Obj. ID: 34038
Memorials  Holocaust Monument in the Jewish Cemetery in Bialyničy, Belarus, 1960s

To the main object: Jewish Cemetery in Belynichi, Belarus

According to Yad Vashem, in January 1939, 781 Jews lived in Belynichi, accounting for approximately 25 percent of the total population. Germans occupied the town on July 6, 1941. After the first murder operation conducted in August or September 1941, the remaining Jews of Belynichi were concentrated in a ghetto. Later, Jews from the neighboring localities of Shepelevichi, Golovchin, Neroplya, and others were deported to it as well. Although the ghetto was not fenced in, the inhabitants were not allowed to leave, and Belarusian collaborators were posted as guards. The Jews in the ghetto were killed on December 12, 1941 [Yad Vashem: The Untold Stories].

Memorialization activities in Belynichi started presumably in the 1980s. At the killing site, the victims' relatives erected a small monument in memory of several families [Litin]. As was common in the Soviet Union, the inscription does not specify the victims' ethnicity. 

Further memorialization activity took place in 1965 when, on the initiative of the victims' relatives, the first general monument at the killing site was erected. In 1983, for the 40th anniversary of the Belarus liberation, it was replaced by the present-day government monument that became the place of commemorative ceremonies [Smilovitsky]. 

In the 1960s, on the initiative of the local official Iosif Belynicha, an attempt of the reinterment in the Jewish cemetery was undertaken. However, due to the subsequent difficulties, the remains of only seventy victims were transferred. The present monument marks the reburial place.