About Belarus

Articles dedicated to Belarus history, Belarus politics, Belarus economy, Belarus culture and other issues and Belarus tourist destinations.

Derechin, Western Belarus

Although it is a small village now, Derechin has a very interesting history.

Previously a borough and now a center of a rural area, Derechin is based on the Sipa River, 13 km to the north from Zelva. One of the oldest settlements in the area, it was first mentioned in the chronicles in the 15 century as a village that the Grand Duke of Lithuania Vitovt passed to D.Kopach as a reward for military services. A detailed inventory of the town and its real estate was created listing 430 residents and 62 households existing at the time.

Since 1537 Derechin belonged to Slonim poviat (according to Polish territorial division). Among its owners there were representatives of the Sangushko, Vishnevetski, Odintsevichy and Polubinski families. Â 1618 Konstantin Polubensky established the Church of Ascension and a Dominican monastery which ran a school, a library and a hospital. In 1690 a baroque stone church was built on its site. The Dominican monastery was closed down by the Russian authorities in 1832 and its buildings didn’t survive - we only know of them from the drawings of Napoleon Orda.

 

From 1685 and on the borough belonged to the Sapegis and became one of their main residences. In the 1750s Derechin had two streets, a market and 85 households. In 1786 Alexander Michal Sapega, then the Chancellor of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, had a one-floor masonry built to accommodate a military education establishment. In the early 19 century Frantishek Sapega rebuilt it into a palace and had a park laid out around it. Because of the man’s participation in the 1830-1831 rebellion the palace was confiscated and refitted into army barracks in the early 20 century. It was destroyed in the 1920s.

The first all-Russian census conducted in 1897 described Derechin as a borough by the road connecting Slonim and Mosty and numbering 320 households and 2529 residents. It also had a local administration office, a pharmacy, a stone church, a synagogue, three Jewish prayer houses, a mill, 45 shops, seven bakeries, two leather factories and several other small enterprises.

The Roman Catholic Church of Ascension was built in 1913 to replace the previous one that collapsed in fire in the late 19 century. It lived through tough times  being used as a warehouse in the Soviet times and then just closed down. In the late 1980s a French benefactor – Jean Kerchner - came over looking for the relatives of his wife who came from the area. He sponsored the restoration of the church which is now an operational Catholic temple.

In 1878 Derechin numbered 1725 Jews, in the 1920s – 1346. The last rabbi of the village was Bokalchuk. Derechin was occupied by the Nazi throughout 3 years – between 28 June 1941 and July 1944.

On-site occupation administration in Derechin was made up of several Nazi gendarmes and their 100-strong volunteer force recruited from the locals. Once in the village, the Nazi got down to exterminating the civilians, in the first line – Jews. The latter were placed into a ghetto located not far from the Catholic church. The place was so cramped that several families had to share a room.

The ghetto premises included a street and a lane surrounded by barbed wire. All Jews were to wear a six-point patch and even when outside the ghetto on permission, a Jew could not use a sidewalk.

All able-bodied ghetto prisoners of Derechin ghetto were to assemble at the judenrat at in the morning to get their labour assignments. Prisoners were extensively used as forced labourers fixing roads and doing other exhausting jobs getting a few hundred grams of lowest class bread in return. Their survival heavily depended on natural exchange – at nighttime locals brought food to the barbed wire. Humiliation and torture from the guards and insanitary living conditions in the ghetto resulted in daily loss of life.

 

Someone reported an escape plan organized by several Jews and they were executed. Some collaborators – polizei – who were trying to ease the pains of their prewar Jewish friends were also shot. In April 1942 a German execution squad killed 150 Jews of Derechin as a punishment for the successful escape of seven Jews. On 23-26 June, according to other accounts – 24 July 1942 Derechin ghetto was entirely surrounded and destroyed by a Nazi execution team consisting of 14 German gendarmes and 70 local policemen.

At dawn the collaborators started digging pits by the road behind the mill. After midday Jews were forced into a convoy and all of them – men, teenagers and women with the babies in their hands were escorted to the execution site with the chief of judenrat in the lead. People were forced to undress, split into groups and killed at the edge of the pit. This Aktion – the term used by the Nazi for such operations – claimed over 3000 lives of the Derechin Jews. Their property was then pillaged.

 

In spring 1943 a group of Jews escaped from Belostok ghetto moving eastwards. They were looking for partisans but got caught near Derechin and were killed by the Nazi collaborators.

The prisoners of the Derechin ghetto somehow learned about the oncoming destruction. Some Jews managed to break out of the ghetto to join the Bulak partisan team, named after it leader, a peasant from a nearby village. The Bulak partisans launched an assault on Derechin and having destroyed the police force kept the village under his control for the next month. Jews came to burn down their houses – since their relatives had been killed no one could use their property.

An independent partisan team headed by Yeheskel Atlas operated in the nearby forests. The core of the team consisted of 120 Jews who fled from Derechin ghetto.

Derechin Jewish survivors who took part in the partisan movement or who were saved by the locals emigrated from the USSR after the war. In total the period of the Nazi occupation saw the execution of 4100 Derechin Jews, an obelisk was installed to commemorate them in 1948. In 2013 another burial site was discovered with approximately 50 persons killed there during the war.

 

A few years ago the Sokolovsky family that originated from Derechin financed works to restore the Jewish cemetery of the village. Many macevos are in good condition and a visit is highly recommended. If you are looking to tour Derechin to trace your Belarusian family roots – I will be happy to handle the trip as your guide.