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

Pre-1941: Vyritsa, town, Gatchina raion, Leningrad oblast’, RSFSR; 1941–1943: Wyritsa, Rear Area, Army Group North (rückwärtiges Heeresgebiet Nord); post-1991: Vyritsa, Russian Federation

Vyritsa is located 56 kilometers (35 miles) south-southeast of Leningrad. In 1926, there were 49 Jews living in Vyritsa, and in 1939, the census recorded 138 Jews, representing 1.2 percent of the total population of the town.¹

German forces of Army Group North captured the settlement on August 31, 1941, more than two months after Germany’s invasion of the USSR on June 22. During that time, some Jews were able to evacuate to the East, and the eligible males were required to report for military service in the Red Army. About one third of the pre-war Jewish population remained in Vyritsa at the start of the German occupation.

During the entire period of occupation, a German military Kommandantur ran the town. The German military administration formed a local council and a police force (Ordnungsdienst), staffed by local residents.

Soon after the occupation of the town, the German Kommandantur ordered the council to organize the registration and marking of the Jews, as well as their use for various types of heavy labor. In October or November 1941, all the remaining Jews in the settlement were rounded up and moved into a ghetto, for which a barn was allocated. This ghetto contained around 50 people. German security forces soon liquidated the [End Page 1836] ghetto, probably in November 1941, when all the Jews were shot in the forest outside the town.²