ABSTRACT
The German Army’s lightning advance in its invasion of the USSR and the Red Army’s hurried retreat left the Bielorussian Jews stunned, deeply disillusioned and with feelings of helplessness. Suddenly the Jews felt that they had been abandoned to their fate, a fate that no one knew. At the sight of the retreating Red Army, many Jews, mainly young people themselves, turned to flee eastward. Among them were Jewish Communists and others who had been active in the Soviet administration. Some refused to leave their aged parents and the members of their family. Upon the Red Army’s retreat, and even before the Germans’ arrival, members of the non-Jewish population in the villages and towns began committing acts of plunder and murder against the Jewish population. The first waves of shock came when groups of Jews were taken out and murdered during the first two months of the German occupation, in almost all of the minor towns of Western Bielorussia.
