Ozarichi

At the beginning of the 19th century the Jewish population of Ozarichi was aproximately 100. By 1897 the number of Jews in the town increased to 1,308, which amounted to 96 percent of the total population. In the 1920s a Yiddish school operated in Ozarichi. In 1925 a Jewish council was established there. At the end of the 1920s the majority of Ozarichi Jews were craftsmen, such as shoemakers and tailors, and most of them were members of cooperatives. Many young people left the town in search of better employment and educational opportunities in the 1920s. In 1939 the Jewish population of 1,059 comprised 47 percent of the town's total population. Ozarichi was occupied by the Germans at the end of August 1941. By then many of its Jewish residents had succeeded in escaping to the Soviet interior. From the beginning of the occupation the Jewish population was ordered to wear yellow arm bands. The Jews were incarcerated in a ghetto and made to perform forced labor. In the autumn of 1941 (according to other sources, on March 3, 1942) the Jews of the town were murdered in the forest east of the town. 12 members of the Portnoy family were shot in February 1942. Ozarichi was liberated by the Red Army on January 20, 1944.