The Shoah (1939–1945)
Escape and liquidation of Sharkawshchyna
18 juillet 1942·Sharkawshchyna
The toll is reproduced exactly as the source states it — never rounded, never added to another. Tolls overlap from one event to the next.
Warned that the pits were ready, the ghetto inhabitants set fire to their own houses and rush en masse at the fences; most are caught in the fields and shot, but a few dozen reach the marshes and survive the war. It is one of the first collective escapes from a ghetto in Eastern Europe.
Warned by escapees from a neighboring town that the pits had been dug, the enclosed quarter of Sharkawshchyna refuses to wait: at the signal, the inhabitants set fire to their homes and rush en masse toward the fences. A good number manage to reach the woods in the confusion. Most will be caught over the course of the summer, but several dozen will make it to the partisan detachments, making this escape one of the largest in the region.
- Period :
- The Shoah (1939–1945)
- Type :
- Shoah
- Region :
- Central and Eastern Europe
- Country :
- Biélorussie
*Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos*, dirigée par Geoffrey Megargee ; Leonid Smilovitsky, *Holocaust in Belorussia*.