Monuments to Holocaust Victims Unveiled in Bykhaw and Svislach

In Bykhaw, a monument to the victims of the Holocaust has been erected at the municipal cemetery. The memorial consists of two stone obelisks sharing a single platform. Beneath one lie the remains of women and children executed by German forces, while the other serves as the final resting place for the men.

The small memorial marks the graves of more than 4,500 local Jewish civilians liquidated by the occupying forces. During the ceremony, Semyon Dvoskin, a member of the local Jewish community, recalled that Nazi forces carried out mass executions of Jews at several locations during the occupation. In a subsequent effort to conceal evidence of their war crimes, the perpetrators attempted to dissolve the bodies using sulfuric acid.

Following the war, dedicated local residents collected the remains from the mass execution sites and transported them to the regional center's cemetery, where they were reinterred in two large communal graves.
Speaking at the monument's dedication ceremony in the Svislach District, near the district center, the Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the Federal Republic of Germany to Belarus, Peter Dettmar, stated:

"Attending these ceremonies is always a deeply painful experience for me. We, as Germans, bear a unique responsibility for the thousands of lives, particularly of Jewish descent, destroyed by our ancestors. I extend my gratitude to everyone involved in historical and archival research. We must safeguard this flame of remembrance to ensure it is never extinguished. Memory must be preserved across generations so that such atrocities are never repeated."

Prior to the war, the Jewish population of Svislach exceeded three thousand. In November 1941, they were ordered into a ghetto. Within exactly one year, fewer than half—1,536 people—survived. The survivors were eventually driven from the ghetto to the Vishevnik tract. The condemned were marched to the execution site, with the elderly and children transported on carts. It was only upon reaching the pre-dug pit and being lined up along its edge that the women began to scream in anguish and the children began to weep. Their cries were drowned out by gunfire. Many fell wounded into the pit and attempted to claw their way out. Local elders recall instances where bloodied survivors managed to escape into the forest under the cover of night.

Dr. Haim Ben-Yakov, Director General of the EAJC, stated: "Preserving the memory of the victims of the Second World War and preventing the revision of the lessons of those horrific events remains a key priority for the EAJC. Today, we witness the resurgence of hateful ideologies, alongside calls for the destruction of the Jewish people and the State of Israel. We highly appreciate the respectful approach of the state authorities toward commemorating the victims of the Shoah and express our gratitude. Such practices are not observed by politicians globally. While history has taught little to some political leaders, those who choose to forget the past ultimately pay a heavy price."