4 Execution site(s)
Dmitriy K.: "There was also a mass grave in the village. But a long time after the war, a Vitebsk military unit came to dig up the bodies (about 50) to transfer them to a shared mass grave in Novoyelnya. This mass grave included Jews who had hid in the forest." (Witness N°326, interviewed in May, 2010)
Dvorets is a village located 139km southwest of Minsk. Before the war, there were around 400 Jews living in Dvorets, making up 75% of the total population. The place was under German occupation from 1941 to 1945.
In March 1942, a ghetto was set up between Molchadskaya, Goncharnaya, and Smutnaya streets. Jews rounded up from surrounding areas, such as Naliboki, were interned in the ghetto. According to witnesses interviewed by Yahad In - Unum, the ghetto was fenced in with barbed wire, but there were many secret tunnels going inside the ghetto. The liquidation of the ghetto took place in the second half of December 1942. 2,500 to 3,000 Jews lived there at this moment. The Jews were killed in pits dug in advance in the forest about 2km outside the village on the road from Dvorets to Novoyelnya. Later, Jews who had managed to hide were also killed in the village.
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