On May 11, 1942, German military police and local auxiliaries entered Voronova, gathering all Jewish residents in the Market Square. SS Commandant Vindish pronounced the Reichstag's verdict of 1938: all Jews were responsible for the troubles of the German people and of all humanity, and were condemned to death, and now was the time to carry out that verdict. Some 2,300 were massacred that day: while they breathed their last air they were piled into layers, and between layers their executioners spilled chlorine and whitewash for disinfection. Among those brutally buried some were only wounded, covered by the bodies of the next layer, choking underneath them. Some townsfolk hid and joined the Partisans in nearby forests, later exacting revenge against their tormentors. Those who remained as necessary laborers in town were eventually taken to the Lida Ghetto, and finally to Majdanek, where they were killed. Towards the end of the War, some prisoners from Majdenek were returned to Voronova to exhume and burn bodies-- so as to hide evidence of the massacre from the advancing Allied troops.


Though there is no more Jewish community of Voronova, it lives in these pages and in our collective memory.


-Adam Cherson (Translation Editor)