Our editors will review what you’ve submitted and determine whether to revise the article in which locale it suffered many reversals of fortune By the 19th century it was a centre of trade and handicrafts and its modern growth began with the coming of the railway It now has food and engineering industries "Crime Scene" is a joint project of the regional prosecutor's office and "Grodnenskaya Pravda" Hitler's policy of "final solution of the Jewish question" brought fear During the Great Patriotic War in 1941-1943 fascist non-humans and their accomplices destroyed more than six thousand Novogrudok Jews there was a unique case of Jewish resistance and an unprecedented flight about which books have been written and films have been made – The new order during the Great Patriotic War was planted on the territory of Belarus through genocide and mass terror In the occupied territory of the Grodno region the Nazis created 55 places of forced detention of the civilian population: 40 ghettos 7 camps for prisoners of war and the civilian population and one collection point (during the additional investigation At least 105 thousand people were killed in captivity and more than 26 thousand were taken to Germany and death camps outside of Belarus The Nazis and their accomplices committed mass murder of the Jewish population and Jews deported from Western Europe  The new joint project of the prosecutor's office of the Grodno region and Grodnenskaya Pravda newspaper is about this About the difficult fate of people who were marked on a national basis about the extermination of the peaceful Soviet people during the years of war hard times and experienced universal grief the miracles of survival and the height of the spirit of the survivors We will talk about the crime scenes of the Nazis: ghettos in which local residents found themselves only because they had a different hair or eye color  The new facts obtained by us in the framework of the criminal case on the genocide of the Belarusian people during the Great Patriotic War in the lands of the Grodno region make us take a fresh look at the events of almost eighty years ago and are horrified But the legalization of this hard truth is our duty to the innocent fallen Before the beginning of the Great Patriotic War people of different nationalities peacefully coexisted in Novogrudok Sixty-three percent of the townspeople were Jews they built and developed a unique historical place with a unique aura and already on July 26 they showed their attitude towards the Jews by arranging a demonstrative execution on the city square: they drove one hundred people out into the street and shot every second without explaining the reason an order appeared on the streets of the city to restrict the rights of Jews A new occupation order was established in Novogrudok - brutal head of the department of ideological work of the Novogrudok regional executive committee “They were forbidden to travel to other cities appear on the streets without special permission and they were ordered to sew yellow marks on their clothes - armor measuring 10x10 centimeters for identification and in case of escape the Germans gathered all the Jews - about six thousand people The unfortunate languished in anticipation Thus began the first "action" - a senseless and cruel execution the head of the family answered only two questions: about the profession and how many children are in the family former director of the Novogrudok Museum of Local Lore a witness in the criminal case on the genocide of the Belarusian people - After the answer - eye contact with the German officer not only the answer to the question was important And then fate was determined with a wave of the hand Those who were sent down the stairs to the street were waited by trucks which were taken to the place of execution in Skrydlevo And those who remained in the building - about one and a half thousand - were transferred three days later to the ghetto on Peresek they began to bring people in trucks and drive people on foot my father hid us under the table and forbade us to leave the house Several corpses lay on the street from among those who disobeyed this order and went out into the street I ran with other children to the place of execution and saw fresh moving earth ”(from the memoirs of an eyewitness to the distance  The execution was carried out by the Lithuanian police battalion the city was cordoned off by the 7th company of the 727th infantry regiment The territory of the ghetto at Peresek was fenced off with a wooden fence and several rows of barbed wire According to the documentary-historical chronicle “Memory.Novogrudok district” about eight (according to other sources - five) thousand Jews were kept there because after the order of the gebitskommissarTraub to clear the territory of Jews Korelichi and Nalibok of the Stolbtsy district began to be brought to the Novogrudok ghetto  -The ghetto consisted of about fifty residential buildings both Jews and residents of other nationalities deputy prosecutor of the Novogrudok district Jewish workshops were created in Novogrudok where prisoners were taken to work under guard The occupiers used the labor of Jews to clear the city from the rubble formed as a result of bomb attacks Any violation of the rules of the ghetto was punishable by death a group of Jews from the ghetto escaped into the forest The German authorities paid bounties to local residents who turned over runaway Jews  But there were those who saved other people's lives the Bobrovskys' house became a saving island for many Jews The prisoners who escaped from the ghetto hid for several days and even weeks near the Bobrovskys in order to later join the Jewish partisan detachment of the Belsky brothers which operated in the forests of NalibokskayaPushcha And following the denunciation with a search the owners were demonstratively dragged tied to horse tails to the prison But the youngest Jewish girl remained alive due to the fact that the mistress of the house married her off as her own daughter Khadashka was assigned to an orphanage in Novogrudok And she survived under the name of GalinkaBobrovskaya went to Israel and preserved this story of human courage Ghetto survivor Idel (Jack) Kagan recalled: “When I fled on December 21 fourteen people came to the house of the Pole Bobrovsky When he repeated the escape on September 26 the Bobrovskys' house had already been burned down the Jewess ShifraHarkavi and her five-year-old daughter who were hiding in the basement of the Bobrovskys and the children were sent to a concentration camp Thanks to the testimonies of Idel (Jack) Kagan and the surviving Jewish girl Hadashka (now her name is