The Museum of Jewish Resistance is located in a former ghetto barrack on Minskaya Street in Novogrudok (Navahrudak), Belarus. Established in 2007, the exhibition tells the story of the most successful tunnel escape from a Nazi-controlled Jewish labor camp in occupied Europe and of the Bielski partisan detachment, later known as the Kalinin Unit.
On September 26, 1943, the last 232 surviving prisoners of the Novogrudok Ghetto escaped through a tunnel approximately 200 meters long. The tunnel had been secretly dug over a period of four months and became one of the most remarkable acts of resistance during the Holocaust.
The Labor Camp and Daily Life
The second Novogrudok Ghetto, organized as a closed labor camp, was established on August 6, 1942, by order of Gebietskommissar Wilhelm Traube on Korelichskaya Street (today Minskaya Street).
Initially, the camp held between 500 and 600 prisoners, primarily skilled craftsmen and their families, including approximately 300 women and 32 children. The prisoners themselves constructed three-tier wooden bunks in former provincial court workshops that had been converted into living quarters. Each room housed 20 to 25 people, leaving only about 65 centimeters of sleeping space per person.
The camp was completely enclosed. Prisoners worked in workshops located within the camp compound and were not permitted to leave its boundaries. There was no running water, heating, or electricity. Water had to be brought under guard from a well outside the camp and was barely sufficient for drinking and preparing a thin soup made from potato peels.
The daily ration consisted of a bowl of soup and 150 grams of bread. Following a mass execution on May 7, 1943, during which nearly half of the camp population was murdered, the bread ration was reduced to 125 grams per day.
Upon transfer from the original ghetto district, prisoners were forbidden, under threat of death, from bringing any personal belongings with them. Skilled furriers, carpenters, shoemakers, harness makers, tailors, and blacksmiths from Novogrudok and neighboring towns were assigned identification numbers that had to be worn on both the front and back of their clothing.
Every morning prisoners assembled for roll call before being sent to work. They produced uniforms, fur-lined garments, gloves, saddlery, boots, furniture, knitted goods, dresses, and other items for the German military administration and local population.
The camp was surrounded by a three-meter wooden fence and two rows of barbed wire. Guard towers equipped with machine guns stood at the corners, while a searchlight mounted on the former courthouse illuminated the camp at night. Twenty-four local auxiliary policemen guarded the camp around the clock.
The Tunnel and the Escape
Following the May 7, 1943 massacre, prisoners began constructing an escape tunnel. Starting beneath the bunks of one barrack, the tunnel extended approximately 200 meters underground at a depth of about one meter. Its height and width measured only 65–70 centimeters.
The entire operation was organized and supervised by Berl Yoselovich, a photographer from Novogrudok.
On the evening of September 26, 1943, the escape took place. A list prepared shortly before the breakout contained 223 names, although researchers have since identified 232 participants. Of those who escaped, 132 survived the war.
More than one hundred escapees successfully reached the forests near Stara Huta and eventually joined the Bielski partisan group, which had recently returned to the area following the German anti-partisan operation known as “Hermann.”