Białystok Ghetto The Białystok Ghetto ( ) was a World War II Jewish ghetto set up by Nazi Germany between July 26 and early August 1941 in the newly formed capital of Bezirk Bialystok district of German - occupied Poland . About 50 , 000 Jews from the vicinity of Białystok and the surrounding region were herded into a small area of the city . The ghetto was split in two by the Biala River running through it " ( see map ) " . Most inmates were put to work in the forced - labor enterprises , primarily in large textile factories established within its boundaries . The ghetto was liquidated in November 1943 as soon as the courageous Białystok Ghetto Uprising was extinguished . All its inhabitants were either killed locally or transported in cattle trucks to the Majdanek and Treblinka extermination camp . Ghetto history . The city of Białystok was overrun by the Wehrmacht on September 15 , 1939 , and a week later ceded to the invading Red Army in accordance with Molotov – Ribbentrop Pact . On September 27 , 1939 , it was annexed by the Soviet Union following mock elections . According to the terms of the German - Soviet Pact signed earlier in Moscow , Białystok remained in Soviet hands until June 1941 , assigned to the Belorussian Soviet Socialist Republic . Thousands of Jews flocked to the city from German - occupied Poland . Mass deportations to Siberia by the NKVD followed . The German army entered the Soviet occupation zone on June 22 , 1941 under the codename Operation Barbarossa and took over the city within days . On June 28 , 1941 the Great Synagogue was set on fire with 800 to 1 , 000 Jews locked in it , and burned down . The so - called " Red Friday " took the lives of up to 5 , 000 Jewish victims – a harbinger of things to come . Himmler visited Białystok on June 30 , 1941 during the formation of the new Bezirk district and pronounced that there is a high risk of Soviet guerrilla activity in the area , with Jews being of course immediately suspected of helping them out . The mission to destroy the alleged NKVD collaborators was assigned to " Einsatzgruppe B " under the command of SS - Gruppenführer Arthur Nebe aided by " Kommando SS Zichenau - Schroettersburg " under Hermann Schaper and " Kommando Bialystok " led by Wolfgang Birkner summoned from the General Government on orders from the Reich Main Security Office . In the early days of the German occupation , these mobile killing units rounded up and killed thousands of Jews in and around Białystok , before and after the creation of the actual Ghetto with up to 60 , 000 Jewish prisoners in it . Textile and armament factories were established with the help of Judenrat , along with soup kitchen , first aid site and other amenities . Food rations were strictly enforced . On February 5 – 12 , 1943 , the first group of approximately 10 , 000 Białystok Jews were sent to their deaths in cattle trucks at the Treblinka extermination camp . Up to 2 , 000 victims were shot on the spot for insubordination among those too weak or sick to run for the wagons . Approximately 7 , 600 inmates were put in a new central transit camp within the city for their further selection . Those fit to work were sent to the Majdanek camp . In Majdanek , after another screening for ability to work , they were transported to the Poniatowa concentration camp , Blizyn , as well as Auschwitz labor and extermination camp . Those deemed too weak to work were murdered at Majdanek . More than 1 , 000 Jewish children were sent first to the Theresienstadt ghetto in Bohemia , and then to Auschwitz - Birkenau , where they were killed . Only a few months later , as part of Aktion Reinhard , on August 16 , 1943 the ghetto was raided by regiments of the German SS with Ukrainian , Estonian , Latvian and Belorussian auxiliaries ( " Hivis " , a . k . a . Trawniki - men ) aiming at the ghetto ' s final destruction . Faced with the final deportations , when all hope for survival was abandoned , the ghetto underground staged an uprising against the Germans . In the night of August 16 , 1943 , several hundred Polish Jews began an armed insurrection against the troops carrying out the liquidation of the Ghetto . " The blockade of the ghetto lasted one full month and on the 15th of September 1943 , after the last of the flames of resistance had been extinguished , the SS units retreated , " and the final stage of mass deportations commenced , wrote Szymon Datner , a Holocaust survivor . Only about one hundred Jews managed to escape and join various partisan groups in the Białystok area including Soviet . The Red Army liberated Białystok in August 1944 .