Obj. ID: 16039
  Memorials  Holocaust Monument at the Killing site in Mir, Belarus, 1967

Mir was occupied by the Wehrmacht on June 26 [Yad Vashem: The Untold Stories]. The anti-Jewish Aktions in Mir were carried out by the 8th Company, Infantry Regiment 727, German security forces, members of the Gendarmerie, and local police [The Map of Holocaust by Bullets: Yahad-In Unum].  The first Aktion took place on July 20 against local Jewish intelligentsia [Al'tman]. In the following days, a Jewish council was established in Mir; all the town's Jews were required to wear a yellow badge, and forced labor was imposed on Jewish men aged 16-60. On November 9, 1941, the Nazis carried out a massacre of the Jews of Mir and nearby Turzec: some 1,500-1,600 (or 2,000, according to other sources) Jews were killed on that day. Several days later, a ghetto was established in Mir, with the building of the former Mir yeshiva being incorporated into it. 850 Jewish survivors of the November massacre were imprisoned in this ghetto. Some accounts also mention a massacre that took place in Mir either on the eve of Purim, March 2, 1942, or in June of that year. In any case, sometime between December 1941 and June 1942 the last 800 Jews of Mir were transferred to the dilapidated Mir Castle (which at present forms part of the town), and a new ghetto was set up there. On August 13, 1942, the Germans assembled a large armed force at the castle and shot 560 inmates of the new ghetto in the Jabłonowszczyzna Forest, where pits had been dug in advance. Over the following days and weeks, the Germans caught many Jewish fugitives who had managed to escape from Mir ahead of the final massacre and killed them. Only some sixty Jews from Mir survived the German occupation [Yad Vashem: The Untold Stories].

The commemoration of the Mir victims began in 1966 when the first memorial, dedicated to the massacre of November 1941, was established in the grove at 42 Tankistov Street, east of the town center, near Mir Castle [Yad Vashem: The Untold Stories]. In the same year, an obelisk was erected in the Iablonovshchyna Forest, 1.5 km south of the town, at the site of the massacre of August 1942. In 1996, the monument was renovated, and a bilingual Belarusian-Hebrew plaque was affixed to the stele [Yad Vashem: The Untold Stories].

 Later, in 1967, the monument under discussion - that also commemorates the massacre of November 1941 - was erected at 10-12 Kastrychnitskaya Street. In 1996, a bilingual Belarusian-Hebrew plaque was added to the stele [Yad Vashem: The Untold Stories]. Today the monument is a place of commemorative ceremonies.