Obj. ID: 47375 New Holocaust memorial at the killing site on the Myslotino Hill, near Hlusk, Belarus, 2010
Who is Commemorated?
Jews from Hlutsk killed on the spot and six million Jews killed in the Holocaust
Description
The memorial is designed as six concrete columns located in the paved square by the side of the 1958 Holocaust memorial.
Three columns are decorated with images of a Jewish family; the columns as if tear these images apart. The columns are visually held together by a black frame reminding a frame of a photograph.
According to the artist Galina Levina, "the idea of the monument is based on the image of a burnt and torn photograph of a Jewish family taken before June 1941, a symbol of the destruction of Glusk's Jewish families. Six concrete columns as the fragment of the wall of the house, on which photography was placed. Six concrete columns - in memory of six million Jews killed in Holocaust."
Two columns bear inscriptions in Russian.
Inscriptions
Inscriptions were compiled by the journalist, writer, and poet Naum Sandomirskii, one of a handful of Jews living in Hlutsk today.
On the first column (from the right) there is an inscription n Russian:
2 декабря
1941 года
трагедия
зимнего дня
эхо
в наших сердцах
Translation: December 2nd, 1941 // Tragedy of the winter day is echoing in our hearts
On the third column (from the right) in Russian:
Мыслочанская
гора
адрес
горя и боли
место
массового
уничтожения
3 тысяч Глусских
евреев
Translation: Myslochanskaya mountain [Myslotino Hill] is a place of grief and pain, a place of mass destruction of 3 thousand Glussk Jews
Commissioned by
Jewish survivors of Hlutsk and their descendants
District Executive Committee of Hlusk
7 image(s)
Three sidewalks (0,6 meters wide and 9,0 meters long) lead to the trapeziform square.
The size of each column is 0.5x0.32 x2.1(h) meters.
In 1939, 1,935 Jews lived in Hlusk, accounting for 37.7% of the total population. After the beginning of WWII, some Jewish refugees from German-occupied Poland sought refuge in the town.
The first German troops entered Glusk on June 27, 1941. Almost immediately all the Jews were forced to wear yellow badges in the shape of a Star of David. Jews were robbed of their possessions and forbidden to walk on the sidewalks or enter non-Jewish homes.
Jews from Hlusk were murdered at the end of 1941 at Myslotino Hill (Мыслотянская гора) and at the beginning of 1942 at Kostyolski Val.
On December 2, 1941, the Germans ordered all the Jews to assemble on Sovetskaya Square to be registered. Some of those assembled were pushed into gas vans, others - numbering between 1,000 and 2,000 people (according to different sources) were taken on foot to a hilly area near Myslotino village several kilometers from the town of Hlusk. The pits had already been prepared. Groups of Jews were taken to the pits, placed in rows at the edges of the pits, and shot dead. The perpetrators of this massacre, which lasted two days, were apparently members of Einsatzkommando 8B and local auxiliary policemen.
Several hundred Jews, who succeeded in escaping the mass murder operation on December 2, 1941, were shot in 1942 near the Kostyolski Val (a fortification built in the 19th century that was close to the town's cemetery).
In 1953, the surviving Jews of Hlusk reburied the bodies of the Jews who were shot at Kostyolni Val in the town's Jewish cemetery and erected a monument.
In 1958, Jews of Hlusk erected a monument at the killing site on Myslotino Hill, near Hlusk.
In 2005, the stone commemorating Jews killed in Hlutsk was unveiled in the Holocaust Memorial Park in Sheepshead Bay Brooklyn. The memorial was initiated by the survivor from Hlutsk Yulii Aizenstat.
The monument of 2010 was created on the initiative of the writer and journalist Naum Sandomirsky from Hlusk. Officially, the monument was commissioned by the Khvastovskiy village Executive Committee responsible for the area, where the killing site is located. The construction was financed with donations from Jews born in Glusk or their relatives all over the world and partially financed by the District Executive Committee of the city of Hlusk.
The unveiling ceremony took place on the 65th anniversary of the Victory in WWII and was attended by representatives of the regional authorities, the Ambassador of the State of Israel, representatives of Jewish public organizations of Minsk, Mogilev, Bobruisk, the rabbis from Minsk and Bobruisk, a local RUssian-Orthodox priest, the authors of the Memorial, two survivors - Mendel Rubinson and Mikhail Abramovich Kharkhurin, - descendants of the Righteous Among the Nations.
Memorial ceremonies take place twice a year, on December 2 and May 9 (Victory Day).
"Glusk,"
Untold Stories - Murder Sites of Jews in Occupied Territories of the USSR (Yad Vashem project), https://collections.yadvashem.org/en/untold-stories/community/14621533.
Shl'man, Arkadii, "Pamiatnik nuzhen zhivym," Moe mestechko, http://shtetle.com/shtetls_mog/glusk/monument.html (accessed January 30, 2023)
Vasilevskii, Valerii, "Myslochanskaia gora - adres goria i boli," Mishpokha, http://mishpoha.org/pamyat/1404-adres-gorya-i-boli-myslochanskaya-gora (accessed January 30, 2023)