Dzyatlava massacre

The Dzyatlava massacres refer to two mass shooting actions carried out during the Holocaust against the Jewish population of Zdzięcioł (Yiddish: Zhetel; today Dzyatlava, Belarus), a town then located in the Nowogródek Voivodeship of the Second Polish Republic. In February 1942, German authorities ordered more than 4,500 Polish Jews from the town to relocate into a newly created ghetto established around the synagogue and the Talmud Torah building.

The first massacre began at the end of April 1942. On April 29, German authorities arrested members of the Judenrat, and at dawn on April 30 ghetto inmates were roused by gunfire inside the ghetto. Jews were ordered to assemble at the old cemetery within the ghetto boundaries, driven from their homes by German forces and local Belarusian and Lithuanian auxiliary police, who beat, kicked, and shot those who resisted. A selection separated women, children, and the elderly from young, skilled workers. About 1,200 people selected for the latter group were marched to the Kurpiasz (Kurpyash) Forest on the southern edge of town, where prepared pits awaited them. They were shot in groups of twenty. During the shooting, the German district commissar released those holding work certificates along with their families, allowing roughly 100 people to return to the ghetto. In total, an estimated 1,000–1,200 Jews were killed in this first action.

The second massacre began on August 10, 1942, and lasted three days, coinciding with the liquidation of the ghetto; many Jews attempted to hide in bunkers prepared in advance. During this clearance operation, an estimated 1,500–3,000 Jews (sources vary, with some citing up to 3,000) were shot into three mass graves at the Jewish cemetery on the southern outskirts of the town, with roughly 1,000 victims in each grave. Slightly more than 200 Jewish craftsmen were transferred to the ghetto in Nowogródek. This action marked the end of the Zdzięcioł ghetto and of the town's Jewish community. Several hundred Jews who had hidden during the massacre fled afterward; some, including the Kaplan family, formed a family camp in the Nakryszki forest and survived until liberation.

News of the massacre spread to Jews held in labor camps in Dworzec, Nowogródek, and other towns, and roughly 120 people subsequently joined the Soviet-organized Zhetel partisan detachment in the Lipichany forests after escaping the August 1942 killings. That detachment, commanded by Hirsch Kaplinski, later carried out reprisals against local collaborators, including an action in the village of Molery on September 10, 1942, in which two collaborators were killed. An estimated 370 Jewish partisans from Dzyatlava are believed to have survived the war. Of the two Jewish cemeteries that once existed in the town, only one retains some marked graves today.