The Death Box": On November 14, 1941, the Nazis shot 9,000 Jews in the Belarusian salons.
Before the war, this city was a major Jewish center, but after Israel, more than 35 thousand people were forced into the ghetto. Starvation, disease and targeted bullying killed no faster than bullets.
Stress and terror. The Nazis wanted to break people morally. "The Germans gradually applied pressure, mocked our human dignity, and said that you are not people, you do not belong to the human race, you are cattle," remembers Yaakov Shaptinsky, born in Salonim.
Scary day. On November 14, 1941, thousands of Jews, under the pretext of "resettlement", were deported to the Ceplewski pits. "Living people walked, prayed, cried, cursed. But the worst thing was the children. They didn't understand why everyone around was screaming and crying... "- said Sheptinsky.
After people were forced to undress, they were shot and thrown into ditches, often half dead. "They pushed small children, we heard the screams of their mothers, for the slightest resistance they were shot on the spot," recalled Salonim inmate Liova Abramovich.
Some of the injured were miraculously saved. Yaakov Shaptinsky, who came out of a pit full of corpses, recalled: "I twisted like a snake, I twisted out. A few seconds passed, and I felt a blast of cold air. Another effort, I raised my head and saw stars in the sky."
helpers Not only the SS, but also auxiliary units of the Latvian and Lithuanian police participated in the extermination operations. According to local historian Vassili Afanasik, these thugs "committed more terrible atrocities than the SS men", and some of the punishers even filmed the murders.
The salon ghetto was finally liquidated later. The surviving prisoners fled to the partisans and told the world about the crimes of the Nazis.