Before the outbreak of World War II, Bobruisk was one of the centers of Jewish life. According to the 1939 census, 26.7 thousand Jews lived here, making up a third of the townspeople. The Nazis captured Bobruisk six days after the outbreak of war. The occupation lasted three years from June 1941 to June 1944.

It is difficult to establish the exact number of Jews who were in Bobruisk because, with the outbreak of hostilities, part of the male population was mobilized into the Red Army, part of the Jewish civilian population managed to evacuate, and Nazis brought Jews from neighboring villages and Polish territories to the city. Therefore, in July 1942, 3 thousand Jews from the Warsaw ghetto found themselves in Bobruisk.

The Holocaust of the Jews began with discriminatory measures. They were forbidden to leave their place of residence after a certain time, they had to wear yellow stripes, pay indemnities and participate in forced labor. In June and August 1941, the invaders shot the Jewish population.

In early August 1941, the Nazis announced the creation of a ghetto in the area of ​​three streets: Bobrova, Novoshosseynaya and Zaturensky. The resettlement of the Jewish population took 10 days. In Bobruisk, the Nazis created a closed type ghetto that the Jews could not leave. According to eyewitnesses, the prisoners received rations of 3 potatoes and 100 g of bread per day, they were forbidden to wash and cook food on fire.

Ghetto residents were forced to clear minefields, build bunkers, dig ditches and work on rebuilding the railway. Ghetto dwellers with working specialties were used in urban plants and factories. Periodically, the Nazis staged punitive actions. Therefore, in September - October 1941, Einsatzkommand 8 carried out three actions of destruction. More than 1 thousand people were killed. SS men from the cavalry brigade killed about 7 thousand Jews.

In November 1941, the occupation authorities began to liquidate the ghetto. The Jews were announced to be relocated to Palestine, loaded into cars and transported along the Slutsk highway several kilometers from Bobruisk. The executions took place near the villages of Yeloviki and Kamenka.

Part of the Jewish specialists (tailors, joiners and shoemakers) the occupiers left alive, settling them in four houses along Novoshosseynaya Street. In addition, the invaders offered to return to this place for those who, for various reasons, escaped execution.

The last inhabitants of the ghetto were liquidated in December 1941 - February 1942. In February, the Nazis killed 70 Jews who worked in the commandant’s office.

From autumn 1943 to January 1944, the Nazis destroyed traces of crime. They recovered the remains of ghetto prisoners and burned them in the area of ​​the Jewish cemetery. At the gravesites, roads were laid or crops were sown.

According to rough estimates, in Bobruisk, 25 thousand Jews became victims of the Holocaust.