[2] Two months later, at the end of April 1942, the mobile German death squad aided by the Lithuanian and the Belarusian Auxiliary Police battalions,[3] surrounded the ghetto and ordered all Jews to leave their houses to undergo a "selection".

[1][5][6] On February 22, 1942, the German authorities put up posters around town announcing that all Jews had to move into the new ghetto, which was set up around the synagogue and the Talmud Torah building.

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

[citation needed] 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 prepared in advance.

[3] During the course of the clearance of the ghetto, some 2,000[7] to 3,000 Jews were shot into three mass graves in the Jewish cemetery on the southern outskirts of Zdzięcioł, roughly 1,000 people in each.

[citation needed] Word spread among the Jews in the labor camps of Dworzec (Dworets), Nowogródek and other towns, about the Zhetel partisan detachment formed by the Soviets.