Vysokaye Ghetto

Vysokaye Ghetto (in Russian: "Гетто в Высоком") was a Jewish ghetto established during the occupation of Belarus by Nazi Germany in World War II. This ghetto served as a place of forced resettlement for Jews from Vysokaye (Vysoko-Litovsk) in the Kamyenyets District of the Brest region, as well as from nearby settlements, during the Nazi persecution and extermination of Jews.

Occupation of Vysokaye and Creation of the Ghetto
According to the 1939 census, the city of Vysokaye was home to approximately 2,000 Jews. German forces captured Vysokaye on June 23, 1941, and the occupation lasted until July 28, 1944.

Immediately after the occupation began, a police station was established in the city. The occupation forces included 100 policemen, 50 gendarmes, and about 100 Gestapo officers. The persecution of Jews started immediately following the occupation.

The Nazis implemented their program of Jewish extermination by confining Jews to a ghetto, which the prisoners were forced to fence off themselves. Jews from nearby villages were also relocated to this ghetto.

Destruction of the Ghetto
In early January 1942, the ghetto was liquidated. Within the ghetto, 320 Jews were killed, and the remaining 2,500 were transported to Treblinka, where they were exterminated. According to the National Archive of the Republic of Belarus, the Vysokaye ghetto held more prisoners, totaling 3,600 people.

Prior to the final removal of Jews from the ghetto, the occupiers conducted several "actions" (used by the Nazis for mass murders), killing people near the village of Ogorodniki in the Peschany tract and continually committing individual murders. Massacres also occurred in Wolka Tokarska.

Jews who initially hid during the ghetto's liquidation were later captured, shot, and buried in a common grave near the tannery.

Rescue Cases
Only a few Jews from Vysokaye survived the Holocaust. Shlema Berkovich Kantarovich survived the entire war and returned to his homeland afterward. Yakov Aronovich, one of the few surviving Jewish residents of the town of Pinchuk, lived and worked in Moscow after the war. Alexander Markovich Kesler was drafted into the Red Army after the annexation of the territory by the USSR, survived the war, and later lived in Voronezh. His mother, Maria Iosifovna Kesler, had gone to Voronezh for treatment before the war and survived, although her six children and husband were killed.

Memory
In 2010, a monument was erected to commemorate the victims of the Jewish genocide in Vysokaye, located on Frunze Street near the ruins of an ancient synagogue.

Jozef Khariton, an artist and witness to the destruction of the Vysokaye ghetto, created several paintings depicting these events in the post-war years. Most of these artworks are housed in the Jewish Historical Institute of Poland.