Ivatsevichy Ghetto

Ivacevichi Ghetto (summer 1941 – August 11, 1942) was a Jewish ghetto, a place of forced resettlement for the Jews of the town of Ivacevichi in the Brest Region and nearby settlements during the Holocaust in Belarus, under the occupation of Belarus by Nazi Germany during World War II.

Occupation of Ivacevichi and Creation of the Ghetto
Before the war, the Jewish population of Ivacevichi had significantly increased due to the influx of refugees from areas of Poland occupied by the Germans in September 1939, and by the beginning of the occupation, it numbered about 300 people. Ivacevichi was captured by German forces on June 24, 1941.

Jews were immediately ordered to sew large fabric marks in the form of yellow circles onto their clothing (on the back and chest).

The Germans confiscated all the savings, household items, and tools from the Jews—equipment, sewing machines, horses, wagons, bicycles, and other property.

Shortly after the occupation, the Germans, implementing the Nazi program of exterminating Jews, organized a ghetto in Ivacevichi, where Jews from nearby villages were also brought.

Conditions in the Ghetto
The ghetto was located in an overcrowded small hotel on a street leading to the railway station, which ran parallel to the central street of Ivacevichi. The ghetto area was surrounded by barbed wire.

Prisoners were beaten daily and used for forced labor—construction, road laying, and loading and unloading work at the railway station. The food ration issued was minimal—200 grams of bread per day. According to eyewitness accounts, local peasants came to the ghetto and urged: "Give us everything, you will be killed anyway…"

Liquidation of the Ghetto
In February 1942, in severe frost and a snowstorm, the Jews from the Ivacevichi ghetto were marched through the forest to Kossovo—20 kilometers from Ivacevichi. All those who could not keep up were killed on the spot. People fell from exhaustion, suffered frostbite on their hands and feet, but they could not be accommodated in the Kossovo Ghetto. After two days, the Jews were marched back. On the way, 21 Jews died or were killed.

In March 1942, 620 Jews from Ivacevichi were shot.

In August 1942, the Germans ordered the Jews to collect and hand over all their gold, even forcing them to remove gold dental crowns. A 10 by 5 meter pit was prepared outside the village. The “Action” (a euphemism the Germans preferred to use for their organized mass murders) took place early in the morning of August 11, 1942. The Jews, stripped naked, were lined up at the edge of the pit and shot. The killings were carried out by Lithuanian volunteers from an SS punitive battalion and Ukrainian police. After the shooting, the Germans and policemen divided the clothing and personal belongings of the victims among themselves.

Memory
In 2001, a memorial boulder was installed at one of the sites where more than 1,000 Jews of Ivacevichi were murdered.