Zaostrovechye | Minsk

The former building of the synagogue. ©Jethro Massey/Yahad - In Unum The former police post. ©Jethro Massey/Yahad - In Unum Sofia S. remembered that she was grazing her cow when she heard the shooting. ©Jethro Massey/Yahad - In Unum Sofia S., born in 1931: "My Jewish friends and their mother were also shot at the central square. The Jews were forced to lie down facing the ground and were shot with a sub machine gun." ©Jethro Massey/Yahad - In Unum Sofia S. points out the direction from which she watched the shooting from home. ©Jethro Massey/Yahad - In Unum Around midday, the Jews were taken to the village center near the selsoviet building. They were shot on the big square and their corpses were taken away on carts by other Jews. The bodies were buried in the pit. ©Jethro Massey/Yahad - In Unum The Yahad team reconstructs the different stages of the crime with a local witness in Zaostrovechye ©Jethro Massey/Yahad - In Unum The Yahad team during an interview. ©Jethro Massey/Yahad - In Unum The monument to the Jewish victims murdered by Nazi in Zaostrovechye during the Holocaust. ©Jethro Massey/Yahad - In Unum

Execution of Jews in Zaostrovechye

1 Killing site(s)

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

Witness interview

Sofia S., born in 1931: “The Jews were imprisoned in various houses in the village and had to wear special signs on their clothes. The entire village was surrounded with barbed wire, and watched by a guard in a high tower.” (Eyewitness N°753, interviewed in Zaostrovechye, on May 18, 2014)

Historical note

Zaostrovechye is a village situated 120 km southwest of Minsk. Before the war, it was home to a small Jewish community. There was a synagogue. The village was under German occupation from 1941 to 1944.

Holocaust by bullets in figures

At the end of 1941, a special type of ghetto was created, with the whole village being surrounded with barbed wire. The Jews were concentrated in different houses in the village. There were 4 entrances to the village and a watchtower. The ghetto was liquidated in June 1942, and the fate of the Jews remains rather unclear, with contradictary information from different sources. It appears that some of the Jews were taken to the village of Sinyavka, where they were shot alongside local Jews. But according to witnesses interviewed by Yahad, there were also Jews shot in the village itself, on the central square. Ttheir corpses were buried in a mass grave close to the killing site.

Nearby villages

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