Rabbi Yossie Denburg of Coral Springs reminded the Schedriners to carry on "not only the memories, but also the feelings and the promise of Schedrin." Afterward, he said his father, Leibl, narrowly missed the 1942 [sic 1943] tragedy. "When the Communists began to put pressure on the village in 1939, he went to Moscow. He was supposed to have gone back [to the village] in the summer of '42. He became sick and postponed his train ride one day. That's the day the Germans came in." [Formerly on http://www.shtetlinks.jewishgen.org/bobruisk/bobhist.html]

Hitler's army conquers Bobruisk. On Nov. 7, 1941 at the hands of the Nazi S. S. Einzatzgruppe B, in the town of Yeloviki, approx. 20,000 Bobruisk Jews are shot and buried in mass graves. A general slaughter is also carried out in Hlusk, Paritch, Uzarich and Dragonavka. Ghetto and labor camp are established near airstrip on southwest side of town. Some Jews previously evacuated by Soviets to Uzbekistan. Nazi authorities declare Bobruisk judenrein ("Jew-free").

The Einsatzgruppen, mobile killing units of the SS, followed the army as the German military assault advanced eastward across the Soviet Union in 1941. From June 1941 to December 1942, the Einsatzgruppen murdered more than 900,000 Jews and several hundred thousand non-Jewish Russians. The left-hand map traces the paths of the four mobile killing squads as they established headquarters at different sites and moved into the adjacent countryside eliminating Jewish communities. The map at the right shows destroyed communities in the area south and west of Minsk. Useful sources include: Gary Mokotoff and Sallyann Amdur Sack, Where Once We Walked: A Guide to the Jewish Communities Destroyed in the Holocaust (Teaneck, NJ: Avotaynu, 1991), which has been used to compile the destroyed communities map; Raul Hilberg, The Destruction of the European Jews (New York: Holmes and Meier, 1985); and Helmut Krausnick and Hans-Heinrich Wilhelm, Die Truppe des Weltanschaungskrieges: Die Einsatzgruppen der Sicherheitspolizei und des SD, 1938-42 (Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstatt, 1981), from which the data for the left-hand map have been obtained.

[source: A Survivor of War and Holocaust by Regina Sanderson] The way they would kill the people in the ghetto in Bobriusk was, they would put about 30 Jews into a truck and take them out into the forest. There they would make them line up next to a huge ditch and shoot them. Maria was told by her father to jump out of the truck and to run for her life. Because if she didn’t she would definitely be killed. This way she had a chance to escape; she was young and could run fast. Maria took her fathers advice and jumped out of the truck and ran towards the forest away from the Nazis. Of course the Germans did shoot at her and luckily they missed. It was a cold November day and it was snowing heavily. [source: Headlines-Timelines 1942] July 1, 1942 -- Massacres of Jews in Minsk, Lida and Slonim.

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