Polotsk (Polatsk) | Vitebsk

Soviet soldiers in Polozk (Belarus), propaganda poster celebrating the reconquest of the city and urging the liberation of the Baltic from Nazi German occupation © Public domain, Wikipedia / Mikhail G., born in 1905, saw the bodies in the grave after the shooting © Guillaume Ribot - Yahad-In Unum Mikhail G. leading the Yahad team to the execution site of about 2,300 Jews from Polotsk (November 21, 1941). Today, the graves are under the road. There is a memorial in the nearby forest © Guillaume Ribot - Yahad-In Unum Mikhail G. showing the place of the pit where the Jews were shot in © Guillaume Ribot - Yahad-In Unum Interview of Mikhail S. at the killing site of the Polotsk Jews in Baranovo © Guillaume Ribot - Yahad-In Unum The Yahad team trying to figure out the locatio of former ghetto in Borovukha II © Guillaume Ribot - Yahad-In Unum The Yahad-In Unum team is looking for witnesses © Guillaume Ribot - Yahad-In Unum

Execution of Jews from Polotsk in Borovukha II

1 Execution site(s)

Kind of place before :
Near a former firing range
Memorials :
Yes
Period of occupation:
1941-1944
Number of victims :
2300

Witness interview

Mikhail G. remembered: "Not long after the gunfire, I went to the place. I saw the very thin bodies of the victims who were dressed." (Witnesse N°45, interviewed in Baranovo, on July 16, 2008)

Soviet archives

““In 1941 I saw the shooting of the Jews from Polotsk in the military base of Borovukha. When the Germans and the police put them in columns, there were many women (including me) who followed them (...). Children, women and elderly people were shot there” [Deposition of Maria A., born in 1910, inhabitant of Polotsk, May 7,1945; RG-22.002M.7021-84]

Holocaust by bullets in figures

On November 21, 1941, the majority of the Jews from Polotsk were shot in Borovukha II near a former firing range. The Yahad team found the shooting site of the 2 300 Jews from Polotsk.

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