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Ghetto Uvarovichi

A photo catalog of the burials of this cemetery is available at the LINK 

According to some reports, by the beginning of the German invasion of the USSR, half of the inhabitants of the small town of Uvarovichi in the Buda-Koshelev district (Belarus) (about 3,000 people) were Jews). On the eve of the occupation of the city, the Jewish community also increased due to refugees from Nazi-occupied Poland.

The German advanced units entered Uvarovichi on August 17, 1941. The period of occupation of the city lasted a little more than two years - until the end of November 1943. Almost from the first days of the occupation, the German administration began to implement a program tested in other territories to exterminate the Jewish population by organizing a ghetto in Uvarovichi. All the residents of the town and the surrounding area of ​​Jewish nationality were driven into it.

For the arrangement of the Jewish ghetto, the occupying authorities allocated several houses on Naberezhnaya Street, having previously evicted all residents of non-Jewish nationality from there. Ghetto prisoners were kept in appalling conditions, lacking food, water and medical care. Everyone who could work was forced to do hard physical labor: unloading and loading work, cleaning, etc.

The destruction of the Uvarovichi ghetto by the Germans took place in several stages. The first two executions were carried out by the Nazis and local policemen in November 1941. Officially, the authorities called these killings of civilians "actions." The next "action" took place in December of the same year, and the last - in January 1942. The shootings were carried out in the southwestern part of Uvarovichi, on the outskirts of the village of Novaya Gusevitsa, near the cemetery. Before the execution, the Jews were announced that they were allegedly resettled to another area, but in fact they were taken to the outskirts of the city and killed there with particular cruelty. Previously, valuable things and jewelry were confiscated from them, which were then taken by the Germans and policemen.

According to eyewitnesses, it was mainly old people, women and children who were killed. They made up the main contingent of the ghetto. Some of them were thrown into the execution pits alive or wounded. After the shootings, the place of execution was guarded by policemen for several more days so that those who were buried alive could not get out of the grave.

After the war, a monument was erected at the site of the mass execution of Jews by the forces of the Jewish community, indicating the number of victims - 247 people. However, witnesses of the executions from among local residents claim that in fact there were much more victims - about 700 people.

In the post-war years, the remains of the executed prisoners of the Uvarovichi ghetto were reburied in a mass grave in the cemetery. In memory of the victims of the Nazis, a memorial monument was erected there.