Sapotskin became one of the centers of the Polish minority in Belarus. It is the only town in Belarus where the Polish population, consisting of the majority, is allowed to use bilingual street signs.
In September 1939, Sapotskin was occupied by the Red Army and, on 14 November 1939, incorporated into the Byelorussian SSR. The area became part of the Belastok Region of the Byelorussian SSR, with Sapotskin as a regional centre.
On 22 June 1941, the Germans invaded the Soviet Union and set fire to Sapotskin. The Jewish population at that time was around 1300, and the Germans ordered them to dig mass graves and bury the hundreds of dead from the shelling and fire, both Jewish and non-Jewish. The Germans then asked local Poles to identify Jewish collaborators with the Soviet occupation. The Poles gave them a long list, some of whom had nothing to do with the Soviet regime, including the local rabbi and other community leaders, and those Jews were executed. After that, surviving Jews were confined to a seriously overcrowded and unsanitary ghetto. Those conditions, plus the lack of clean water, led to an outbreak of cholera. In 1942, many Jewish men were sent to labor camps, older and sick Jews were sent to an unknown place and executed, and in November, those remaining were taken to the Kielbasin transit camp. From there, about a month later, they were sent to the Grodno ghetto and then, in January 1943, to Auschwitz where almost all were murdered. Only a few Sapotskin Jews survived the Holocaust, including those protected by the Falejczyk and Bykowski families who were later named by Yad Vashem as Righteous Among the Nations.[3]
A memorial book[4] about the town's Jewish shtetl was translated into English.[5]
During the German occupation, Sapotskin was administered as a part of Bezirk Bialystok. Sapotskin was liberated by the Red Army on 18 July 1944. The town became a regional centre of Grodno Region.
Old photographs of the town have been collected.[6]
Notables
Sapotskin is the death place of Gen. Józef Olszyna-Wilczyński and his adjutant, murdered by Soviet soldiers
Jaroslav Romanchuk, a Belarusian economist and 2010 presidential candidate, was born in Sapotskin
Attractions
Burial mound (10-11 cent.) - archaeological monument, on the western outskirts
Church of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary (early 20th Century)
Megargee, Geoffrey (2012). Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos. Bloomington, Indiana: University of Indiana Press. p.Volume II,959–961. ISBN978-0-253-35599-7.
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