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Lyady

Community
Lyady
Belorussia (USSR)
The town of Lyady in the 1930s
The town of Lyady in the 1930s
Mishpoha journal (Vitebsk), Copy YVA 14616599
The origins of the Jewish community in Lyady date back to the eighteenth century. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, Lyady was the center of Habad Hasidism and the site of the court of Shneur Zalman, the founder and first rebbe of the Habad movement.

During the Soviet period, a Yiddish school operated in the town, but it was closed in 1938. A Jewish kolkhoz named Naye Lebn was founded in the town’s vicinity, employing a number of local Jews. In January 1939, 897 Jews resided in Lyady, accounting for 40 percent of the total population.

When the Germans invaded the Soviet Union in 1941, Lyady was situated on the main route of the Wehrmacht’s offensive, and sustained significant damage.

The Germans occupied Lyady on July 18, 1941. Only some of Lyady’s Jews were evacuated (via the railway station seven kilometers from the town), and many who attempted to escape were forced to turn back. In March 1942, all of Lyady’s Jewish inhabitants, along with Jews who had arrived from other localities, were forced into a ghetto. The Lyady ghetto was liquidated at the beginning of April 1942. Only five Jews who were in Lyady during the Nazi occupation survived.

The Red Army liberated Lyady on October 8, 1943.

In early March 1942, all the Jews in Lyady as well as those from towns and villages in the vicinity were concentrated in a ghetto set up in the local school. The site was surrounded with barbed wire and guarded by Germans and Belarussian police. Non-Jews were forbidden to venture anywhere near the ghetto. No one was allowed out of the ghetto except for Jews who worked at the local kolkhoz or who buried the dead. Hunger, overcrowding, and disease soon claimed many lives. A number of ghetto inhabitants managed to escape and join the partisans.

Lyady
Dubrovno District
Vitebsk Region
Belorussia (USSR) (today Belarus)
54.602;31.172
The town of Lyady in the 1930s
Mishpoha journal (Vitebsk), Copy YVA 14616599