[2][5] In July 1941, the Germans herded all the remaining Jews in the city into the ghetto, forcing them under threat of death to sew yellow patches in the shape of stars onto the front and back of their clothing.
Soon, over 1,000 Jews – both local and those driven from nearby villages such as Shereshevo, Khomski, Gutovo, and others – were crammed into the ghetto, living in dreadful overcrowding with 40-50 people per house.
By this time, the number of prisoners in the Drogichin ghetto had significantly decreased, as Jews whose professions were not urgently needed by the Germans, along with their wives and children, had been taken and killed at the extermination camp at Bronnaya Gora.
[7] Before the complete destruction of the ghetto, the remaining Drogichin Jews were mostly shot at night near the prison, in the cemetery area in the city center.
During these “actions” (a euphemism used by the Nazis for organized mass killings), the doomed people were tied together with barbed wire, shot, and their bodies thrown into pits.
Belarusian police under the command of SS officers, with dogs, drove the last prisoners of the ghetto, including elderly people and children, to the killing site.
In the 1970s, the mass grave of the Jews murdered in Drogichin was surrounded by a low concrete fence, and the inscription on the obelisk erected on it was changed.