Obj. ID: 32645
Jewish Funerary Art Monument at the Killing Site in Dokshitsy, Belarus, 1968
Memorial name:
No official name.
Who is Commemorated?
Jewish Holocaust victims from Dokshitsy.
Description
The monument was erected at the killing site of Dokshitsy Jews, which was transformed into a small public garden. It is shaped like a concrete stele of irregular shape, standing on a large base. On the monument's surface, there are reliefs of four individuals brought to the execution site: three adults and one child.
At the top of the monument, there is a Russian inscription. Another inscription may be found on the memorial plaque at the lower part of the stele.
Inscription
At the top of the stele:
In Russian
Жервам фашизма
Translation: To the victims of Fascism.
At the lower part of the stele:
In Russian
1941 - 1945
Здесь зверски
замучено и расстреляно
фашистскими палачами
свыше 4,300
советских граждан
Translation: 1941-1945 / Here, more than 4,300 Soviet citizens were brutally tortured and shot to death by the fascist executioners.
Commissioned by
Local Soviet administration.
3 image(s)
sub-set tree:
the Wehrmacht entered Dokszyce on 9 July, 1941. In September 1941, a ghetto was set up in Dokshitsy.
During the occupation, several mass killings in the town took place. The present monument commemorates the mass murder that occurred in early May 1942. On that day, the Jews were assembled in a club building (or a school building, according to other sources), where the local collaborationist police carried out a selection. 350-400 Jews, rejected as unfit for work, were killed at a former sand quarry near the Jewish cemetery [Yad Vashem: The Untold Stories].
The memorialization of the killing site took place in May 1968 when the local Soviet administration in Dokshitsy decided to set up a monument to the victims of the German occupation of the town. The area of the former sand quarry, which had been used by the Nazis as an execution site, was transformed into a small public garden and a sports ground. An official Soviet monument does not mention the ethnicity of the great majority of the people murdered there [Yad Vashem: The Untold Stories].
In 2008, some enthusiasts added a black marble stele to the existing monument that mentions the victims' nationality. It bears three inscriptions: in Hebrew and Belarusian [Yad Vashem: The Untold Stories; Smilovitsky].
In Hebrew:
לכל איש יש שם שנתן לו אלוהים...
ושנתן לו הים ונתן לו מותו. זלדה
במקום זה נמנים יתר משלושת אלפים יהודי קהילת
דקשיצי
מבין הנופלים שחרפו נפשם על קידוש השם.
Translation: Every man has a name that God gave him... / and that the sea gave him and that the death gave him. Zelda / In this place, there are more than three thousand Jews of the Dokshitsy community, who are among those who gave their lives for the Sanctification of the Name.
In Belarusian:
"У кожнага чалавека
ёсць імя, што дадзена Богам,
што дадзена морам,
што дадзена смерцю."
Зэльда
Translation: "Every man / has a name given to him by God, / given by the sea, given by his death." / Zelda.
In Belarusian:
Большасць забітых тут ахвяр
былі яўрэі з Докшыц.
Translation: The majority of the victims murdered here were Jews from Dokshytsy.
Another stele was erected in the Jewish lapidarium.
"Dokszyce,"
Untold Stories - Murder Sites of Jews in Occupied Territories of the USSR (Yad Vashem project), https://collections.yadvashem.org/en/untold-stories/community/14622187-Dokszyce.
Smilovitsky, Leonid, "Po sledam evreiskikh kladbishch Belarusi: Dokshitsy," Zhurnal-gazeta "Masterskaia," ed. Evgenii Berkovich., https://club.berkovich-zametki.com/?p=43947 (accessed February 12, 2024)