At the beginning of the twentieth century, Jews constituted a third of the population of the Belarusian Krychaw. More than 2.5 thousand of them lived here; there were several synagogues and a number of Jewish organizations.

Data on those drafted into the army and evacuated from the city has not been preserved.

There are memories of those who tried to leave the city on the eve of the Nazi invasion. It is clear from them that some of the Jews tried to leave the city by rail. Several families managed to do this, despite the fact that the station was under fire from the advancing Nazis. The other part moved towards Khotimsk, but they had to return because of the rapid advance of the German army.

The occupation of Krychaw lasted from July 1941 to September 1943. Jews in the city lived quite compactly and until the fall of 1941, they remained in their own homes. In the fall of 1941, the Nazis carried out the first extermination aktion, shooting old people near the management of the Krichevcementshifer plant. The rest were herded into the ghetto.

Some of the Jews who did not want to move to the ghetto were able to leave the city and organized a partisan detachment in the forest under the leadership of Sonya Primak. Sources say about 150 members of the squad. It is known that Sonya turned to the Soviet partisans for help, but received neither help nor permission to join. As a result, the Nazis destroyed the entire detachment.

The Jews who remained in the Krychaw ghetto were used by the Nazis to build a highway. Preserved memories of eyewitnesses about the bullying that the Nazis subjected Jews. In particular, they were harnessed instead of horses to carts and forced to carry water.

Eyewitnesses reported cases of selection in the ghetto. The Nazis shot the sick and the disabled. In the fall of 1941, they were taken to the territory of a cement plant, forced to dig holes for themselves and were shot.

The Nazis began to destroy the ghetto in October-November 1941. In October 1941, a mass execution took place in the Krutaya Debra tract. According to sources, about 130 Jews were killed. Eyewitnesses told that after the execution the Nazis hunted those who, for various reasons, managed to survive. In November, the Nazis killed the remaining prisoners of the ghetto near the village of Prudok.

After the war, the remains of those killed in the tract were transferred to Komsomolskaya Street, where the Mound of memory was poured, and a monument was erected.

A monument is also erected at the site of the execution near the village of Prudok.