The Untold Stories. The Murder Sites of the Jews in the Occupied Territories of the Former USSR

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Community:

Chashniki

Murder Sites:

Trilesino

Commemoration:

Commemoration of Jewish Victims

Memorial ceremony marking the dedication of the monument, 1970s
Courtesy the Mishpokha journal (Vitebsk)

Inscription on the monument in Chashniki
Courtesy Arkadi Shulman

Immediately following the end of the war, a red brick monument, made by one of the local Jews, was erected at the site where the Jews of Chashniki were murdered. In the 1970s, Jews who had lived in Chashniki collected money to erect a larger monument in place of the original one. This initiative was supported by the local authorities, although they requested that the inscription on the monument be written in Russian and not in Yiddish, and that the number of victims include all those murdered in the vicinity, not just Jews.
The monument bears the following inscription in Russian: “The memory of the Soviet citizens of the victims of the Fascism will never fade.”
Every year, on the last Sunday in May, the relatives and survivors held an annual commemorative reunion in Chashniki. The Soviet authorities did not hinder these reunions.

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