Murder Story of Lida Jews at the Former Military Barracks in the Lida Area

On the evening of May 7, 1942, the Lida Ghetto was sealed. The Jewish council was ordered to submit a list of the able-bodied Jews, together with their occupations. On the same day, the Nazis sent local villagers to dig three trenches behind the former military barracks (koszary) at the northwestern edge of the town. On the morning of May 8, the Germans cleared the ghetto. They rounded up the inmates of all three ghetto quarters for selection. The Jews from the Koszarowa quarter were herded into the square across from the military barracks. The selection of the inmates of the main ghetto (the Postawska quarter) took place near the railway crossing on Koszarowa Street, not far from the barracks. The selection at the Piaski quarter was carried out on the spot. The Germans – led by Gebietskommissar Hermann Hanweg and his deputy and consultant on the Jewish question, Leopold Windisch – picked about 1,000 specialists and their families. The Jews thus selected were ordered to kneel before Hanweg and Windisch and thank them for sparing their lives.

The rest of the Jews, 5,670 persons in total, were killed on the same day in a forest west of the military barracks. The children were killed first. The perpetrators, German policemen and Lithuanian auxiliaries, tore little children from their parents, tossed them into a separate ditch, and killed them with hand grenades. Then, it was the adults' turn to die. They were forced to sit in rows 60 meters from the trenches, and were then led toward the edge in groups of 10-15, stripped naked, and shot with machine guns.