Obj. ID: 32991
Jewish Funerary Art Holocaust Monument at the Killing Site in Ivianiec, Belarus, 1990s
Memorial name:
No official name.
Who is Commemorated?
800 Jewish Holocaust victims from Ivianiec (Ivianets), Rubezhevichi, Derevnoe, Naliboki, Wolma (Volma), and Kamien' (Kamen'), killed on June 9, 1942.
Description:
The monument is situated on the killing side/mass grave of the local Jews is in the Pishchugi Forest. At the nearest highway there is a large signpost that indicates the direction of the monument. On the signpost the Israel flag is depicted.
The monument is shaped like a stele on a four-step base. Its surface bears the Magen David and two non-identical inscriptions in Hebrew and Russian. The inscription includes the quote from a shot poem written by the Soviet poetess Olga Bergholts (Bergolz) for the memorial to the victims of the Siege of leningrad. It was frequently used on the Soviet monuments.
The territory of the killing site and the monument are enclosed by a massive concrete wall and an internal metal fence.
Inscription
On the monument:
In Hebrew
בקבר אחים זה
נרצחו והושלכו
גופותיהם של 800 יהודי גטו איביניץ,
דרבנה, נליבוק, רובזביץ וולמה וקמין
על ידי הנאצים, הגרמנים, ימ׳׳ש,
כיום כ׳׳ד בסיון החש׳׳ב 1942 9/6.
ארץ אל תכסי דמם, ואל יהי
מקום לזעקתם!״
ת.נ.צ.ב.ה
זכרם לא ימוש מלבנו לעד.
Translation: In this mass grave lie the bodies of 800 Jews from the ghettos of Ivianets, Derevnoe, Naliboki, Rubezhevichi, and Kamen', who were murdered and thrown by the German Nazis, may their names be obliterated, on Sivan 24, 5702, 9/6 1942. Earth, do not cover their blood, and may their cry never be laid to rest! [Job 16:18]. May their souls be bound in the bundle of life. Their memory will always live on in our hearts.
In Russian
Здесь похоронены
800 жертв жителей Ивенца,
Рубежевич, Деревное, Налибок,
Волмы, Камена,
зверски расстрелянных
9.06.1942 г,
немецкими фашистами.
Никто не забыт,
ничто не забыто.
Translation: Here are buried / 800 victims residents of Ivianets, Rubezhevichi, Derevnoe, / Naliboki, / Vołma, / Kamien', / who were brutally shot to death / on 9.06.1942, / by the German fascists./ No one is forgotten, / nothing is forgotten.
On the signpost:
In Russian
Эта дорога ведет к братской могиле,
где в 1942 году зверски убиты
немецко-фашистскими захватчиками
600 еврейских детей и 200 стариков -
жителей Ивенца и окрестных деревень.
Translation: This road leads to the mass grave where 600 Jewish children and 200 elderly - the residents of Ivanets and nearby villages - were brutally killed in 1942 by the German-fascist invaders.
Commissioned by
Probably, the victims' relatives.
sub-set tree:
The Wehrmacht entered Ivianets on June 27, 1941. Sometime in the fall of the same year, most probably in November, a ghetto was established. From time to time, the Germans moved the Jews from the nearby settlements to Ivianets [Yad Vashem: The Untold Stories].
The present monument commemorates the tragic events that took place on June 9, 1942, during the ghetto's liquidation. On that day, a squad consisting of 12 Germans and 17 Lithuanian auxiliaries came over from Baranowicze (Baranovichi). With the assistance of the local police, they took all the ghetto's inmates, except for several "specialists", to the pit in the forest and shot them with machine guns. Many of the victims were buried alive, having been merely wounded in the shooting [Yad Vashem: The Untold Stories].
The commemoration began in 1965 when a monument was erected at the killing site. The inscriptions on it did not explicitly identify the victims as Jews. In the 1990s, the present monument was erected in Pishchugi instead of the old one [Smilovitsky]. Now the victims' nationality is unambiguously stressed.
Today the monument is the place of the memorial ceremonies [Smilovitsky].
"Iwieniec,"
Untold Stories - Murder Sites of Jews in Occupied Territories of the USSR (Yad Vashem project), https://collections.yadvashem.org/en/untold-stories/community/14622477.
Smilovitsky, Leonid. "Ivianets: iz budushchei knigi 'Po sledam evreiskikh kladbishch Belarusi'," part II. Most, February 27, 2019. no 977., https://cja.huji.ac.il/external_texts_db/Ivianets_Most_27_02_2019.pdf (accessed February 14, 2024)