Bliznianski's Fields Related Communities
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Murder Story of Dereczyn Jews in Bliznianski's Fields
Murder Site
Bliznyanskiy
Poland
On the night of July 23-24, 1942, German forces, including the Security Police, the Gendarmerie, and the auxiliary police, came over from Słonim and surrounded Dereczyn. Intending to liquidate the ghetto, they began to round up the Jews on the morning of July 24. According to Soviet documents, the shootings lasted from July 23 to July 26, 1942. During the operation, many Jews, who had built shelters for themselves beforehand, were found by the Nazis and killed either on the spot or in Bliznianski's fields. They were later buried in nine bomb craters, some of which lay within the town limits, while the rest were located in Bliznianski's fields.
Related Resources
Written Accounts
ChGK Soviet Reports
Sh. Nieger, who was born in Dereczyn and lived there during the war years, testified:
It happened on the tenth day of Ab in the year 1942.
It fell on a Friday. Despite the fact that it was strictly forbidden to pray, the Jews nevertheless assembled in the cellars and recited the kinot (prayers of lamentation). The destruction of two thousand years ago was mourned, as was the present destruction.…
After the night of Tisha B'Av, when day began to break, the Gestapo, along with Lithuanian and Ukrainian police, surrounded the ghetto and began to shoot into it from all sides. Jews ran to hide in the pits they had dug under the houses, which they had previously prepared [for this purpose], but the Germans, with the assistance of the local police, extracted the Jews from these pits, led them to the Schulhof and to Bliznianski's fields, and killed them with rifle bullets, machine guns, and hand grenades. They set the ghetto on fire.
The yelling and screaming could be heard for miles.
A portion of these were buried in three grave sites, and the others lie in six grave sites in Blizniansky's fields.
Raban, Yekhezkiel and Berger, Jacob Solomon. The Dereczin memorial book : a book of remembrance honoring the communities of Dereczin, Halinka, Kolonia-Sinaiska . Mahwah, N.J. : Dereczin Organizations in Israel and the United States of America, 2000, p. 234.
Bliznyanskiy
Murder Site
Poland
53.245;24.783