8. Post-War Aftermath

At the end of the war, after the Red Army returned and conquered the area, the Christians of Kletsk put the criminals on trial. The accused admitted their crimes and witnesses strengthened the charges with regards to the Germans and their Belorussian and Lithuanian collaborators.

The murderer, Nikolai (Kolya) Zadalin, a local Belorussian, was caught and tried. Another murderer, a commander by the name of Goren, who was also involved in the murder of the Jews of Baranovich, was caught by Dr. Nerkonsky, a Jew from Baranovich who tracked down those who'd murdered the Jews of his town. He traced him to the town of Vrotslav, where he was put on trial and the sentence carried out -- death by hanging.

One of the chief murderers, Joseph Gornevich, was put on trial in Baranovich. He was one of the participants in the liquidation of the area' s ghettos: Baranovich, Horoditsch, Neshvizh, Stolptsy and Kletsk. He was sentenced to death and hanged in Vrotslav. [Source: A report from the N.K.V.D. on the trials of war criminals, Yad Vashem archive. And the newspaper ÒSlovy PolskyÓ, October 20, 1947. ]

A Summing Up

Shalom Cholovsky, one of the organizers of the resistance in the nearby town of Neshvizh, a partisan and Holocaust historian, in his explanation of the characteristics of ghetto life - the imprisonment, the tortures, the decrees, and the decree of "The Final Solution," emphasizes that it was "characteristic of the underground." And he continues: "I don't mean to say that every Jew in the ghetto was in the underground or was a fighter, but there is no denying that the way of life in the ghetto was all in all, like that of the underground. This is the truth in and of itself and not in comparison to other people of that time. When we uncover this Jewish world, we are shocked and excited by the human and Jewish strength, that they possessed. These many anonymous Jews were marked by great courage. " [Source: Shalom Cholovsky, The Jewish Battle in the ghettos and partisans, Periodical Moreshet, November 1990.]