Lyuban | Minsk

/ Nadezhda L., born in 1935, remembers the Jews being taken to the shooting site in trucks. ©Jethro Massey/Yahad - In Unum The former Jewish cemetery in Lyuban. ©Jethro Massey/Yahad - In Unum The mass shooting site of the Jews in Lyuban. ©Jethro Massey/Yahad - In Unum

Execution of Jews in Lyuban

1 Execution site(s)

Kind of place before:
Pits near Machine Tractor Station
Memorials:
Yes
Period of occupation:
1941 - 1944
Number of victims:
800

Witness interview

Nadezhda L., born in 1935, remembers the looting of Jewish belongings: “After the shooting of the Jews, inhabitants entered Jewish houses to take the sheets and pillows. Some were shot for it. I didn’t see it myself, but everybody talked about it.” Witness N°759, interviewed in Kostyukhi, on May 19, 2014)

Soviet archives

“When the Germans occupied Lyuban, in 1941, they took the civilians of Lyuban into the forest and shot them. The shootings took place every day, day and night. The forest is 500m east of the village of Kostiouki, mostly consisting of pine trees. It was cut down in 1942 and there are now bushes on the mass graves.” [Act of the Soviet Extraordinary State Commission; RG-22.002M.7021-81]

Historical note

Lyuban is a village situated 150km southwest of Minsk. IIn 1939, there were more than 1,000 Jews living in the village. There was a synagogue and a cemetery. The village was under German occupation from 1941 to 1944.

Holocaust by bullets in figures

On August 2, 1941, one month after the Germans’ arrival, a selection was conducted, during which between 150 and 200 Jewish men from Lyuban were killed in a gravel pit near the village of Dubniki.

In September 1941, a ghetto surrounded with barbed wire was created in the western part of the village, near Pervomayiskayia Street. It was guarded by Germans and local policemen. According to eyewitnesses interviewed by Yahad, adult Jews were forced to work, cleaning or repairing roads. On November 8, 1941, 50 Jewish men were shot, as a reprisal Aktion after a partisan attack. On December 4, 1941, the ghetto was liquidated by an SS detachment from Glusk. Jews were escorted on foot in a column, and shot in pits near the Machine Tractor Station (MTS).

For more infomation about the execution in Dubniki please check the corresponding village’s profile.

Nearby villages

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