Baran Ghetto

The Ghetto in Baran (September 1941 – April 8, 1942) was a Jewish ghetto, a site of forced relocation for the Jews of Baran in the Orsha District of the Vitebsk Region, and nearby villages, during the persecution and extermination of Jews under the Nazi occupation of Belarus during World War II.

Occupation of Baran and Creation of the Ghetto
By June 1941, more than 50 Jews lived in Baran. Several Jewish men were drafted into the Red Army. The town was captured by German forces on July 16, 1941, and the occupation lasted nearly three years, until June 27, 1944.

In September 1941, the Germans, implementing the Nazi program for the extermination of Jews, herded all remaining Jews in the town, around 45 people, into the ghetto.

Conditions in the Ghetto
The Baran ghetto was "Open Ghetto" and occupied two two-story houses at numbers 19 and 21 on Yaltinskaya Street (now Zarechnaya Street). Prisoners were forbidden to leave their premises after 18:00 and to leave the territory of Baran.

The Jews in the ghetto suffered from hunger and exchanged their last possessions for food. Most prisoners had to sleep directly on the floor. The Jews were used for the heaviest and dirtiest forced labor.

Destruction of the Ghetto
On April 8, 1942, the remaining Jews of Baran were marched under the guard of German soldiers and Belarusian police to a pre-dug pit on the outskirts and killed. During this "aktion" (organized mass murders), a 16-year-old girl named Lena Polykovskaya attempted to escape but was shot.

Remembrance
A monument to the victims of the Jewish genocide in Baran is located in the town cemetery, 300 meters from Sorokina Street.