Monument Dedication Honors "Lost" Holocaust Victims

At 6 a.m. on March 1, 1942, horror hit the Jewish community of Lida, in Belarus. Already confined to the Lida Ghetto, Jews were forced by the Nazis into the town’s main square, where they were stripped of their belongings and money. Though 300 people managed to escape this mass slaughter to Belarus, most were less fortunate. 50 people were picked at random from the crowd and murdered. The ill and children who could not come to the square were killed later that afternoon. All of the bodies were thrown into a pit.

Over the next year (1942-43), 250 bodies were added to the pit, and two more series of executions of the Lida Ghetto Jews resulted in the burial of 6,700 people. The pit remained unknown to local residents until nearly 60 years later.

In the spring of 2001, during a live interview on local radio in which she discussed activities of local Jews, the head of the Lida Jewish Community, Asya, gave her contact information on air so that anyone interested in joining or helping the community could reach her. A Lida resident, Zenon, called Asya. He told her that when he was five he witnessed Nazis burying bodies in a pit and directed her to the location. Since the location was not known to the Jewish community as an extermination site, Asya was shocked by the news. She immediately had local authorities begin excavations there.

Confirmation of Zenon 's story came when, in July 2001, one month into the digging, 2,220 human remains were found in the ground. The community decided to mark the site with a memorial, and arrangements were finalized in October 2002.

The erecting of the monument became a cooperative effort between Lida town residents and the Belarusian Jewish community. A Jewish businessman from Minsk funded the building of an outside fence, and a Lida entrepreneur did much work on the area adjacent to the site. JDC in Belarus, in conjunction with the Union of Belarusian Jewish Organizations and Communities (UBJOC) headed by Mr. Leonid Levin - a famous Belarusian architect - presented the monument to the town.

In August 2003, 400 people, including distinguished guests from Jerusalem, representatives of the JDC and UBJOC, local officials, journalists and Lida residents, gathered for the unveiling of the monument. The site was dedicated to the innocent victims of World War II who, for years, were overlooked - but whose memory will now be assured proper honor in the Jewish history of Belarus.