1 Execution site(s)
Yelena K.: "I remember that all the town’s Jews were gathered in four big barracks surrounded by barbed wire and guards, both Germans and policemen. Most of them were elderly people. The Jews didn’t leave and they didn’t work in the ghetto." (Witness N°498 interviewed in June 2011)
"In February 1942, German officers and soldiers carried out the shooting of the Jews in the district: 150 people (women, children and the elderly) were shot in a pit southeast of Yezerishche." [Act of the Soviet Extraodinary State Commission, RG22.022M/7021-84/9]
Yezerishche is a village close to the Russian border, located 75 km north of Vitebsk. In 1939, it is estimated that 60 to 175 Jews lived in the village. The village was under German occupation from 1941 to 1943.
In October 1941, the Jews were resettled in a building close to the train station. On February 22, 1942, all the Jews were shot across the train tracks, in pits that had been dug in advance. According to local testimonies collected by Yahad’s team on the ground, villagers were requisitioned to dig and fill in the pit. Today, the location of the mass shooting site is on the Russian side of the border.
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