Dunilovichi. The Jewish cemetery.

There is an assumption that the name of the town of Dunilovichi comes from a personal name, until 1897 it was Danilovichi. According to another version, it comes from the Latvian dunaksts (swampy place).

Jews settled in Dunilovichi in the 16th century and their numbers have been constantly increasing from century to century in these places. They were forbidden to live in rural areas, and Dunilovichi was one of those places where it was allowed. There is information about the 1897 census. The town had 1,810 inhabitants, of whom 1,553 were Jews. The main lands of these places belonged to Count Tyshkevich. Information about Jewish life in Dunilovichi can be found in archives today, but the national memory has moved abroad. It is kept by the descendants of Jews from Dunilovich in Israel, the USA, Argentina, Australia, Poland, Germany. They are more interested in the Dunilovichi's past than the locals.

The Jewish cemetery is located in a picturesque location and is located on a steep hill. There is a river below, a machine yard fenced off by an old fence, and horses in the yard. The old Jewish monuments look at the new Catholic ones, located in another cemetery, across the street. Crosses and ancient matzevas with six-pointed stars and menorahs look at each other.

The oldest burials in the Jewish cemetery date back to the 1770s, and the latest to the 1950s. By now, the cemetery has a perimeter of 450 meters.

The cemetery is in a neglected state. Of the several thousand mats, only 369 have survived, and the inscriptions on many of them are no longer legible. Very rarely, descendants of natives of Dunilovich, with the help of the Jewish Religious Association of Belarus, clean and clear the cemetery, lift fallen tombstones. Two crypts through which young birch trees sprout, four matzo (tombstones) placed on the graves of Cohens (Jewish priests). Above the epitaph are palms with fingers spread.

Jews from other countries come to Dunilovichi, bring their children and grandchildren, and tell them about their lives. They come to pray, put stones at the monuments, sit and leave. Jews don't live here anymore.

Ruderman, who erected the first monument to Jews in the 50s, went first to Poland and from there to the USA. Before leaving, he said, "This is my homeland, but you can't live your whole life in a cemetery."

The locals are not interested in the past of their fellow Jews, and probably do not know that more than a thousand local Jews died in the Dunilovichi ghetto. When you are in this place, sad thoughts do not leave you: after all, this is all that remains of the people who were born here, lived, loved, suffered, created...