Wasiliszki

The first Jews appeared in Wasiliszki in the early 18th century. One of the greatest musar (ethical) authorities of the time, Israel Meir haKohen, known as the Chofetz Chaim (Hafetz Chaim) lived and taught in Wasiliszki in the 1860s and 1870s. In 1897 theere were 2,081 Jews in Wasiliszki, where they comprised 75 percent of the total population. World War I and the Polish-Soviet war of 1919-1920 reduced the Jewish (and also the non-Jewish) population of the town, with the first Polish census in 1921 recording only 1,223 Jews there. In the 1920s Wasiliszki experienced a revival: prior to World War II about 1,800 Jews lived there. The first local group of the socialist Yiddishist Bund was active in Wasiliszki at the end of the 19th century; it was followed by branches of the all-Russian revolutionary parties the SR (Socialists-Revolutionary Party) and the RSDRP (social democrats). After World War I the following Zionist groups were also active in Wasiliszki: the Zeirei Zion, the religious Zionist Hamizrakhi party, the Hehalutz pioneer movement, the leftist Hashomer Hatzair, and the rightist Beitar movement. In 1925, a Hebrew school of the Tarbut network was founded, although with considerable opposition, and in 1927, the talmud torah was transformed into a Hebrew school of the Yavne religious Zionist network. In September 1939, with the beginning of World War II, the Soviets occupied Wasiliszki. On June 25, 1941, on the fourth day of the German invasion of the Soviet Union, the Wehrmacht entered the town. On that day they shot seven Jews who were had been denounced to them as Communists. Anti-Jewish decrees and orders followed in July 1941: Jews had to wear yellow armbands, they had to hand over their furniture and valuables to the police; forced labor was introduced for all Jews from the age of 12; and a Jewish council was established. In October 1941 a killing squad arrived from Lida and carried out two group shootings: in the first rabbis and other religious leaders were killed; in the second - families and relatives of Soviet functionaries who had been evacuated or had been mobilized into the Red Army. In November 1941 a ghetto was established in Wasiliszki. On May 9, 1942, the Germans carried out a selection. After separating Jews with "useful" professions and sufficiently healthy to work, they shot to death about 2,000 Wasiliszki's Jews in pits near the Jewish cemetery. Those 180 men who survived the selection were sent to the Szczuczyn ghetto and from there to various labor camps; most of them perished. Wasiliszki was liberated by the Red Army on July 12, 1944.