Stolowicze

Jews lived in Stołowicze at least from the 17th century. In 1897, there were 515 Jews in the village, making up fifty-five percent of the total population. The new and rapidly growing town of Baranowicze, which lay only 8 kilometers (5 miles) to the south, hampered the development of urban economy in Stołowicze and attracted many of its Jews. The Jews who remained in the village were mostly agriculturalists and petty merchants. By 1921, when Stołowicze became part of reborn Poland, its Jewish population had dwindled to 251. In the late 1930s, there were only thirty-seven Jewish families in the village. In September 1939, World War II began, and Stołowicze was annexed to the USSR. During the subsequent twenty-one months of Soviet rule, the village’s Jewish population rose from about 250 to 350, mainly as a result of the influx of refugees from the German-occupied areas of Poland. German troops occupied Stołowicze on June 27, 1941 – i.e., on the sixth day of the Soviet-German War. Various anti-Jewish measures followed, including the obligation to wear a yellow patch on the clothing and the ban on contacts with non-Jews. Some of the most onerous impositions on the Jews were the labor duty and the heavy “contributions” – in money, valuables, clothing, furniture, etc. – that they had to pay. In October 1941, the Germans herded the Jews of Stołowicze into a ghetto. In early May 1942, the Germans transferred sixteen Jewish artisans from Stołowicze to the Baranowicze Ghetto. On May 13 (or May 12, according to other sources) that year, the Germans, assisted by the local Auxiliary Police, murdered most of the rest of the Jews of Stołowicze in a forest on the road to the village of Arabowszczyzna. After the shooting, the local police carried out a search for Jews who had tried to hide, and shot any they could find. Several days later, the Germans declared an “amnesty” for all Jews who would willingly come out of hiding. Some twenty persons heeded this call, returned to the ghetto, and were shot in June that year. Several local Jews survived the war, either by joining Soviet partisan units or through the assistance of friendly non-Jews. Stołowicze was liberated by the Red Army on July 8, 1944.