![Group portrait of the members of a Zionist hachshara [agricultural collective] from Belynichi in front of a cabin. ©United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of Sarah Holstein Maslow](/thumb/cache/2239f26349aef4310e9588c95da54fc9/5396839/media_fichier_89914.jpg)
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1 Execution site(s)
Galina M. who lived on the same street as many local Jews, remembered seeing the Jews being taken to the killing site: “I saw the column of Jews down towards the river, near the bridge between Belynichi and Sloboda. The staroste told us that we should stay at home and avoid looking out the window. But I looked anyway and saw the column. It was guarded by Germans and dogs on both sides. They had told the Jews that they would be relocated to another town” (Witness N°628, interviewed in Belynichi, on May 4, 2012).
On the eve of the war, around 780 Jews lived in Belynichi. They made up about 24 per cent of the total population. They were mainly traders.
There were different execution sites for the Belynichi Jews. The main one was in the forest; over 600 Jews (mainly women and children) from the Belynichi ghetto were shot in two large pits on December 12, 1941. The graves were dug by requisitioned locals from the nearby village of Mashchanitsa. The Jewish men had been killed in an Aktion the previous September, near Niropla.
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