Obj. ID: 34044 Holocaust Monument at the Killing Site in Vysokaje, Belarus, 2010
Memorial name:
No official name.
Who is Commemorated?
320 Jews of Vysokaje, killed in the autumn of 1941, and 2500 local Jews, transported to the Treblinka extermination camp.
Description
The monument is an upright stele of an irregular shape standing on a granite base that, in turn, stands on a paved piece of ground.
In the upper part of the stele, the menorah is depicted.
The monument bears presumably three non-identical inscriptions: in Belarusian, English, and Hebrew. At the bottom of the monument, there is possibly an additional inscription identifying the foundations that erected the monument. The inscriptions are framed with long strips on their right and left sides.
Behind the monument, there is a broken Jewish tombstone, discovered at the site of the former old Jewish cemetery. It bears the inscription in Hebrew.
In the background, there are ruins of the stone synagogue in which the ghetto prisoners were shot to death.
Inscription
On the monument:
In Belarusian
Ахвярам нацызму
Тут у восень 1941 года
былі зверскі закатаваны
320 яўрэяў горада Высокае.
2500 яўрэяў былі вывезены
ў канцлагер Треблiнка.
Вечная iм памяць.
Translation: To the victims of Nazism / Here in the autumn of 1941 / were brutally tortured / 320 Jews of the town of Vysokaje. / 2500 Jews were transported to the Treblinka extermination camp. / To their eternal memory.
In English
To the everlasting memory of
the Victims of the Holocaust
320 Jews from Vysokae
[...]
In Hebrew [possibly]
[...]
Possibly at the bottom of the monument, in English
This memorial was erected through the efforts of
Belarusian Jewish Community and thanks to
to the Simon Mark Lazarus Foundation, UK,
the Miles and Marilyn Kletter Family Foundation, USA,
the Warren and Beverly Geisler Family Foundation, USA.
On the tombstone:
In Hebrew
שנת תרע׳׳ה [...]
פלגי דמעות זלגו עיניים למותה
יראת ד׳ נלקחה במיטב שנותה
ידיה פזרה לדלים בנדבתה
[ידלה אנ?]חות בנה לפרידתה
אוי יבכו יעצבו דלפו שאריתה
זבול לנשמתה בג׳׳ע עד תחיתה
Translation: Year [c.] 5675 [...] / Streams of tears flowed from the eyes for her death / The fearer of God was taken in her best years / Her hands spread to the poor with her generosity / Her son [sighs?] at her parting / Oh, they will cry, they will mourn with tears for she left behind / Her soul shall rest in heaven until her resurrection.
Commissioned by
Possibly the Simon Mark Lazarus Foundation, the Miles and Marilyn Kletter Family Foundation, and the Warren and Beverly Geisler.
8 image(s)
In 1928, Jews accounted for 93,6 percent of the Vysokaje population. The Germans occupied Vysokaje on June 22 or, according to other sources, on June 23, 1941. By that time, only a few Jews managed to evacuate. At the end of the same year, the ghetto was established, with 3,600 prisoners.
According to some sources, during August-September 1942, an unknown number of Jews were brought from Żabinka village to Vysokaje, where they were shot together with local Jews [Yad Vashem: The Untold Stories].
In November 1942, a group of Vysokaje Jews which, according to German sources, numbered 2,500, was taken to the train station and from there sent to the Treblinka extermination camp [Al'tman].
According to Yad Vashem, the rest of the Jewish population was liquidated in several murder operations in the winter, spring, and fall of 1942 in the town and its vicinity [Yad Vashem: The Untold Stories; Smilovitsky].
The memory of the Holocaust victims was not commemorated till 2010 when, as a part of the City Day celebration, the present monument was unveiled. It is one of the about 100 monuments erected by the Simon Mark Lazarus Foundation, the Miles and Marilyn Kletter Family Foundation, and the Warren and Beverly Geisler; all of them have a similar shape and are adorned with a menorah [Lazarus].
Il'ya, Al'tman (ed.), Kholokost na territorii SSSR (Moskva: ROSSPEN, 2011), p.190.
Lazarus, Michael, "The Belarus Memorials Project: The Simon Mark Lazarus Foundation, The Miles and Marilyn Kletter Family Foundation, The Geisler Family Foundation," in: Killing Sites – Research and Remembrance (Berlin: Metropol, 2015), 205-207., https://www.academia.edu/11753495/Holocaust_Memorials_in_the_Belarusian_Culture_of_Remembrance (accessed January 16, 2024)
Smilovitskii, Leonid, "Po sledam evreiskikh kladbishch Belarusi: Vysokoe" Zhurnal-gazeta "Masterskaia," ed. Evgenii Berkovich, https://club.berkovich-zametki.com/?p=56123 (accessed January 22, 2024)
"Wysokie Litewskie,"
Untold Stories - Murder Sites of Jews in Occupied Territories of the USSR (Yad Vashem project), https://collections.yadvashem.org/en/untold-stories/community/14622282.