Part 1 of a series dedicated to the 80th anniversary of the escape from the ghetto in Novogrudok, Belarus.

On September 26, 1943, the last 234 Jews remaining in the Novogrudok ghetto set themselves free. The city remained under Nazi occupation for another 8 months, and yet this handful of Jews did the impossible, something they did not believe in, yet they did it. They were confined in a ghetto of a closed type. They were the only living Jews in the city, dirty, hungry, humiliated at every step, but with a strong will to live. They grasped their only chance to survive and succeeded. It took them four months of incredible effort to dig a tunnel out of the living barracks.

Fifty-four years after the escape, the tunnel was discovered, and in 2007, the Jewish Resistance Memorial Museum was established at the site of the ghetto in Novogrudok.

Who were they? Why was it possible in Novogrudok?

Tamara Vershitskaya, founder of the Museum and an expert on Jewish heritage at The Together Plan, will try to explore the phenomenon of Novogrudok Jews, answer these and many other questions about the longest ghetto escape tunnel ever built  during the Nazi occupation and the most successful escape during World War II.

Join us for part 2 of the series on 30 April 2023