Słonim Ghetto

Słonim Ghetto
The Baroque Grand Synagogue of Słonim at the onset of World War II
Słonim Słonim location during the Holocaust in Poland
Słonim Ghetto Slonim in modern-day Belarus (compare with above)
Location	Słonim, German-occupied Poland 53°03′N 25°11′E / 53.05°N 25.19°E / 53.05; 25.19
Incident type	Imprisonment, forced labor, starvation, mass killings
Organizations	Schutzstaffel (SS), Einsatzgruppe C, Belarusian Auxiliary Police, Wehrmacht
Executions	Pietrolewicze, Czepielów
Victims	22,000–25,000 ghettoized Polish Jews.

The Słonim Ghetto (Polish: getto w Słonimiu, German: Ghetto von Slonim, Yiddish: סלאנים‎) was a Jewish World War II ghetto established in 1941 by the Schutzstaffel (SS) in the prewar Polish city of Słonim located in the eastern region of Kresy (now Slonim, Belarus), occupied by Germany after the launch of Operation Barbarossa. Before the joint Nazi-Soviet invasion of Poland in 1939 Słonim was a seat of the Słonim county in the Nowogródek Voivodeship of the Second Polish Republic. The invading Soviets annexed the city along with the entire region to the Byelorussian SSR in an atmosphere of terror, and renamed it as Сло́ним (Slonim). All inhabitants including Jews born in sovereign Poland were declared Soviet subjects by the NKVD. Less than two years later the city was captured by the Wehrmacht. The killings of Polish Jews by mobile extermination squads began almost immediately.

The first mention of the Jews in Słonim originates from 1551. The community began to flourish in the first half of the 16th century. Jews specialized in the trade of lumber and grain; some, in the brewery business, others in numerous cottage industries. In 1635–42 the Baroque style Grand Synagogue was built in Słonim. In 1766 the local Qahal counted 1,154 members. Jewish cultural life thrived under the patronage of the Ogiński family from the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. They built the Oginski Canal between the Neman and the Dnieper rivers. Following the military Partitions of Poland perpetrated by Russia, Prussia, and Austria, Słonim became part of the Russian Empire in 1795. It was the home of Rabbi Avraham Weinberg, founder of the Slonim Hasidic dynasty. There were seven synagogues in operation. In 1897 the total population of Słonim was 72,5% Jewish, but many young people emigrated. After the rebirth of sovereign Poland at the end of the First World War, and according to Polish census of 1921, there were 6,917 Jews in the city. Ten years later, the Jewish population grew again to 8,605 or 64% of the rapidly expanding population of 16,251 with 4,899 Catholics. There were 10 new Jewish schools in Słonim, including the Yiddish high school.