Gorodeya | Minsk

/ Maria T. remembers that the pit had been dug by the Jews in advance. ©Nicolas Tkatchouk/Yahad - In Unum Sofia I. remembers that the ghetto was made up of a few houses fenced in with barbed wire. ©Nicolas Tkatchouk/Yahad - In Unum The Yahad team during an interview. ©Nicolas Tkatchouk/Yahad - In Unum The new memorial for the Gorodeya mass shooting, including a path following the route the Jews were forced to take on the way to their death. ©Nicolas Tkatchouk/Yahad - In Unum

Execution of Jews in Gorodeya

1 Killing site(s)

Kind of place before:
Field
Memorials:
Yes
Period of occupation:
1941-1944

Witness interview

Maria T.: "The Jews had to dig their own graves. They all went to the grave in a column, in rows of four." (Witness N°473, interviewed in May 2011)

Soviet archives

"In the early morning, the ghetto was surrounded by the police. An order was given to the population and all of them had to go to a public place. Then the Germans arrived in trucks. The people were forced to lay on the ground, face down. Most of the children were beaten to death." [Deposition of Yelena B., Act of the Soviet Regional Commission,RG 53.002M]

German archives

"After the shootings in Baranovichi, the Jews of Snow and Gorodeja were shot too. I didn’t see these different executions. I only know that the perpetrators were members of the SD". [Deposition of Pyotr K., chief of the local police in Snow during the war, in March, 1970, Minsk, B162-6953]

Historical note

Gorodeya is a village located 40 kilometers northeast of Baranovichi. The precise number of Jews living in Gorodeya at the time of the German occupation is not known, but it was  probably somewhere between 700 and 1,000.The village was under German occupation from 1941 to 1944.

Holocaust by bullets in figures

An enclosed ghetto of a few houses was established in Gorodeya in 1941. On July 16, 1942, the ghetto was liquidated. Some Jews were transported in trucks, but most were marched on foot, to a small hill near the Christian cemetery, where a pit had been dug. On the way to the killing site, the guards shot several Jews who were unable to keep up. Approximately 1,000 Jews were shot that day.

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