Murder Story of Dzisna Jews on Pushkina Street in Dzisna

Pushkin Street (formerly known as Poniatowski Alley), northwest of the center of Dzisna, was the site of the first mass murder of local Jews by the Nazis. On March 28, 1942, the SD (in some accounts, the Gestapo) entered the ghetto and took away thirty Jews. In all likelihood, this operation had some political rationale, since it was the German political police that carried out the arrests. According to some Soviet accounts, these people had been planning an act of resistance; according to other sources, the massacre was a reprisal for the death of the German Gebietskommissar's son. Be that as it may, in the morning the Nazis shot the arrestees at the commandant's office in the village of Doroszkowicze (present-day Dorozhkovichi, or Darozhkavichi, a suburb of the town of Dzisna).