Vitebsk Ghetto or Witebsk Ghetto was a short-lived

ghetto A ghetto, often called ''the'' ghetto, is a part of a city in which members of a minority group live, especially as a result of political, social, legal, environmental or economic pressure. Ghettos are often known for being more impoverished t ...

in the town of

Vitebsk Vitebsk or Viciebsk (russian: Витебск, ; be, Ві́цебск, ; , ''Vitebsk'', lt, Vitebskas, pl, Witebsk), is a city in Belarus. The capital of the Vitebsk Region, it has 366,299 inhabitants, making it the country's fourth-largest c ...

in modern-day

Belarus Belarus,, , ; alternatively and formerly known as Byelorussia (from Russian ). officially the Republic of Belarus,; rus, Республика Беларусь, Respublika Belarus. is a landlocked country in Eastern Europe. It is bordered by ...

. It was created soon after the

German invasion of the Soviet Union Operation Barbarossa (german: link=no, Unternehmen Barbarossa; ) was the invasion of the Soviet Union by Nazi Germany and many of its Axis allies, starting on Sunday, 22 June 1941, during the Second World War. The operation, code-named afte ...

; immediately after the Nazis took control of the town on 11 July 1941. Approximately 16,000 Jews lived in the ghetto. In October, the

Nazi Nazism ( ; german: Nazismus), the common name in English for National Socialism (german: Nationalsozialismus, ), is the far-right totalitarian political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in ...

administrators declared that the poor conditions in the ghetto created a health hazard for local inhabitants and that an epidemic had started in the ghetto; in fact, this declaration was a pretext to move and massacre the Jews. Less than three months later, on 8 October 1941, the Nazis started a massacre of the Vitebsk Jews, which ended on 11 October with the deaths of most of the ghetto's inhabitants (sources vary as to the exact number).

Peter Longerich Peter Longerich (born 1955) is a German professor of history and German historian. He is regarded by fellow historians, including Ian Kershaw, Richard Evans, Timothy Snyder, Mark Roseman and Richard Overy, as one of the leading German authori ...

''Holocaust: The Nazi Persecution and Murder of the Jews'' 2010 p.223 "Thus, to name only the most significant places, the Vitebsk ghetto was cleared between 8 and 10 October and 4090 Jews were shot (according to reports by Einsatzkommando 9)" - but another source puts this 4,090 at December 1941 Many bodies were disposed in the nearby Vitba river.

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October 8: Vitebsk Ghetto liquidated; more than 16,000 Jews killed
via

Yad Vashem Yad Vashem ( he, יָד וַשֵׁם; literally, "a memorial and a name") is Israel's official memorial to the victims of the Holocaust. It is dedicated to preserving the memory of the Jews who were murdered; honoring Jews who fought against th ...

VITEBSK AND THE HOLOCAUST
* Vitebsk Holocaust locations in Belarus Jewish ghettos in Nazi-occupied Belarus World War II sites in Belarus {{WWII-stub

See also

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