In the city of Pochep (Bryansk region, Russia) a monument was erected in memory of the Jews shot by the Nazis during the Great Patriotic War. This memorial is dedicated to the victims of the mass extermination of the Jewish population that took place as part of the Holocaust in the territory occupied by German troops.
The history of this monument is connected with the tragic events of 1941–1943, when Pochep was under German occupation. In 1939, 2,314 Jews lived in Pochep, about 15% of the population. By the beginning of the occupation, on August 22, 1941, some of the Jews were able to evacuate, but at the same time there were many Jewish refugees from previously occupied territories in the city.
At the beginning of November 1941, 217 Jewish men were executed in Pochep. All the rest were imprisoned in two camps: women with small children were kept on the territory of the former Poultry Plant, men and boys over 14 years old were kept near the swamp behind the Kalinin school. Able-bodied prisoners of both camps were used for hard physical work. On March 16–17, 1942, they were all shot in the anti-tank ditch. According to updated data, 1,846 Jews were killed during this action.
In the 1960s, a monument was erected at the site of the execution; over time, it began to collapse. On September 26, 2018, a renewed memorial was opened here, containing slabs with the names of the victims. Work on the reconstruction of the monument was carried out on the initiative of the Administration of the Pochep District, the Russian Jewish Congress and the Holcust Center within the framework of the project “Restore Dignity” with the participation of the director of the Rechytsa secondary school Olesya Petrovskaya, Yad Vashem, and the Jewish charity center “Hesed Tikva” in the city of Bryansk. For several years, Olesya Petrovskaya and her students carried out large-scale work to establish the names of those executed. There are now 1,174 names on the stele, and work to find the names of the victims continues.

The monument to Holocaust victims in Pochep is notable for the fact that it contains an inscription in Russian and Hebrew: “1846 people are buried here, brutally killed by fascist executioners on March 16-17, 1942.”  This is one of three monuments in Russia that have inscriptions in Hebrew. One memorial to the victims of the Holocaust is located in Moscow on Poklonnaya Gora and a monument to the victims of the Holocaust is located in St. Petersburg, on Primorsky Avenue.