The Nazi massacre of the Jews of Slonim on June 29, 1942 became known to the Jews of Byteń. Realizing that a similar mass murder in their own town was imminent, they began to build bunkers where they hoped to hide. On July 24, 1942, a rumor spread in the ghetto about local peasants being ordered to dig pits. On the night of July 24-25, a member of the Jewish police warned the Jews that the ghetto had been surrounded by Germans and auxiliary policemen, and suggested that they hide in the bunkers. However, the perpetrators were prepared for this eventuality. At dawn on July 25, German gendarmes, Lithuanian auxiliaries, and local Belorussian policemen began the roundup. The local policemen carried out a thorough search for Jews who had hid in shelters, killing some of those they found on the spot. The Germans and auxiliaries then assembled the inmates of the Byteń Ghetto and transported them, in trucks or on foot, to the area between the villages of Rudnia and Zapole, about a mile northwest of Byteń, where pits had been dug in advance. The perpetrators also arrested the Jews who had been permitted to live outside the ghetto, rounding them up at their workplaces and bringing them to the same site. Near Rudnia, the Germans ordered both groups of victims to undress, climb down into the pits in small groups, and lie face down in them. The perpetrators then shot the Jews with machine guns and submachine guns. The most reliable estimate of the number of victims killed on that day is 840-850. The skilled Jewish artisans were spared for a while, as were the Jews who had managed to survive the massacre in their shelters. Most of these survivors, 350-360 people (i.e., all the remaining Jews of Byteń, except for fifty-six skilled Jewish workers and their family members), were murdered on August 29, 1942 in the vicinity of the village of Zapole.

More information: Yad Vashem