Dokszyce

Although the arrival of the first Jews in Dokszyce cannot be dated with any precision, it seems to have taken place in the 16th Century. The Jewish community of Dokszyce numbered 2,762 in 1897, comprising about three quarters of the town's total population. Most of them were adherents of the Chabad Hasidic movement. In the aftermath of World War I and the ensuing Soviet-Polish war of 1919-20, Dokszyce became a border town within the newly independent Second Polish Republic. In the interwar period, many Jews left Dokszyce for nearby Vilna, or else migrated overseas. However, the 1930s saw the establishment of many new factories in the town, most of them Jewish-owned. In the 1920s and 1930s, the town had chapters of the leftist Poalei Zion and Hashomer Hatzair parties, which coexisted with various groups of Halutzim (Zionist pioneers) and with the right-wing Beitar. The leftist non-Zionist Bund party was less popular. The Hebrew-language school of the Tarbut network eclipsed the small Yiddish school of the TSISHO network. However, an even greater number of students attended the Polish-language state school. About 3,000 Jews lived in the town on the eve of World War II. In September 1939, following the outbreak of the war, Dokszyce was occupied by the Soviets. The Sovietization of the town entailed the nationalization of the local factories and shops, the suppression of all non-communist activity and education, and the deportation of the more affluent entrepreneurs and political activists eastward. In June 1941, the Soviet-German War broke out, and the Wehrmacht entered Dokszyce on 9 July. Their arrival was followed by a slew of anti-Jewish decrees: Jews were prohibited from leaving the town and having contacts with non-Jews; they were required to wear a yellow patch on their clothes, perform forced labor, and pay various "ransoms." There were small-scale killings of Jews, most of them suspected Soviet collaborators. In September 1941, a ghetto was set up in Dokszyce. The first mass murder in the town took place during Passover, on April 2, 1942 (or around March 15, according to another source). On the initiative of the Gebietskommissar, the local police arrested 65 Jews for alleged "contacts with partisans" and shot them in a sand quarry near the Jewish cemetery, southeast of Dokszyce. In April 1942, the Germans sent 100 young Jewish men to a labor camp in Glębokie. In early May 1942, the Jews were assembled in a club building (or a school building, according to other sources), where the local collaborationist police carried out a selection. 350-400 Jews, rejected as unfit for work, were killed at a former sand quarry near the Jewish cemetery. After this operation, the Germans reduced the ghetto area. Following the second massacre, the survivors began to build underground shelters, hoping to hide during the next mass murder, which was imminent. On May 29, 1942, the Germans, aided by the auxiliary police, entered the Dokszyce Ghetto in order to liquidate it. However, this massacre dragged on for more than two weeks, as many Jews had hidden in bunkers, and it took the Nazis that much time to find all of them. Some Jews managed to escape from the ghetto and join the Soviet partisans. Dokszyce was liberated by the Red Army on July 3, 1944.