Obj. ID: 34040 Monument at the Killing Site near Bialyničy, Belarus, 1983
Memorial name:
No official name.
Who is Commemorated?
Holocaust victims of the Belynichi region.
Description:
The monument at the killing site of the Belynichi Jews is erected in the tract of Mkha River, near an older monument dedicated to the local Holocaust victims.
It is surrounded by the post-war cemetery.
The monument has the shape of an upright granite stele that stands on a two-step pedestal. It bears an epitaph that doesn't refer to Jews as the Nazi's victims.
The territory of the monument is surrounded by a fence.
Inscription:
In Russian:
Здесь захоронено
более 1500
мирных жителей
Белынического района,
расстрелянных
фашистскими захватчиками
12 декабря 1941 года.
Вечная память погибшим!
Translation: More than 1500 civilians of the Belynichi region, shot to death by the fascist invaders on December 12, 1941, are buried here. Eternal memory to the dead!
Commissioned by
The government of the Republic of Belarus [Smilovitsky].
| In the Mkha Rover tract, near Zadrutskaia Sloboda village
According to Yad Vashem, in January 1939, 781 Jews lived in Belynichi, accounting for approximately 25 percent of the total population. Germans occupied the town on July 6, 1941. After the first murder operation conducted in August or September 1941, the remaining Jews of Belynichi were concentrated in a ghetto. Later, Jews from the neighboring localities of Shepelevichi, Golovchin, Neroplya, and others were deported to it as well. Although the ghetto was not fenced in, the inhabitants were not allowed to leave, and Belarusian collaborators were posted as guards. The Jews in the ghetto were killed on December 12, 1941 [Yad Vashem: The Untold Stories].
Memorialization activities in Belynichi started presumably in the 1980s. At the killing site, the victims' relatives erected a small monument in memory of several families [Litin]. As was common in the Soviet Union, the inscription does not specify the ethnicity of the victims.
Further memorialization activity took place in 1965 when, on the initiative of the victims' relatives, the first general monument at the killing site was erected. In 1983, for the 40th anniversary of the Belarus liberation, it was replaced by the present-day government monument that became the place of commemorative ceremonies [Smilovitsky].
In the 1960s, on the initiative of the local official Iosif Belynicha, an attempt of the reinterment in the Jewish cemetery was undertaken. However, due to the subsequent difficulties, the remains of only seventy victims were transferred [Smilovitsky]. Their reburial place is also marked by a monument.
Aleksandr Litin, "Belynichi," in Holokost na territorii SSSR, ed. Il'ia Al'tman, 71.
"Belynichi,"
Untold Stories - Murder Sites of Jews in Occupied Territories of the USSR (Yad Vashem project), https://collections.yadvashem.org/en/untold-stories/community/14621526-Belynichi.
Smilovitskii, Leonid, "Po sledam evreiskikh kladbishch Belarusi: Belynichi," Zhurnal-gazeta "Masterskaia," ed. Evgenii Berkovich., https://club.berkovich-zametki.com/?p=54483 (accessed December 25, 2023)