Jews have lived in Belarusian Gomel since the 16th century. Here Ukrainian Jews who fled from the Khmelnytsky pogroms found refuge. The city was one of the centers of the origin of Hasidism. According to 1989 data, 22.5 thousand Jews lived in Gomel. During the 1980s - 1990s, about 13.3 thousand Jews left.

There were several Jewish cemeteries in the city. In the 1950s the authorities liquidated the old Jewish cemetery, which contained the burials of the 19th century, without taking care of reburials. The stadium of the Gomel University has grown in its place. In 2008, during reconstruction, workers at the stadium found human bones.

One of the cemeteries in which Jewish burials have been preserved is located in the village of Prudok, which later became part of the city limits of Gomel. From this settlement, it got its name Prudkovskoye. The cemetery was officially opened after the Second World War. However, there is information that there are graves dating back to the 1920s-1930s on it.

The cemetery was originally purely Jewish. However, with a decrease in the number of the Jewish population, Gomel began to be used for burial of representatives of other confessions. It was officially closed in the 1960s. However, the authorities allowed subburials on it in special areas inside the established fences.

For a long time, the cemetery was in desolation. In 1994, vandals desecrated over 90 Jewish graves. In addition, the territory of the cemetery is overgrown with weeds. In summer, part of the territory turned into impassable jungle due to the abundance of vegetation. In addition to vandals, old trees that fell and destroyed abandoned graves became a problem for the graves.

In 2013, the volunteers carried out the first aktion to clear the area. Then they cut down many dried trees and removed the branches from the graves. A year later, in November, an aktion was held that united Christians and Jews. The cleanup was scheduled for Friday, November 7, so as not to affect either the holy Saturday for the Jews, or the important Sunday for Christians.

Volunteers cleared the territory of the cemetery and put in order the surviving graves. Today it is known that the Jewish section of the Prudkovskoye cemetery consists of two sectors. In one, 103 rows of burials were counted, and in the second, five. According to rough estimates, there are about 1.3 thousand burials here, where tablets can be read in whole or in part.

At the cemetery, one can find burials in the form of a tree trunk with felled branches, common among Belarusian Jews, as well as the usual gravestones with inscriptions in Hebrew and images of the Star of David.