Every year on January 27, the International Holocaust Remembrance Day is observed. It was officially established by the UN General Assembly resolution of November 1, 2005. The date was not chosen by chance – on this day in 1945, Soviet troops liberated Auschwitz, the largest Nazi concentration camp located in Poland. The liberation of the camp became one of the symbols of the end of the Nazi genocide, which affected not only the Jewish population but also other ethnic and social groups.

The Holocaust in Beshenkovichi District became part of the systematic persecution and extermination of the Jewish population by the occupational authorities of Nazi Germany and collaborators in 1941-1944 during World War II, as part of the "Final Solution to the Jewish Question" policy.

In July 1941, Beshenkovichi District was completely occupied by German troops, and the occupation lasted until the end of June 1944. To implement the genocide policy and carry out punitive operations, punitive units of the SS troops, Einsatzgruppen, Sonderkommandos, the secret field police, the security police and SD, the gendarmerie, and the Gestapo arrived in the district immediately after the troops. From the very first days, the Germans began to separate Jews from other residents and kill them. Similar "actions" were repeated many times in many places. In those settlements where Jews were not killed immediately, they were kept in ghetto conditions until their complete extermination.

Under threat of death, the occupation authorities prohibited Jews from removing yellow armbands or six-pointed stars (identification marks on outerwear), leaving the ghetto without special permission, changing their place of residence and apartment within the ghetto, walking on sidewalks, using public transport, being in parks and public places, and attending schools. District administrations and police garrisons of collaborators were established in all major villages. Before the autumn of 1941, elders were appointed in all settlements of the district. During the occupation, almost all Jews in the Beshenkovichi district were killed, and the few who survived mostly fought in partisan detachments afterwards.

The Germans, implementing the Nazi program for the extermination of Jews, created 4 ghettos in the district. In the ghetto in Beshenkovichi (summer 1941 – February 1943), about 2900 Jews were killed. In the ghetto in Sloboda (early August 1941 – October 1942), about 400 Jews were tortured and killed. In the ghetto in Ostrovno (July 19, 1941 – September 30, 1941) – more than 300. Hundreds of Jews were also killed in the ghetto in Ulla (December 1941 – autumn 1942).

Among Belarusians, there were many who, risking their own lives, saved Jews during the Holocaust. In the Beshenkovichi district, "as a sign of the deepest gratitude for the help rendered to the Jewish people during World War II" – for saving the Nemtsov family in Beshenkovichi – two people were awarded the honorary title of "Righteous Among the Nations" by the Israeli Memorial Museum of the Catastrophe and Heroism of the Jewish People "Yad Vashem": Nikolai Illarionovich Peregud and his wife Anna.
During the occupation, 95 percent of the Jewish population perished in our region. Monuments to the murdered have been erected in Beshenkovichi, Sloboda, Ostrovno, and Ulla. Mass graves of war victims serve as a grim reminder of the Holocaust. In the town of Beshenkovichi, on the right bank of the Western Dvina River, 1,068 Jews are buried. In the agro-town of Ostrovno (near the road to Plissy), 300 people rest in a mass grave. In the agro-town of Ulla, within the territory of the former pioneer camp, there are 385.

A solemn reburial of the remains of civilians from the village of Sloboda, Ulla rural council, who were shot by German-fascist invaders during the Great Patriotic War in the "Lis'i nory" tract in 1942, took place in Ulla in November 2022. They were discovered in August 2022 by servicemen of the 52nd Specialized Search Battalion. Forensic examination results indicated that the discovered remains belong to at least 65 people, the majority of whom were women and children. All bodies were found in the execution pit in several rows. Among the remains, personal belongings of the buried were found and recovered: fragments of shoes, combs, buttons, as well as shell casings from the executioners' weapons. Many shell casings from German rifles were marked with stamps from 1938 and the SS emblem, consisting of two characteristic lightning bolts.

There can be no forgetting...
Belarus preserves the memory of its people's heroic past and defends historical truth. We remember everyone. Since 2021, a large-scale investigation into the criminal case of the genocide of the Belarusian people during the Great Patriotic War, initiated by the Prosecutor General's Office of Belarus, has been ongoing, with its results regularly updated.
According to official statements, during the occupation, approximately 600 death camps operated on Belarusian soil (105 of them in Vitebsk region), nearly 13,000 villages and towns were burned down, and more than three million people were ruthlessly killed. And the final chapter in this grim statistic has yet to be written.

The Holocaust is a tragedy and pain of the Belarusian land, an unhealed wound of history. Our country sacredly honors the memory of the innocently killed, preserves historical truth, passing it down from generation to generation. Educators tell the younger generation about the genocide of the Belarusian people during the Great Patriotic War in lessons and extracurricular activities. Cultural workers hold events dedicated to the International Day of Commemoration of the Victims of the Holocaust.

Lessons of memory "The Holocaust - memory of generations," for example, were prepared by librarians of the Verkhovskaya rural library and the Bocheykovskaya rural library named