SEPTEMBER

September 3: Armed Jewish resistance in Lachva, Belarus

On September 2, two underground leaders in Lachva received word that pits were being dug near the town. Late that afternoon, 150 Germans and 200 police encircled the ghetto. The underground, with full cooperation from the Judenrat, planned to attack the police and the soldiers at midnight at the ghetto fence; the Jewish inmates would exploit the fracas and the chaos to flee to the forests. The uprising was postponed to the morning. When the German commander informed Dov Lopatyn, chairman of the Judenrat, that he was about to liquidate the ghetto of 2,300 Jews and leave behind only 30 skilled artisans, Lopatyn replied, "Either we all stay alive or we all perish." When the underground gave the signal, the fence was broken through and the underground members instigated a battle with the Germans, with axes and bare hands. The ghetto gate was breached; large numbers of Jews rushed through the hole, but many were killed by German gunfire. Of approximately 1,000 Jews who escaped, some 600 made their way to the Pripet Marshes. Some 500 Jews, women and old men, were taken to the pits and shot to death. Many of those who escaped were betrayed by local non-Jewish inhabitants. Only about 120 managed to assemble in the forest. Twenty-five of them, armed with two rifles, were accepted into the ranks of a Soviet partisan unit. Lopatyn joined the "Stalin" partisan unit and was killed on February 21, 1944, when he stepped on a mine.