Slonim

The earliest documentary reference to the Jewish community of Słonim dates to 1551. In 1642, a large stone synagogue in the Baroque style was built in the town. In the 1660s, during the Polish-Swedish War, the Jews of Słonim suffered from the depredations of the Polish army. In 1897, Słonim was home to 11,515 Jews, who made up 73 percent of the total population. The celebrated Słonim yeshiva, which had been established back in 1815, taught 700-800 students a year in the late 19th-early 20th Centuries; its rector, Avraham ben Yitzhak Vaynberg (Weinberg), became the founder of a new movement in Hasidism and of the Slonim Hasidic dynasty.

In 1906, the town had chapters of three Jewish workers' parties: the Bund, Poale Zion, and the Zionists-Socialists. In the wake of the Balfour Declaration of 1917, Zionists came to dominate the local political scene. They were represented by the leftist and rightist factions of Poale Zion, the religious HaMizrakhi, the leftist Hashomer Hatzair, the rightist Revisionists, and other parties and youth movements.

From 1921, Słonim was part of the Second Polish Republic. Its Jewish community shrank to 6,917 (or 66.7 percent of the total population), but later rebounded. The daily “Slonimer Vort” and the weekly “Undzer Zhurnal” were published in the town. The various Jewish educational establishments - the Hebrew-language Tarbut and Yavneh schools, the Yiddish schools of TSISHO and Shulkult, a Polish-language szabasówka (a school that did not hold classes on Saturdays), and a Jewish gymnasium - attracted hundreds of Jewish children, as did the religious Talmud-Torah, Tahkemoni, and Beit-Yaakov schools.

In September 1939, World War II broke out, and Słonim was annexed by the Soviets. The Sovietization of its economic and cultural life began. At the same time, thousands of refugees from the German-occupied regions of Poland arrived in Słonim, swelling its Jewish population. For many of the refugees, Słonim was only a transit station on their way to Lithuania. In April 1940, the Soviets deported some 1,000 Jews, mostly refugees, eastward; several months later, they also deported former members of the Bund.

In June 1941, the Soviet-German War began, and German troops occupied Słonim on June 26. According to the German estimate, they found about 25,000 Jews (including refugees) in the town, although this figure may be an exaggeration. Anti-Jewish orders followed - e.g., Jews were forbidden to share a residence with non-Jews, use the sidewalks, and have contacts with non-Jews; they were required to wear an identification badge, sew a yellow patch on their garments, etc.

On July 17, 1941, the SS carried out the first massacre in Słonim. On that day, members of Einsatzgruppe B and the 316th Police Battalion shot between 1,075 and 1,200 Jewish men in the sandpits in the area of Petralowicze (Petralevichi) Hill. In September 1941, the German authorities conducted a census in the town (according to the results, it was home to 14,461 Jews) and set up a ghetto.

On November 14, 1941, the Nazis perpetrated a second massacre in Słonim. On that day, the SiPo (German Security Police) - with the assistance of the Wehrmacht, Latvian and Lithuanian collaborators, and the local auxiliary police - rounded up more than 8,000 (or more than 10,000, according to another source) non-working Jews under the pretext of resettlement, took them to the so-called Czepielów (Chepelevo) Fields, some 5 kilometers southeast of the town, and shot them in pits that had been dug beforehand.

After the second mass murder, only working Jews were left in the Słonim Ghetto, which was then concentrated on the Żabinka Island. Conditions in the ghetto even improved a little. At the same time, the Germans resettled Jews from nearby villages - such as Byteń, Kosów, Iwacewicze, and others - in the ghetto, and deported the local Jewish converts to Christianity (including a monk from the nearby Żyrowicze Monastery) into it. Between June 29 and July 15, 1942, the SS, assisted by Lithuanian, Latvian, and local collaborators, carried out the “liquidation” of the ghetto. All the inmates, except for some 800 “specialists” - 8,000 people in total - were shot at Petralowicze Hill. The last Jews of Slonim were killed by the Nazis in August and December 1942.

No more than 400 Słonim Jews survived the German occupation, mostly with the Soviet partisans.

Słonim was liberated by the Red Army on July 10, 1944.