Obj. ID: 44766  Holocaust Monument to Nakhman Oleinik in the Jewish Cemetery in Lenin, Belarus, 1992

Lenin was occupied by German troops on July 18, 1941 [Yad Vashem: The Untold Stories]. In May 1942, a closed ghetto was created on a street in the village. Jews from surrounding villages were also interned there. When the ghetto was liquidated on August 14, 1942, 750 Jews escaped to the woods in one of the first uprisings of the war. The rest were taken to trenches that had been dug in the field on the Ogarkov property and executed by Germans assisted by local police. According to witnesses interviewed by Yahad, skilled workers were kept alive and separated in a house outside of the ghetto. They were later liberated by the Partisans [The Map of Holocaust by Bullets: Yahad-In Unum].

The commemoration begun in 1970s. Today there are three memorials at the former murder site on the hill in the direction of the village of Steblovichi, which currently lies on the northwestern outskirts of Lenin. One of them (erected in 1973) was replaced with a sculpture of the Mourning Mother in 1989. On August 14, 1992, a number of obelisks, including the present one, were unveiled at the Lenin Jewish cemetery. These obelisks were financed by donations, apparently from family members of the victims residing in various countries. While the monument under discussion is dedicated to Nakhman Oleynik (the first Jewish victim of Lenin, who was murdered in July 1941), the others commemorate the eight Jewish young Komsomol members who were murdered shortly after the beginning of the occupation; the members of the Gorodetskiy and Flat families, who were murdered in November 1941; and the Jewish insurgents of Hantsavičy (Gantsevichi) labor camp, the partisans and Itshak Issers, who was murdered after the liquidation of the ghetto [Yad Vashem: The Untold Story].