This forest, which lies 3.5 kilometers northeast of Słonim, was used by the Nazis as a murder site in 1942-43. According to Soviet estimates, 2,000 people, some of them Jews (but many non-Jews, as well), were killed there

More information: Yad Vashem

On July 17, 1941, the SS carried out the first massacre of Jews in Słonim. According to some accounts, the Germans declared that this massacre was intended as a reprisal for the failure of the local Jews to pay a full and timely “ransom.” On that day, Einsatzkommando 8 of Einsatzgruppe B, accompanied by men of the 316th Police Battalion, arrived in the town. The perpetrators rounded up some 2,000 Jewish men, loaded them onto trucks, and took them to Pietralowicze Hill, which was also known as Krzywa Góra (Krivaya Gora, present-day Petralevichi-1, a northeastern suburb of Słonim). Out of the 2,000 men, 1,200 (or 1,075, according to the Einsatzgruppe report) were shot, while the rest were released. Between June 29 and July 15, 1942, the Germans liquidated the Słonim Ghetto. The Nazi authorities decided to delegate this task to SS units from faraway Minsk and Baranowicze, preferring not to rely on the local SS and policemen, who were allegedly too familiar with the Jews of Słonim. Nevertheless, the 727th Infantry Regiment of the Wehrmacht also took part in the roundup of the Jews, just as it had done during the second massacre in November 1941. The final liquidation was assigned to Stabsleiter Rithmeyer. This third and largest, massacre of Jews was preceded by a wave of arrests and executions of anti-Nazi Poles. The Nazis shot several dozen Polish arrestees at the Pietralowicze Hills, the site of the first mass murder of Jews in July 1941. When forty trucks bearing SS squads and Latvian collaborators arrived in the town in late June 1942, many ghetto Jews ascribed their arrival to the ongoing anti-Polish campaign, and thus did not panic. However, at dawn on June 29, 1942, the SS and Security Police squad that had arrived from Minsk began to encircle the Słonim Ghetto. When Rithmeyer shot Kwint, the deputy chairman of the Jewish Council, at point-blank range, the ghetto Jews finally realized what was going on and began to hide. There were attempts at resistance on the part of a clandestine cell that had managed to procure some arms. The SS set the ghetto (and the whole town of Słonim) on fire. The “operation” dragged on for longer than the Germans had anticipated. Rithmeyer was forced to spare the Jewish craftsmen and medical personnel (700 men and 100 women). Nevertheless, over the next two weeks his squad murdered 8,000-10,000 (the figure varies depending on the source) inmates of the Słonim Ghetto. The victims were either killed on the spot or escorted to Pietralowicze Hill and shot there.

More information: Yad Vashem

On November 14, 1941, the Nazis carried out the second massacre in Słonim. On that day, the Słonim Gebietskommissar and the German Security Police, who were assisted by the Wehrmacht, the Latvian and Lithuanian collaborationist police, and the Belorussian police, assembled some 10,000 Jews in the market square under the pretext of resettlement, selected those who had work certificates, and released them. The rest - mainly elderly people, women, and children - were taken, on foot and in trucks, to an open space near the village of Czepielów (Chepelevo), approximately five kilometers southeast of the center of Słonim, and shot at pits that had been dug there in advance. According to a German estimate, 8,000 Jews were killed on that day.

More information: Yad Vashem