On July 17 (or July 16, according to other sources), 1942, a SiPo (German Security Police) squad, reinforced by a Lithuanian auxiliary police unit, arrived in Horodziej and ordered the local police to surround the ghetto. The next morning, the Germans, together with the Lithuanians and local collaborators, assembled the ghetto inmates in the square in front of the railway station. Some Jews had tried to hide, but the police found them and hauled them to the square. There, the victims were ordered to lie face down on the ground. Many Jews were killed on the spot – thus, children who cried loudly were clubbed to death by the perpetrators. After much beating and random killing of the victims, the Jewish men were taken in trucks to a pit near the local cemetery. There are testimonies according to which the shooting was carried out near the local church. Near the pit, the men were ordered to undress, and then shot with machine guns. The women and children who had survived the killings in the square were then taken to the same place and murdered in the same fashion as the men. According to the Soviet documents, 1,137 Jews were murdered on that day.

More information: Yad Vashem