Murder story of Wilejka Jews in the Wilejka Prison

Throughout the German occupation period, the town prison – specifically, its courtyard – was used by the Germans as an execution site, and hundreds of people, both Jews and non-Jews, were killed there between 1941 and 1944. On March 2, 1942, on the eve of Purim, the Germans carried out the third massacre of Jews. During this operation, the Wilejka SD arrested about 300 Jews on the pretext of transferring them to another ghetto. The arrested were taken to the prison courtyard (which is now used as a cancer ward), where they underwent a selection. A small group of skilled workers were kept alive, while the majority of Jews were shot in the prison. According to German sources, the perpetrators loaded some victims onto trucks and drove them out of town, probably along the Osipowicze Road (southwest of Wilejka), to a place near the Jewish cemetery. There, they shot them and cremated the bodies in an abandoned wooden structure, in an act reflecting the modus operandi of the Wilejka SD.