Zhlobin

The first mention of Jewish settlement in Zhlobin refers to the last quarter of the 17th century. In 1768 the Jewish population of Zhlobin suffered from attacks of the Haidamaks during their uprising. In 1897 1,768 Jews lived in Zhlobin. In the first two decades of Soviet rule a Yiddish school operated in Zhlobin. In the 1930s about 35 Jewish families worked in two nearby kolkhozes, while the majority of the Jewish population remained artisans. A small number of Jews became white-collar workers. In 1939 the Jewish population amounted to 3,709 or 19 per cent of the town’s total population. The Germans first occupied Zhlobin on July 3, 1941. The Red Army managed to temporarily liberate the town on July 13 but the Germans reoccupied it on August 14. Apparently much of the Jewish population had time to flee to the Soviet interior before the reoccupation. Under German rule Jews were not allowed to shop for food in public places, speak with the locals, or walk on the main streets. Then the Jews were forced into two ghettos. One consisted of a public building, the Narodny dom (people’s house), on what is today Tovarnaya Street. The other, comprised of two houses surrounded by barbed wire, was located on Pervomayaskaya Street on the outskirts of town in the direction of Bobruysk. The ghetto's population suffered from starvation and a lack of medical care and the Jews were tortured and abused. The two ghettos in Zhlobin were liquidated on April 12, 1942, when the approximately 1,200 inmates were murdered near the neighboring village of Lebedevka. On April 14, 1942 198 Jews from the Streshin ghetto were murdered at the same site. Zhlobin was liberated on August 26, 1944.