In anticipation of the imminent liquidation of the Dzisna Ghetto, its inmates stocked some kerosene, hoping that the fire and the ensuing confusion would enable some of them to escape from the town. On the night of June 14-15, 1942, a squad of the Security Police (SiPo), reinforced by gendarmes from Wilejka and local policemen, surrounded the ghetto and entered it. The inmates tried to resist – in particular, by setting the ghetto houses on fire. Only a few were able to escape, since the Germans strafed the ghetto with machine guns and threw hand grenades into it, while the policemen shot at those who tried to swim across the river. Several hundred Jews managed to reach the forest, but most of them were seized by local policemen or by peasants over the following days. The rest of the ghetto inmates were shot by the Nazis near the village of Ościewicze (Vostsevichi in Belarusian), which was formerly known as Piaskowe Górki (lit. Sand Hills), some three kilometers south of Dzisna. According to German sources, 2,181 Jews from Dzisna were killed on that day, whereas Soviet documents put the number of victims at 3,800. Seventeen Jewish artisans, along with their families, were spared by the Germans during the massacre. They were murdered by the local police in Dzisna in January 1943.

More information: Yad Vashem

On July 14, 1941, the Germans assembled 100 male residents of Dzisna in the market square, picked every tenth man, and shot these ten persons dead in front of their fellows. Seven of the victims were Jews. This massacre was presented by the Germans as a reprisal for the cutting of a German telephone wire, and was intended to intimidate the local population.

More information: Yad Vashem

Pushkin Street (formerly known as Poniatowski Alley), northwest of the center of Dzisna, was the site of the first mass murder of local Jews by the Nazis. On March 28, 1942, the SD (in some accounts, the Gestapo) entered the ghetto and took away thirty Jews. In all likelihood, this operation had some political rationale, since it was the German political police that carried out the arrests. According to some Soviet accounts, these people had been planning an act of resistance; according to other sources, the massacre was a reprisal for the death of the German Gebietskommissar's son. Be that as it may, in the morning the Nazis shot the arrestees at the commandant's office in the village of Doroszkowicze (present-day Dorozhkovichi, or Darozhkavichi, a suburb of the town of Dzisna).

More information: Yad Vashem