Sinyavka | Minsk

/ Leonid K. remembered how the Jews were violently herded down Pinskaya street by the local police. ©Nicolas Tkatchouk/Yahad - In Unum Lyubov Zh. remembered that the Jews were shot in the nape of the neck. ©Nicolas Tkatchouk/Yahad - In Unum The Yahad team conducting an interview with Lyubov Zh. ©Nicolas Tkatchouk/Yahad - In Unum

Execution of Jews in Sinyavka

1 Execution site(s)

Kind of place before:
Woods
Memorials:
No
Period of occupation:
1941-1944
Number of victims:
134

Witness interview

Leonida V.: "The column of Jews stopped on the road, not far away from the pit, before slowly moving forward to the edge of it. They climbed down into the pit and were shot by several gunmen... Germans or policemen. They were forced to leave their clothes and their jewellery aside." (Witness N° 291, interviewed in April 2010)

Soviet archives

"The number of civilians tortured to death, shot, hanged and sent into German slavery was established after the opening of the mass graves [of Kletsk], as well as the mass graves of Sinyavka and Zaostrovechye." [Act of the Soviet extraodinary commission RG-22.002.7021-81]

German archives

"I was informed about three ‘Aktionen’ against Jews and other acts of violence. I witnessed one myself in Kletsk, on July 20, 1942, a member of the police force reported another one (against Gypsies) to me, and Jewish workers who worked with me told me about the third one, in Sinyavka." [Deposition of German soldier, B162-6953]

Historical note

Sinyavka is situated 20 km southeast of Baranovichi. According to the 1921 census, there were 379 Jews living in Sinyavka, out of a total population of 514. The village was under German occupation from 1941 to 1944.

Holocaust by bullets in figures

German forces conducted the first large-scale Aktion in Sinyavka against Jews in the autumn of 1941. They assembled about 500 Jews in the synagogue, befores selecting 134 individuals, mostly elderly Jews, escorting them to a ditch in a field close to the village, and shooting them. The remaining Jews in Sinyavka were then moved into a ghetto. In the summer of 1942, the ghetto was liquidated and the Jews were killed outside the village in the direction of Pinsk, near a forest close to the village of Nareshevichi. They were shot alongside around 130 Jews who had been brought from Zaostrovechye. The Jews were buried in a mass grave beside the road. That day, about 600 people were murdered.

Nearby villages

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