voblast is one of the administrative regions in the Republic of Belarus located in the south-west of Belarus bordering on Poland and Ukraine. ... At the higher administrative level, Belarus is divided into 6 voblasts and one municipality (horad, i. ... Pinsk (Belarusian: , Russian: ), a town in Belarus, in the Polesia region, travesed by the river Prypiać, at the confluence of the Strumen and Pina rivers. ... Minsk or Miensk (Belarusian: ; Russian: ; Polish: ) is the capital and largest city in Belarus with a population of 1,780,000 (2006 estimate}. Minsk is also a headquarters of the Commonwealth of Independent States. ...

Before the Second World War, Lakhva was a shtetl in eastern Poland with a sizeable Jewish population of about 2,300. The Jewish population increased by 40% between 1939 and 1941, when Germany and the Soviet Union partitioned Poland, and Jewish refugees fled German-occupied areas to those lands incorporated into the Soviet Union. Mushroom cloud from the nuclear explosion over Nagasaki rising 18 km into the air. ... A shtetl or shtetele (Yiddish: , diminutive form of Yiddish shtot, town) was typically a small town or village with a large Jewish population in pre-Holocaust Central and Eastern Europe. ... The word Jew ( Hebrew: יהודי) is used in a wide number of ways, but generally refers to a follower of the Jewish faith, a child of a Jewish mother, or someone of Jewish descent with a connection to Jewish culture or ethnicity and often a combination of these attributes. ...

Germany invaded the Soviet Union in 1941, and German troops occupied Lakhva on July 8, 1941. On April 1, 1942, the town's Jews were forcibly moved into a ghetto consisting of two streets surrounded by a barbed wire fence. A ghetto is an area where people from a specific racial or ethnic background or united in a given culture or religion live as a group, voluntarily or involuntarily, in milder or stricter seclusion. ...

On September 2, 1942, the local populace became aware that the Nazis were digging pits outside the town. Later that day, 150 German soldiers (the Einsatzgruppen) and 200 local police surrounded the ghetto. Dov Lopatyn, the head of the local Judenrat, refused the German request for the ghetto inhabitants to line up for deportation. On September 3, members of the ghetto underground attacked the Germans as they entered the ghetto, using axes, sticks, molotov cocktails and their bare hands. This battle represented one of the first ghetto uprisings of the war. September 2 is the 245th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar (246th in leap years). ... This article is about the year. ... A member of Einsatzgruppe D is just about to execute Jewish man kneeling before a filled mass grave in Vinnitsa, Ukraine, in 1942. ... Dov Lopatyn was the head of the Judenrat in Łachwa, Poland (now Lakhva, Belarus) in 1941-1942. ... Judenrats, German for Jewish council, were administrative bodies that the Germans required Jews to form in each ghetto in General Government (the Nazi-occupied teritory of Poland) and later in the occupied territories of the Soviet Union. ... September 3 is the 246th day of the year (247th in leap years). ... Molotov cocktail is the generic name for a variety of crude incendiary weapons. ... Ghetto Uprising refers to an armed struggle by people incarcerated in German Ghettos during World War II against the plans to resettle all the inhabitants to concentration and death camps. ...

Approximately 650 Jews were killed in the fighting, and another 500 or so Jews were taken to the pits and shot. The ghetto wall was breached, and approximately 1000 Jews were able to escape, of whom about 600 were able to take refuge in the Pripet Marshes. Although an estimated 120 of the escapees were able to join partisan units, most of the others were eventually tracked down and killed. Approximately 90 residents of the ghetto survived the war. Pinsk Marshes (Пинские болота) or Pripyat Marshes (Pripet Marshes, Припятские болота) is a vast territory of wetlands along the Pripyat River and its tributaries from Brest, Belarus (West) to Mahileu (Northeast) and Kiev (Southeast). ... Look up partisan on Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ...

Lopatyn joined a communist partisan unit, and was killed on February 21, 1944 by a landmine. Lakhva was liberated by the Red Army in July 1944. February 21 is the 52nd day of the year in the Gregorian Calendar. ... 1944 (MCMXLIV) was a leap year starting on Saturday (the link is to a full 1944 calendar). ... U.S. Army soldier removes fuse from a Russian-made mine to clear a minefield outside of Fallujah, Iraq. ... The short forms Red Army and RKKA refer to the Workers and Peasants Red Army, (in Russian: Рабоче-Крестьянская Красная Армия - Raboche-Krestyanskaya Krasnaya Armiya), the armed forces first organized by the Bolsheviks during the Russian Civil War in 1918. ... 1944 (MCMXLIV) was a leap year starting on Saturday (the link is to a full 1944 calendar). ...

At present, there are few, if any, Jewish inhabitants in Lakhva, although a small memorial to the 1942 Jewish uprising was erected in 1994.

References

• Suhl, Yuri. They Fought Back. (New York: Paperback Library Inc., 1967), pages 181-3.

External links

• General Information on Lakhva
• The Simon Wiesenthal Center - Lachva
• This Month in Holocaust History - September 3, 1942
• B'nai Brith Canada - The forgotten resitstance in Lachva
• The History of the Jewish People