Murder story of Iwieniec Jews in the Piszczugi Forest

On Saturday, June 28, 1941, the second day of the German occupation of Iwieniec, the occupiers killed 34 Jews. Earlier, during the fighting over the Iwieniec area, the Soviets had downed a German plane. Its wounded pilot was taken to a Soviet hospital in the town, where he died. The occupiers accused the Jews of "deliberate medical malpractice". They assembled the male Jews in the market square, arranged them in rows, picked 35 men, escorted them to a nearby forest, and shot them. One of the men, who was only wounded in the shooting, was later rescued by Jewish laborers who had been brought to this place to bury the dead. Eyewitnesses failed to identify the forest where the massacre had taken place. However, since the sounds of gunfire could be heard in the town itself, it must have been the Piszczugi Forest, which lies less than one kilometer north of Iwieniec.

On June 8, the Nazis took 40 ghetto inmates to the square near the "red brick" Catholic church, led them into the Pishchugi Forest, and ordered them to dig a deep, long pit. The next morning, on June 9, 1942, a squad consisting of 12 Germans and 17 Lithuanian auxiliaries came over from Baranowicze. With the assistance of the local police, they took all the inmates of the Iwieniec Ghetto (who numbered either around 800 or 1,025, depending on the source), except for several "specialists", to the pit in the forest and shot them with machine guns. Many of the victims were buried alive, having been merely wounded in the shooting.