Galina Steiner) in recognition of the dedication and heroism of her parents as well as Frantisek and FrantishkaBobrovsky were posthumously awarded the title of Righteous Among the Nations And there were eleven such families of the Righteous in Novogrudok  The place where the house of the Bobrovskys stood has been immortalized: there is a monument to the families of the Righteous Among the Nations from Novogrudok in the form of a swan protecting its chicks On the memorial plaque are the names of the Righteous and the phrase from the Talmud: "He who saves one life saves the whole world." and there was not enough food for everyone the German occupiers prepared the second brutal action of extermination of the Jews: on August 7 about four thousand (!) civilians were shot near the village of Litovka According to the data of the Extraordinary State Commission which in 1945 conducted an investigation and recorded the crimes committed in the occupied territories since another 500 people were shot there on February 4 They shot from machine guns and machine guns at huge dug pits -Four thousand brutally murdered Jews were buried in a common grave,” says local historian Tamara Vershitskaya who during the war lived in the village of Sunchitsy together with her mother and other women from the village she harvested rye in the field and then every day she walked to school along the road past this grave She recalled that "blood was breaking out of the grave a fountain and a river flowed along the road".. published in Jack Kagan's The Holocaust and Resistance in the Homeland of Adam Mickiewicz: "The sun shines the same as last year as if to show that nothing happened to him as if : "I'm not guilty." The thought troubles my heart Here is what in July 1948 testified about that terrible execution who committed many atrocities on the territory of Belarus as part of the 36th Estonian police battalion: the entire 36th police battalion in Tartu was loaded onto a train and went to Belarus where we were unloaded in the city of Novogrudok Our battalion was in the area of this city for about one month our main task was to kill the Jews who were in Novogrudok and the surrounding villages I took part in the execution of Jews with soldiers and officers of the 36th police battalion Some of the arrested Jews were put on cars where these arrested Jews dug large pits - ditches about 30–60 m long Then they began to bring the rest of the Jews to these ditches a selection was carried out: the best specialists in the profession were selected who was responsible for forming groups for work in the city Prisoners who knew Ostashinsky agreed with him to issue such cards realizing that those who did not get them would be shot they were transferred to a "labor camp" - a ghetto on Korelichskaya Street on the territory of the former district voivodship court “The territory of the ghetto on Korelichskaya Street (now Minskaya Street) was surrounded by two rows of fences: the barrack itself was surrounded by barbed wire and a three-meter wooden fence,” says Tamara Vershitskaya - Towers and a searchlight on the courthouse were installed along the perimeter for control at night because the Jews were here permanently and had no right to leave it  On the territory of the ghetto there are two barracks sewing and locksmith workshops worked for the Wehrmacht and the local German administration The building of the voivodeship court was initially used as a warehouse (furniture from the houses of Jews was brought here which was then used to equip the housing of the families of the German administration) - According to the recollections of the surviving prisoners the Jews had to build bunk beds for sleeping on their own: in three tiers and 65 centimeters per person and then used things left after the execution of the prisoners of the ghetto in Peresek as bedding only a stove-potbelly stove standing in the middle of the barracks kept warm There was little water in the well on the territory of the ghetto so it was not possible to wash or change clothes It was forbidden to leave the barracks after sunset The daily norm of bread per person was 125 grams For offenses - the most severe punishments in the form of blows with sticks suspension by the hands wound behind the back for two potatoes found in a pocket of clothes.. later became the British millionaire Jack Kagan  The commandant of both ghettos was Wilhelm Reuter who supervised the execution of Jews in Dyatlovo on August 6 the ghetto administration included the heads of the workshops who were hired workers from among the Poles and Belarusians and the ghetto guards - local residents who voluntarily went to serve in the police or were mobilized for service she twice came across information in archival documents that in July-August 1943 Belarusians were also brought to the ghetto for a short period before being sent to forced labor in Germany the third mass “action” was held in the ghetto on Korelichskaya to exterminate the prisoners but according to a new scenario: on the day of the execution the best specialists were locked up in the courthouse and the rest - about 250 people - were taken to a distance of 300-400 meters from the ghetto to the pit people lay down in a pit on the corpses of the dead and .. the number of Jews in the ghetto was halved which he gave in 1944 (an archival criminal case): “I personally shot 30 Soviet citizens of Jewish nationality who announced that today there would be an execution of Jews after which a German doctor came and gave all the participants in the execution an injection in the left hand after which they put us on a truck and drove us outside the city of Novogrudok they began to lead the prisoners in groups of 30-40 people all those arrested were undressed and they remained in their underwear ..  The same policeman testified in October 1944: “On May 7 500 people of Jewish nationality were shot disabled people who don't provide enough produce and old people were shot; the families of specialists who remained in the ghetto were shot The execution was carried out from 5 o'clock in the morning and ended at about 10 o'clock in the afternoon The ghetto was located in the former buildings of the Polish court.”  According to the National Archives of the Republic of Belarus (materials of the Extraodionary State Commission) and according to the German archives - 375 Оперативные и актуальные новости Волковыска и района в нашем Telegram-канале Правила использования материалов "Наш час" читайте здесь Публикуемая информация является интеллектуальной собственностью ГУ «Редакция Волковысской районной газеты и телерадиопрограмм «Наш час». 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