Rudnya

In the 18th century there was already a Jewish community with a rabbi of its own in Rudnya. By 1897 the Jewish population of the town was 2,122 or 71 percent of the total population. In 1939 the Jewish population of 1,640 comprised 22.3 percent of the total population. Rudnya was occupied by the Germans on July 14, 1941. Apperently, as many as a quarter of the Jews succeeded in fleeing eastward. In August a ghetto was established; it was comprised of a single street encircled by barbed wire, where some 1,200 Jews were imprisoned. The local Jews were shot to death in several murder operations in 1941: in August, when 20 young men were killed; in September, when 100 Jews were killed; and on October 21, when 1,000 inmates of the ghetto were killed. The artisans who had been kept alive on October 21 were shot later, in November 1941 and in February 1942, together with Jews from Mikulino and other nearby locations. Rudnya was liberated by the Red Army on September 29, 1943.