Osipovichi

The first Jews began to settle in Osipovichi in the 1880s. The Jews of Osipovichi suffered from the calamities of the revolutionary years. In 1919 Polish soldiers staged a pogrom in the town, looting Jewish property, raping Jewish women, and hanging one Jewish man. During the Soviet period Osipovichi's Jews were craftsmen, workers, and government officials. There was a Yiddish primary school in the town in the 1920s and 1930s. In 1939 1,694 Jews lived in Osipovichi, comprising 12.3 percent of the total population. After the German invasion of Poland in September 1939, a number of Polish Jewish refugees arrived in the town. Osipovichi was occupied by the Germans on June 30, 1941. Almost immediately a three-man Jewish council ("Judenrat") was appointed and a registration of the Jews was ordered. The Jews of Osipovichi were concentrated in the southern part of the town. The living conditions there were apalling: Jews lived in overcrowded houses, did not receive any food, had to sew a yellow patch on their clothes, and were forced to perform hard labor. A curfew was also enforced on the ghetto inmates. The Jews of Osipovichi were murdered by Germans with the assistance of local policemen in two murder oprations in October 1941 and February 1942. Osipovichi was liberated by the Red Army on June 28, 1944.