Skidzyel’

Skidzyel’
Скідзель

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Skidzyel’
Coordinates: 53°35′00″N 24°15′00″E / 53.58333°N 24.25000°E
Country  Belarus
Voblast Grodno Region
Raion Hrodna district
Population (2009)
 • Total 10,869
Time zone EET (UTC+2)
 • Summer (DST) EEST (UTC+3)
Postal code 231761
Area code(s) +375 152
License plate 4

Skidzyel’ (Belarusian: Скідзель, also Скідаль, Skidal’; Polish: Skidel; Russian: Скидель) is a town in the Grodno Region of Belarus located 31 kilometers from Grodno.

Overview

Skidzyel is sometimes referred to as the former shtetl due to a high number of Jewish people living there before the Holocaust. In the course of the 1939 Soviet invasion of Poland the village, located in Nowogródek Voivodeship of the Second Polish Republic, was the site of a pro-Soviet communist revolt against the Polish government leading to massacre of ethnic Poles by killing squads representing the delegalized Communist Party of Western Belarus armed with Soviet guns soon before the invasion. The events are sometimes referred to as the 'Skidal uprising'.[1]

After World War II, the Grodno headquarters of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union was located in Skidal until the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.

References

  1. ↑ Marek Wierzbicki, Institute of National Remembrance (2007). "Western Belarus in September 1939 – Polish-Jewish Relations in the kresy". Shared History, Divided Memory: Jews and Others in Soviet-occupied Poland, 1939-1941 by Elazar Barkan, Elizabeth A. Cole, Kai Struve. Leipziger Universitätsverlag. pp. 138–140. ISBN 3865832407. Retrieved December 13, 2012.

Coordinates: 53°35′10″N 24°15′07″E / 53.58611°N 24.25194°E