Murder Story of Baranowicze Jews at the Baranowicze Old Jewish Cemetery

The Jewish cemetery was located on Hrabska (present-day Chernyshevskogo) Street, near the center of town. The Nazis used this site for their early killings of June-July 1941, when they hunted for Jews belonging to specific categories: those denounced by local residents as collaborators with the Soviet authorities in 1939-41, Jewish professionals and members of the intelligentsia, and Jewish hostages taken to extort “contributions” from the other Jews. The first such group killing took place as early as June 30, 1941, and it claimed the lives of thirty-six Jewish physicians. On July 8, seventy-three “Jewish Communists” were shot. On July 18, the Germans took Jewish hostages and demanded a ransom to the tune of one million rubles, ten kilograms of gold, and 100 kilograms of silver. Before the Judenrat could raise the required sum, the Nazis shot the hostages. Seventy Jewish intellectuals were killed in late July. At least 400 Jews had been killed in Baranowicze by August 1, 1941, and most of these killings took place at the Jewish cemetery.