Baranavichy Ghetto

Baranavichy (also spelled Baranowicze), a city in Poland, was surrounded by forests. In September 1939, another part was occupied by Germany. Baranavichy and its factories were located within the part of Poland that the Soviet Union occupied. ==German invasion==

Hitler invaded the Soviet Union, and began bombing Baranavichy, in the summer of 1941, violating the Molotov–Ribbentrop pact. a group that included soldiers, civil administration authorities, and Schutzstaffel (SS) personnel. The city was made part of the General Commissariat Belarus in the Reichskommissariat Ostland. When the Germans occupied the Baranavichy area, Chacza helped Jews escape from the cloistered ghetto and into the forests. He aided Jews by providing temporary shelter, medical care, and food, as well as connecting escapees with Jewish partisan groups in the woods. As a rescuer, he was at risk of arrest or death. In November 1943, he was arrested. Chacza remained in contact with Jewish partisan groups and people he had saved, most of whom immigrated to Israel after the war. Chacza received the title Righteous Among the Nations on March 24, 1964. Chacza participated in a tree ceremony held at Yad Vashem. Renia Berzak Renia Berzak, born in 1925 in Baranavichy, grew up in a wealthy family and interacted with Jewish and Gentile people. When the Red Army occupied the city, the Soviets took personal goods from her family's house. Her family was exiled to a neighboring village, where they lived until the Germans occupied Poland in the summer of 1941. Her father was immediately murdered. Berzak and her family were forced by the Germans to move into the Baranavichy Ghetto and she was assigned to a forced-labor work detail to clean a German garage. One day in 1942, while she was at work, her siblings — Feigele, Hanale, and Samuel — were killed by the Germans. They had been overheard reciting the Shema Yisrael prayer. Ya'akov and other members of an armed group escaped the ghetto and went into the woods. ==Liberation==

The Russian Army liberated Baranavichy on July 8, 1944. By that time, the houses and buildings in the city had been destroyed. About 250 former residents survived, 150 or fewer returned from the forest, and others returned from forced labor camps and the Soviet Union. ==Memorials==

The survivors created monuments for the 12,000 people who had died during The Holocaust and had a mass burial of the personal effects found of the people who had died. It was not long before the memorials were defaced. Besides a memorial stone at Tsaryuka Street, an obelisk was erected by Jews in Israel and around the world in 1992 at the former Jewish cemetery. ==Notes==