Radoszkowice

The first reported Jewish presence in Radoszkowicze was in 1765, when the Jews numbered 455. In 1897 the number of Radoszkowicze Jews was 1,579. In the interwar period Radoszkowicze became part of the independent Poland. In the 1930s the town's 1,200 Jews comprised about 50 percent of the total population. In September 1939, with the arrival of the Red Army following the Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact, Radoszkowicze became part of Soviet Belarus. German forces captured the town on June 26, 1941. The Jews of Radoszkowicze had to wear yellow stars with identifying numbers. They were forced to hand over their valuable, including wedding rings, to the German authorities. The Jews were banned from walking on the sidewalk and excluded from public life. On March 11, 1942, the Germans drove the inhabitants of the town to the marketplace, where a selection was carried out. Those who were considered unable to work were forced into a barn in the town and burned to death. Those who were left alive were taken to a labor camp to build a road between Minsk and Molodeczno. On the way from the labor camp to the construction site the guards drove into the line of Jews with their trucks; those who were not able to get out of the way were shot. Those who remained alive were concentrated in a ghetto, surrounded by a barbed wire fence. Several mass shootings of Jews took place between February and April 1943. Another mass murder operation was carried out on March 7, 1943 when the remaining Jews of the Radoszkowicze ghetto were shot or burned to death in a barn in the vicinity of Radoszkowicze. The total number of victims was about 340. The Red Army liberated Radoszkowicze on July 7, 1944.