Vitebsk Ghetto

Vitebsk Ghetto or Witebsk Ghetto was a short-lived ghetto in the town of Vitebsk in modern-day Belarus. It was created soon after the German invasion of the Soviet Union; immediately after the Nazis took control of the town on 11 July 1941.

Present-day memorial on the site of the ghetto

Approximately 16,000 Jews lived in the ghetto.^[1] In October, the Nazi administrators declared that the poor conditions in the ghetto created a health hazard for local inhabitants and that an epidemic had started in the ghetto; in fact, this declaration was a pretext to move and massacre the Jews. Less than three months later, on 8 October 1941, the Nazis started a massacre of the Vitebsk Jews, which ended on 11 October with the deaths of most of the ghetto's inhabitants (sources vary as to the exact number).^[2] Many bodies were disposed in the nearby Vitba river.

See also

• The Holocaust in Belarus