Obj. ID: 33234 Memorial at the grave of the last Ghetto victims (Monakhova St.) in Slutsk, Belarus, 1958
Who is Commemorated?
The Jews of Slutsk who were killed on February 7-8, 1943 (though Jews are not mentioned in the dedication)
Description
This memorial, set in a small plaza at the center of an empty plot in Slutsk, takes the form of a white [plaster?] obelisk. Its front has a portion protruding from its face, upon which is a plaque that mentions "victims of Nazis" rather than Jews, and the year 1958 is inscribed near the top of the monument. The obelisk is topped with a five-pointed star.
Inscriptions
In Russian:
1958
Вечаня память
жертвам
павшим от рук
немецко-фашистских
захватчиков в годы
Великой
Отечественной
войны
7-8 февраля 1943 года
Translation: Eternal memory to victims killed by Nazi-Fascist conquerors during the Great Patriotic War / February 7-8, 1943
Commissioned by
local Jews
3 image(s)
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.
During the liquidation of the ghetto, some Jews staged an armed uprising, shooting at the German and Latvian soldiers. To quell the resistance the Germans set the ghetto houses on fire. The ghetto completely burned down. 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 to the memory of Jews from the "town ghetto" killed on February 8, 1943, was erected in 1958 in the area of the former ghetto, on Monakhov Street, half a kilometer northeast of the flour mill. [Untold Stories]
In 2005, the area around the monument was cleaned and rearranged. Most probably, the same year the old plaque was changed to a new one.
"Slutsk,"
Untold Stories - Murder Sites of Jews in Occupied Territories of the USSR (Yad Vashem project), https://collections.yadvashem.org/en/untold-stories/community/14621542-Slutsk.
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 photograph of the memorial before the new plaque was installed, see https://collections.yadvashem.org/en/photos/73630