Obj. ID: 44892
Memorials Holocaust Monument at the Killing Site in Kuranets (Kurenets), Belarus, 1990s
To the main object: Jewish Cemetery in Kurenets, Belarus
Memorial name
No official name.
Who is Commemorated?
54 Jewish Holocaust victims from Kuranets (Kurenets), killed on October 14, 1941.
Description
The monument is situated at the killing site and mass grave, near the former Jewish cemetery. It is a stele that stands on a base that, in turn, is placed on a massive concrete platform.
The monument's surface bears Magen David and two Russian inscriptions.
A fence surrounds its territory.
Inscription
On the stele:
In Russian
Здесь покоится
54 человека мирных жителей
еврейской национальности
местечка Курнец зверски
расстрелянных фашистскими
а[о]ккупантами 14 октября 1941 г.
Translation: Here lie / 54 people, peaceful residents / of Jewish nationality / from the town of Kurenets, who were brutally / shot to death by the fascist / occupiers on October 14, 1941.
On the base:
In Russian
Никто не забыт
И ничто не забыто
Translation: Nobody is forgotten / and nothing is forgotten.
Commissioned by
Probably, victims' relatives.
sub-set tree: 
The Nazis entered Kurenets on June 28, 1941. No ghetto was established in Kurzeniec. However, there was a flurry of anti-Jewish decrees and several mass killings [Yad Vashem: The Untold Stories].
The present monument memorializes one of such Aktions that occurred on October 14, 1941. On that day, the Germans shot 54 Jews as alleged communists and Soviet collaborators. Among the victims, there were 20 children aged 12 and younger. A squad of approximately 70 men of the Security Police and their helpers came to Kurzeniec from Wilejka and arrested the alleged communists. They then separated the Jewish men and sent them to dig two graves in a sparsely forested area at the end of Kasucka Street, near the Jewish cemetery, at the southeastern edge of the town. Afterward, they shot first the men, and then the women and children. Some of the victims were merely wounded, but they, too, were covered with soil after the shooting. The survivors later referred to this massacre as "the Aktion of the Fifty-Four" [Yad Vashem: The Untold Stories].
In 1955, a stele commemorating the massacre's victims was erected. The monument was restored, probably in the 1990s [Yad Vashem: The Untold Stories]. Today the monument is a place of memorial gatherings.
There is another Holocaust memorial in the town that dates back to the 1990s.
Botvinnik, Marat, "Pam'atniki Genotsida Evreev Belarusi" (Minsk: Belaruskaia navuka, 2000), p.63.
Il'ya, Al'tman (ed.), Kholokost na territorii SSSR (Moskva: ROSSPEN, 2011), pp.498-499.
"Kurzeniec,"
Untold Stories - Murder Sites of Jews in Occupied Territories of the USSR (Yad Vashem project), https://collections.yadvashem.org/en/untold-stories/community/14622367-Kurzeniec.