Obj. ID: 58401  Old Holocaust Monument in Dzisna, Belarus, 1950s

"On July 3 [1941], German troops entered Dzisna. A short while later, someone cut a German telephone wire. On July 14, the Germans assembled all the town's men, Jews and non-Jews alike, in the square in front of the Orthodox church. They picked ten men as hostages and executed them. Seven of the victims were Jews; two were Poles, and one was a Belarusian. The rest of the men were ordered to bury the dead. The German soon introduced anti-Jewish decrees (the requirement to wear a Star of David on one's clothing, a prohibition on leaving the town, forced labor, etc.). In late July, a Jewish council and Jewish police unit were formed. In early August, a ghetto was established in the southern section of the town, straddling both banks of the Dzisenka River (a tributary of the Dvina). In addition to the Jews of Dzisna, some of the Jews from the towns of Łużki and Miory, and from the nearby villages, were moved into this ghetto. It was not fenced off. Many inmates were killed by the guards while attempting to leave the ghetto. Many others died of starvation and typhus.

On March 28, 1942, the SD entered the ghetto and took away thirty Jews; in the morning, they shot them in the commandant's office.

On the night of June 14-15, 1942, a squad of the Security Police (SiPo), reinforced by gendarmes and local policemen, surrounded the ghetto, and then entered it. The Jews tried to resist, setting the ghetto houses on fire. Only a minority of the inmates were able to escape by taking advantage of the confusion: The Germans strafed the ghetto with machine guns and threw hand grenades into it; the policemen shot those trying to swim across the river. Several hundred Jews managed to reach the forest, but the majority of them were seized by the local police or by peasants over the following days. The rest of the ghetto inmates were shot by the Nazis near the village of Ościewicze (known as Vostsevichi in Belarusian), some three kilometers south of Dzisna. According to German sources, 2,181 Jews from Dzisna were killed on that day, whereas Soviet documents put the number of victims at 3,800. Seventeen Jewish artisans, together with their families, were spared by the Germans during the massacre, but they were murdered by the local police in Dzisna in January 1943.

Some of those who had successfully escaped into the forests eventually came to the Glębokie Ghetto, where they shared the fate of its inmates. Others joined the Soviet Morozov partisan brigade. Most of the fighters of this brigade perished in 1943, during a German anti-partisan operation. Only a few Jews from Dzisna survived World War II" [Yad Vashem: Untold Stories].

The earliest monuments to the perished Jews of Dzisna were erected in the 1950s by their relatives [Zeltser, 140; Yad Vashem]. Among them was the monument under discussion. It commemorated 3,800 victims of the massacre that took place
on June 14, 1942.

In the local community's memorial book, there are two photographs of the monument, taken in different years [Disna Memorial Book, 221]. We already described the monument in one of its phases. In another period, instead of the above-mentioned inscription, there was a plaque with Russian and Hebrew texts. The Hebrew inscription was following:

לקדושים
שנרצחו
[?]יד הגזלנים [?]
בשנת תש
ב [?]
[?]

Translation: To the martyrs / killed / [?] / in the year of 5702 / [?]. 

In addition, the monument was topped by a simple ball rather than by the Soviet five-pointed star.

At the end of the 1970s, the monument did not have any element at its top, while its base bore the depiction of a five-pointed star, hammer and sickle surrounded by the two branches, and the following Russian inscription [mishpoha.org]:

Здесь в годы Ве-
ликой Отечествен-
ной войны 14 июня
1942 года были
расстреляны
немецко-фашист-
скими захватчика-
ми 3800 советских
граждан жителей
г. Дисна.
Никто не
забыт,
Ничто не
забыто.

Translation: Here in the years of Great / Patriotic / War on June 14 / 1942 / 3800 Soviet citizens, residents of Dzisna, were shot by the German-fascist invaders. / Nobody / is forgotten, Nothing / is forgotten. 

Roughly in the 1960s, a small Jewish cemetery arose at the obelisk's site [shtetle.com].

Presumably, in the 1980s, the discussed obelisk was replaced by a stele. 

Another monument that arose in the 1950s was a lying stele. It commemorated 28 Jews from the Dzisna Ghetto, killed on March 13, 1942. In the 1990s, the old monument was replaced by a new one. 

In the 1950s, the monument to the killed Jewish artisans was erected.