| Dzyatlava massacres | |
|---|---|
 Commemorative plaque to 3,000 victims of the Dzyatlava massacres. | |
| Also known as | Polish: zbrodnia w Dziatławie |
| Location | Zdzięcioł (now, Dzyatlava) German-occupied Poland, present-day Belarus |
| Date | April 30, 1942 August 10, 1942 |
| Incident type | Shootings by automatic and semi-automatic weapons |
| Perpetrators | SS, Order Police battalions, Lithuanian and Belarusian Auxiliary Police |
| Ghetto | Zdzięcioł Ghetto |
| Victims | 3,000–5,000 Polish Jews in total |
The Dzyatlava massacres were two consecutive mass shooting actions carried out three months apart during the Holocaust. The town of Zdzięcioł (Yiddish: זשעטל, romanized: Zhetel, Polish: Zdzięcioł, Belarusian: Dzyatlava) was located in the Nowogródek Voivodeship of the Second Polish Republic prior to World War II.[1]
The German authorities created Zdzięcioł Ghetto in February 1942 and ordered over 4,500 Polish Jews to relocate there.[2] Two months later, at the end of April 1942, the mobile German death squad aided by the Lithuanian and the Belarusian Auxiliary Police battalions,[3] surrounded the ghetto and ordered all Jews to leave their houses to undergo a "selection".[3] The victims were escorted to the main square and made to wait until the break of dawn. The next day, those who had work certificates were released along with their families, and all others were gradually taken out of town in groups for "relocation". In total, about 1,000–1,200 Jews were marched to the Kurpiesze (Kurpyash) forest and murdered in waves on April 30, 1942.[3] The second massacre took place over three months later on August 6, 1942, during the liquidation of Zdzięcioł Ghetto. Some 1,500–2,000 Jews, possibly up to 3,000 by different source (perhaps a combined number),[4] were murdered at the Jewish cemetery.[1][5][6]
- ^ a b Shmuel Spector, Geoffrey Wigoder (2001). Zdzieciol. NYU Press. p. 1498. ISBN 0814793568.
{{cite book}}:|work=ignored (help) - ^ Krzysztof Bielawski (29 December 2011). "Getto w Zdzięciole (Diatłowie)". Miejsca martyrologii - Zdzięcioł. Virtual Shtetl, POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews.
- ^ a b c Christian Gerlach (1999). Kalkulierte Morde: Die deutsche Wirtschafts- und Vernichtungspolitik in Weißrußland 1941 bis 1944 [Calculated Murder: The German economic and annihilation policy in Belorussia 1941 to 1944] (in German). Hamburger Edition, Hamburg. pp. 206, 614, 702. ISBN 3930908549.
- ^ "News from Abroad: Symbolic soil from USSR" (PDF). AJR Information. 38 (1). Association of Jewish Refugees in Great Britain: 4. January 1983. Archived from the original (PDF) on July 14, 2014. Retrieved January 12, 2013.
- ^ Zdzięcioł (Zhetel) USHMM, Washington, DC. Source: The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos, 1933–1945. In the article "Zdzieciol (Zhetel)", the claim is being made that the atrocity was committed by (quote): "German and local Polish [sic] police forces". It is based on a story told by a 12-year-old boy called Chaim Weinstein, who survived by hiding in a group of laborers. However, there were no such police forces in Dzyatlava. The child's recollections show his inability to distinguish between the non-Jewish assailants; nevertheless, it appeared in a collection published in 1957 by Baruch Kaplinsky in Tel Aviv, entitled Pinkas Zhetel (The Register for Zhetel) and reprinted from there.
- ^ Holocaust Chronology of 1942.
© MMXXIII Rich X Search. We shall prevail. All rights reserved. Rich X Search