Obj. ID: 48084
Memorials Holocaust memorial at the killing site near Veseya village (former Mokharty estate), Slutsk area, Belarus, 1956
Who is Commemorated?
The Jews of Slutsk who were killed on February 7-8, 1943
Description
This memorial is a granite stele, shaped like an obelisk but with its front and back faces flat rather than angled. it sits on a white [plaster?] base, surrounded by low blocks of the same white material with metal bars linking them as a fence. The memorial's front face is inscribed in Hebrew and Russian.
It is located 500 – 600 meters from the road from Slutsk to Veseya village, one kilometer from the Veseya River.
Inscriptions
In Hebrew:
[to be transcribed]
Translation: Here rest old and young people, women and men, mothers and nursing infants who's blood was poured out like water in Slutsk by the Fascist murderers. Let their name be cursed forever.
In Russian:
Вечная память
погибшим
от рук немецко
фашистских захватчикрв
Translation: Eternal memory of the ones murdered by Nazi-Fascist occupiers
Commissioned by
local Jewish community
sub-set tree: 
| 400 meters to the west from Sloboda (Slabada, previously Mokharty)
In 1939 7,392 Jews resided in the town, comprising 33.7 percent of the total population.
The Germans occupied Slutsk on June 27, 1941. On October 27-28, 1941 the first major mass murder of Slutsk Jews took place. At the end of 1941-beginning of 1942 two ghettos were established: the "field ghetto" (on the northern outskirts of Slutsk) where Jews unable to work were imprisoned, and the "town ghetto" for working Jews (situated in the old Jewish quarter of the town, Shkolishche), closer to the town center. The "field ghetto" was gradually liquidated in the spring of 1942. On February 8, 1943, the Germans liquidated the "town ghetto."
On the morning of February 8, 1943, members of the German 22nd Reserve Police Battalion surrounded the "town ghetto" of Slutsk. Special commandos, consisting mostly of Latvians, entered homes and drove the Jews out to the gathering point. The assembled Jews were then loaded onto trucks and taken to the former estate of Mokhart, popularly called Mokharty, situated 5 kilometers east of Slutsk, 800 meters north of the Slutsk-Starye Dorogi road, on the far side of the Veseyka River. There the execution took place at mass graves. The Jews were ordered to enter the graves and were then shot from behind.
Postwar court proceedings against the perpetrators of this massacre cited a minimum of 1,600 victims: at least 1,200 were murdered at the graves at Mokharty, the rest in the ghetto itself. According to Soviet sources, the number of victims of this massacre was 3,000.
The memorial was erected in 1956.
Smilovitsky, Leonid. "Po sledam evreiskikh kladbishch Belarusi. Slutsk," Masterskaia, April 25, 2019 [In Russian]., https://club.berkovich-zametki.com/?p=46806 (accessed February 28, 2023)
For the photographs of the memorial, see https://collections.yadvashem.org/en/untold-stories/community/14621542-Slutsk