Vyritsa

Vyritsa (Russian: Вырица) is a village in Gatchinsky District, Leningrad Oblast, Russia. The village was established in or around c. 1676, and was originally named as Dvernitsy (Дверницы). During the Holocaust, the village was also the site of a ghetto and later the site of the Vyritsa concentration camp.

History

Establishment

Thr village of Vyritsa (Вырица) was founded in or around c. 1676. In that year, it was originally named as Dvernitsy (Дверницы), and not as Vyritsa. The Vyritsa railway station first opened in the village of Vyritsa in 1903. Vyritsa first became a "holiday village" in 1926.

German occupation, mass murders of Jews, and Soviet Bolshevik liberation

Following Operation Barbarossa, Vyritsa was occupied by Nazi German troops in August of 1941. Following the occupation, all the Jews living in Vyritsa were persecuted by German officers, and were forced to work for German officers, against their will. Ultimately, the German commandmant officer in Vyritsa had Jews working for him. Ultimately, a ghetto was established in Vyritsa, in or around c. October and/or November, 1941, and all of the Jews were forced to live there. In the ghetto, by November 1941, about c. 138 Jews had lived there, prior to the quick liquidation of the ghetto. The ghetto was later liquidated and nearly all or even all Jews were shot and killed, between mid-November 1941 and March 1942, in the nearby forest. Nearly all or even all of the bodies of the shot Jews had been exposed, in the open graves, in the nearby forest, for at least a few weeks, if not more and/or longer. By the spring of 1942, people who passed by in the forest, could visibly see the carcasses, sticking out, if they were close to where the open graves were. The Vyritsa concentration camp was established in September of 1942. Most or even all Russian orphaned children were forced to live in the newly-established concentration camp. The conditions were horrendous, horrific, and terrible and many inmates had suffered and died of and from severe malnutrition and even starvation. The concentration camp was closed and shut down in 1943, presumably due to the Soviet advance, throughout the occupied Central and Eastern European territories. Vyritsa was liberated on 29 January 1944, by the Soviet Bolshevik Red Army. The German officers were completely driven away from all of the occupied territories in the Leningrad Oblast, by early (and/or rather the middle (mid) of) February, 1944