Holocaust-era Jewish mass grave found in rural Belarus

A Belarusian town of less than 1,000 people made international headlines after the discovery of a mass grave of holding nearly two dozen Jewish victims.

Uncovered in the once Nazi-controlled town of Stresyn, within the Gomel region in the country’s south-east, were the remains of 23 people, including 11 children between the ages of one and seven.

According to Belarusian media reports, a local man bought a house close to the site 15 years ago and discovered the bodies while carrying out work on the grounds.

He decided, as reported by Belarus news agency Balta, not to disclose his find to anyone, even though many local residents purportedly knew the remains of Jews once confined to the local ghetto were buried in the area.

Eventually, local media reported on the discovery and it was quickly picked up by international outlets.

Belarus authorities hypothesise that the 23 victims died as a result of appalling conditions in the ghetto or illness, as no evidence of execution was found during an examination of the grave.

The Gomel region was once home to a sizeable Jewish population. Some 40,000 Jews lived and worked there in the late 1930s, accounting for nearly 30 per cent of the region’s total population.

Most of the region’s Jews were able to evacuate the district before the arrival of German troops on August 19, 1941, but those who remained were forcibly incarcerated in three ghettos, and their property was looted. Holocaust victims from Gomel are estimated to be between 3,000-4,000.

The find, the country’s second Jewish mass grave unearthed in five years, comes at a time when the Belarusian authorities are beginning belatedly to acknowledge the full extent of war crimes committed against their Jewish citizens.

It is estimated that 800,000 Belarusian Jews, or 90 per cent of the total Jewish population, were murdered during the war following Nazi Germany’s invasion of the country, then a republic of the Soviet Union known as the Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic.

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