The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos, 1933-1945

Pre-1939: Soly, village, Wilno województwo, Poland; 1939–1941: Smorgon’ raion, Vileika oblast’, Belorussian SSR; 1941–1944: Soli, initially Rayon Smorgonie, Gebiet Wilejka, Generalkommissariat Weissruthenien, then from April 1, 1942, Kreis Aschmena, Gebiet Wilna-Land, Generalkommissariat Litauen; post-1991: Soly, Smarhon’ raen, Hrodna voblasts’, Republic of Belarus

Soly is located 16 kilometers (10 miles) northeast of Oszmiana and 66 kilometers (41 miles) southeast of Wilno. On the eve of World War II, there were 130 Jewish families living in Soly.

In accord with the terms of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, the Red Army entered Soly on September 17, 1939. Then German forces occupied the village on June 25, 1941. In July, a German military commandant’s office (Ortskommandantur) was in charge of Soly. In September, authority was transferred to a German civil administration. Initially Soly was in Rayon Smorgonie in Gebiet Wilejka, within Generalkommissariat Weissruthenien.

In the summer and fall of 1941, the German authorities implemented a series of anti-Jewish measures in Soly. They appointed a Jewish Council (Judenrat), headed by Michel Magid, and marked Jews with distinguishing badges in the form of a yellow Star of David. Jews were required to perform physical labor, and they were restricted to the limits of the village.

On July 12, 1941, German security forces conducted the first Aktion in Soly. They arrested 12 people, accused of being Soviet activists, and shot them.¹ In October, the Jews of the village were forced to move into a ghetto, which was located on the side streets and consisted of dilapidated buildings. The ghetto was soon enclosed by a wall with a gate, through which only forced laborers were permitted to exit if issued with passes, usually escorted by the Polish police. A small unit of Jewish Police guarded the gate on the inside. Jewish forced laborers worked on the railroad and on other tasks 10 to 12 hours per day. However, forced laborers did receive some pay or at least coupons that entitled them to food.²

In April 1942, the Germans transferred a strip of territory including most of Rayon Smorgonie from Generalkommissariat Weissruthenien to Gebiet Wilna-Land in Generalkommissariat Litauen. The Jews of Soly now feared for their lives, as the majority of the Jews in Lithuania had already been murdered. In the summer and fall of 1942, most of the young people in the Soly ghetto and other ghettos in the region were sent to various forced labor camps, including those in Žiežmariai, Kiena, and Biała Waka.

In October 1942, the German authorities in Generalkommissariat Litauen ordered the liquidation of the small ghettos in the region to the east of Wilno, concentrating their inhabitants in four ghettos: Oszmiana, Święciany, Michaliszki, and Soly. At this time there were reportedly 295 Jews living in Soly, of whom 160 were deployed for labor. The Gebietskommissar Wilna-Land, Horst Wulff, instructed the head of the Judenrat in Wilno, Jacob Gens, to organize the four new ghettos along the lines of the Wilno ghetto. Gens sent four teams of policemen and administrators to the ghettos. By the end of December 1942, a number of Jewish forced laborers from Soly had been transferred to the Wilno ghetto.³

In the fall of 1942, newcomers were registered by the Jewish Council. One child survivor, Morris Engelson, who was then aged seven, recalled that he went to school in the Soly ghetto, but the Jews there feared that the Germans might organize an Aktion to round up and kill remaining Jewish children. In response, youths lied about their age on registration, and Jews prepared hiding places, usually behind false walls in their apartments, teaching the children to run and hide at the first sign of danger.⁴

An underground resistance existed in Soly, and efforts were made to contact Soviet partisans, but these were sometimes rebuffed. Nevertheless, a report had reached the Wilno [End Page 1124] ghetto by early April 1943 that some Jews from the Soly ghetto had fled to the forests. For example, Morris Engelson and his family managed to flee the Soly ghetto with the aid of a peasant acquaintance in December 1942.⁵

In March 1943, the German authorities forbade the presence of Jews within 50 kilometers (31 miles) of the Generalkommissariat Litauen border with Generalkommissariat Weissruthenien. Therefore, the four remaining ghettos there had to be liquidated. Some of their inhabitants were relocated to Wilno and to the labor camps in Žiežmariai, Kiena, and other sites. Then in late March 1943, the Jews of Oszmiana and Michaliszki were brought to Soly. The Germans had informed Gens that these Jews, together with the remaining 700 Jews in the Soly ghetto, would be sent to the ghetto in Kaunas. Gens even traveled to Soly with the intention of accompanying the transport. In Soly, the Jews were taken to the local train station and put into freight cars with windows sealed by barbed wire. Previously loaded onto the train were Jews from Oszmiana and Michaliszki. However, en route Gens learned from a Polish railway worker that their true destination was the killing site of Ponary and that the Germans had deceived them. When the train made an intermediate stop, Gens and his men were sent back to Wilno and replaced by German Gendarmes and Polish policemen. At the Ponary station, the Jews were held overnight in the sealed cars. When the cars were opened at daybreak, they were led to the murder site and shot next to the death pits. On that day about 3,800 people were murdered, including at least 400 from Soly.⁶

By the time the area was liberated by the Red Army in the summer of 1944, only a few Jews from Soly remained alive. These were mostly young people who had escaped from labor camps and linked up with partisan units. No Jewish community was reestablished in Soly after the war.