Mogilev

Mogilev (Russian: Могилёв, pronounced [məɡjɪˈljɵf]) or Mahilioŭ, also Mahilyow (Belarusian: Магілёў, pronounced [maɣjiˈljou̯]) is a city in eastern Belarus, on the Dnieper River, about 76 kilometres (47 miles) from the border with Russia's Smolensk Oblast and 105 km (65 miles) from the border with Russia's Bryansk Oblast. As of 2011, its population was 360,918,[1] up from an estimated 106,000 in 1956. It is the administrative centre of the Mogilev Region and the third largest city in Belarus.

In 1577, Polish King Stefan Batory granted it city rights under Magdeburg law. In 1654, the townsmen negotiated a treaty of surrender to the Russians peacefully, if the Jews were to be expelled and their property divided up among Mogilev's inhabitants. Tsar Aleksei Mikhailovitch agreed. However, instead of expelling the Jews, the Russian troops massacred them after they had led them to the outskirts of the town.[3] The city was set afire by Charles XII's forces in 1708, during the Great Northern War.[4] After the First Partition of Poland in 1772, Mogilev became part of the Russian Empire and became the centre of the Mogilev Governorate.

In the years 1915–1917, during World War I, the Stavka, the headquarters of the Russian Imperial Army, was based in the city [5] and the Tsar, Nicholas II, spent long periods there as Commander-in-Chief.[6]

Following the Russian Revolution, in 1918, the city was briefly occupied by Germany and placed under their short-lived Belarusian People's Republic. In 1919, Mogilev was captured by the forces of Soviet Russia and incorporated into the Byelorussian SSR. Up to World War II and the Holocaust, like many other cities in Europe, Mogilev had a significant Jewish population: according to the Russian census of 1897, out of the total population of 41,100, 21,500 were Jews (i.e. over 50 percent).[7]

In 1938 according the project of transferring the capital of the Belarusian Soviet Socialist Republic to Mogilev, the reconstruction of the city began. The House of Soviets, the cinema "Rodina", the building of the NKVD of the BSSR (now the Belarusian-Russian University), a hotel, a number of multi-storey residential buildings were erected. Significant appropriations were allocated for the improvement of the city, education, and health care. In a short time, a general plan of the city is being developed. But as a result of the annexation of Western Belarus to the BSSR, the idea of ​​transferring the capital from Minsk to Mogilev disappeared. After the liberation of the BSSR from the German invaders, since Minsk was almost completely destroyed, Mogilev was again considered as a possible capital of the BSSR, but never received this status.

During Operation Barbarossa, the city was conquered by Wehrmacht forces on 26 July 1941 and remained under German occupation until 28 June 1944.[8] Mogilev became the official residence of High SS and police leader (HSSPF) Erich von dem Bach. During that period, the Jews of Mogilev were ghettoized and systematically murdered by Ordnungspolizei and SS personnel.[9] Heinrich Himmler personally witnessed the executions of 279 Jews on 23 October 1941. Later that month, a number of mentally disabled patients were poisoned with car exhaust fumes as an experiment; the method of killing was thereafter applied in several Nazi extermination camps. Initial plans for establishing a death camp in Mogilev were abandoned in favour of Maly Trostenets.