After several months of Nazi ad-hoc persecution that began after the launch of Operation Barbarossa, the invasion of the Soviet Union, the new German authorities officially created a ghetto for all local Jews on 22 February 1942.

Due to their efforts, several hundred residents were able to escape the final liquidation of the ghetto and form a camp in the forest until the end of the Nazi regime.

In 1939–1941 many Jewish refugees arrived in the town from western and central Poland which was attacked by Germany in the beginning of World War II.

Next morning, Mayor Henryk Poszwiński was arrested by the NKVD along with school principals, sołectwo council, gmina clerks and a local priest, and taken to prison in Nowogródek never to be heard from again.

On 14 July 1941, the German military commandant ordered that the Jews must wear the yellow badge on the front and back of their clothing under the threat of death.

The selection was carried out according to a list compiled by the collaborationist Belarusian Auxiliary Police (established on 7 July 1941)[5] for the use by the SS Einsatzkommando killing squad arriving in Zdzięcioł.

[citation needed] At the end of August 1941, Zdzięcioł was transferred to German civil administration and became part of the Nowogródek district (Gebietskommissariat).

Among its members were Alter Dvoretsky, Hirshl Benyamovitz, Jehuda Luski, Moshe Mendel Leizerovitz, Eli Novolenski, Dovid Senderovski, Faivel Epstein, Shaul Kaplinski, Rabbi Jitzhok Reicer and Berl Rabinovitz.

[2] On 22 February 1942 the authorities put up posters on the walls announcing that all Jews had to move into the new ghetto, which was set up around the synagogue and the Talmud Torah building within the streets of Łysogórska and Słonimska.

[2] In autumn 1941, before the ghetto was set up, Alter Dvoretsky formed a Jewish underground organization in the town, consisting of about sixty people.

Dvoretsky established links with the Jews living in the surrounding villages and also with a group of Red Army operatives, who were in the process of organizing Soviet partisan force in the area.

A number of other Jews were hiding in the dense Lipiczansky forest (Las Lipiczański) after fleeing from Zdzięcioł as well as from Żołudek (Zheludok in Russian), Belica (Belitsa), Kozlowszczyna, Dworzec and Nowogródek.

They accepted Jews from around Nowogródek, and coordinated all their activities with the Soviet partisans operating in the area, in particular with the Orlanski ("Borba") detachment under Nikolai Vakhonin, as well as, with the Lenin Brigade.

[6] "Platon" commanded more Soviet units locally including the Kirov Brigade under Sinichkin (and later, Vassiliev), who in turn gave orders to Bielski partisans.

Yisrael Bousel invented a new sort of improvised mine, which the Soviet partisans successfully used to derail German trains.

At the same time the Germans and their collaborators began to drive the Jews out of their houses, beating, kicking, and shooting those who were reluctant to obey.

About 1,200 of those sent to the right were marched along the streets to the Kurpiasz (Kurpyash) Forest on the southern edge of town, where some pits had been dug out in advance.

During the course of the final liquidation of the ghetto some 2,000–3,000 Jews were executed and buried in three mass graves in the Jewish cemetery on the southern outskirts of Zdzięcioł, roughly 1,000 people in each.

[2] Tuvia Bielski related a much larger number of bloody revenge killings of Belarusian families whose farms were later burned down.

However, "the fact that there are hundreds of survivors would indicate – wrote Yehuda Bauer – that there were a fairly large number of people willing to engage in rescue" of Jews also.

For example, a local Polish couple Jan and Józefa Jarmolowicz (Jarmolowitz), later awarded titles of Righteous among the Nations, hid five Jews for over a year on their farm.