Dvorets | Grodno

/ Site of the Rabbi’s former house. ©Nicolas Tkatchouk/Yahad - In Unum Alexandra P. remembers feeding the Jews through the barbed wire. ©Nicolas Tkatchouk/Yahad - In Unum Dmitriy K. remembers Jews being requisitioned to build a German aerodrome. ©Nicolas Tkatchouk/Yahad - In Unum The Yahad team conducting an interview. ©Nicolas Tkatchouk/Yahad - In Unum Preparing for the interview. ©Nicolas Tkatchouk/Yahad - In Unum Stanislav K., born in 1931, had to move to another house because his house became part of the ghetto. ©Nicolas Tkatchouk/Yahad - In Unum The mass shooting site of the Dvorets Jews. ©Nicolas Tkatchouk/Yahad - In Unum

Execution of Jews in Dvorets

4 Execution site(s)

Kind of place before:
Forest
Memorials:
Yes
Period of occupation:
1941-1944

Witness interview

Dmitriy K.: "There was also a mass grave in the village. But a long time after the war, a Vitebsk military unit came to dig up the bodies (about 50) to transfer them to a shared mass grave in Novoyelnya. This mass grave included Jews who had hid in the forest." (Witness N°326, interviewed in May, 2010)

Historical note

Dvorets is a village located 139km southwest of Minsk. Before the war, there were around 400 Jews living in Dvorets, making up 75% of the total population. The place was under German occupation from 1941 to 1945.

Holocaust by bullets in figures

In March 1942, a ghetto was set up between Molchadskaya, Goncharnaya, and Smutnaya streets. Jews rounded up from surrounding areas, such as Naliboki, were interned in the ghetto. According to witnesses interviewed by Yahad In - Unum, the ghetto was fenced in with barbed wire, but there were many secret tunnels going inside the ghetto. The liquidation of the ghetto took place in the second half of December 1942. 2,500 to 3,000 Jews lived there at this moment. The Jews were killed in pits dug in advance in the forest about 2km outside the village on the road from Dvorets to Novoyelnya. Later, Jews who had managed to hide were also killed in the village.

Nearby villages

To support the work of Yahad-in Unum please consider making a donation

Do you have additional information regarding a village that you would like to share with Yahad ?

Please contact us at contact@yahadinunum.org
or by calling Yahad – In Unum at +33 (0) 1 53 20 13 17