A number of Jews from Vilna, who deemed Lida to be a safer place than their own city, fled to this town and lived there illegally. However, Lida proved to be unsafe: In March 1942, following a denunciation by Jewish traitors, 35 refugees from Vilna were arrested by the German Gendarmerie and shot, together with the traitors themselves, in the area of the town prison. Soviet sources also refer to the shooting of eight prominent members of the local intelligentsia on May 2, 1942, at the same location.

More information: Yad Vashem

In early July 1941, a Teilkommando of Einsatzkommando 9, which was following on the heels of the Wehrmacht, entered Lida. On July 3 (or July 5, according to other sources), the SS rounded up the local Jewish intelligentsia and members of the liberal professions. They then selected about 150 Jews (or around 90, according to the German reports), took them out of the town, to the area of a destroyed ammunition depot, and shot them, having first subjected them to humiliation and torture.

More information: Yad Vashem

On the evening of May 7, 1942, the Lida Ghetto was sealed. The Jewish council was ordered to submit a list of the able-bodied Jews, together with their occupations. On the same day, the Nazis sent local villagers to dig three trenches behind the former military barracks (koszary) at the northwestern edge of the town. On the morning of May 8, the Germans cleared the ghetto. They rounded up the inmates of all three ghetto quarters for selection. The Jews from the Koszarowa quarter were herded into the square across from the military barracks. The selection of the inmates of the main ghetto (the Postawska quarter) took place near the railway crossing on Koszarowa Street, not far from the barracks. The selection at the Piaski quarter was carried out on the spot. The Germans – led by Gebietskommissar Hermann Hanweg and his deputy and consultant on the Jewish question, Leopold Windisch – picked about 1,000 specialists and their families. The Jews thus selected were ordered to kneel before Hanweg and Windisch and thank them for sparing their lives. The rest of the Jews, 5,670 persons in total, were killed on the same day in a forest west of the military barracks. The children were killed first. The perpetrators, German policemen and Lithuanian auxiliaries, tore little children from their parents, tossed them into a separate ditch, and killed them with hand grenades. Then, it was the adults' turn to die. They were forced to sit in rows 60 meters from the trenches, and were then led toward the edge in groups of 10-15, stripped naked, and shot with machine guns.

More information: Yad Vashem

In March 1943, approximately 2,000 Jewish inmates of the Lida Ghetto (including both natives of Lida and Jews brought there from nearby towns) were assembled in front of the post office and escorted to Borki (also known as Bary), at the northwestern edge of the town, near Krupowska (present-day Gastello) Street. They were then shot in the area of the former shooting range. The site of this final massacre was conclusively identified only in the early 2000s.

More information: Yad Vashem

According to Soviet documents, on July 8, 1942 (or, more likely, 1941), 120 members of the medical staff of the Lida hospital were shot in cesspits in the vicinity of the villages of Malejkowszczyzna and Minojty. The victims were shot in the presence of local residents, and were buried in the same pits.

More information: Yad Vashem