The Holocaust in Pochep, a small town in the Bryansk region of Russia, is one of the tragic episodes of World War II on the Eastern Front.
In 1941, during the Nazi occupation of Pochep, two detention camps for Jews were established — one for men and one for women. In March 1942, the prisoners were executed in a mass shooting in an anti-tank ditch on the outskirts of the town. More than 1,800 Jews were killed in Pochep during this action.
In the 1960s, a memorial was erected at the execution site. Over time, it fell into disrepair.
In 2018, a renewed Holocaust memorial in Pochep was opened. It includes panels with the names of identified victims. The reconstruction was initiated by Olesya Petrovskaya, director of Rechitsa Secondary School, with the support of Yad Vashem. Over several years, research was carried out to recover the names of Jews killed in Pochep in 1942.
Today, 1,174 names are inscribed on the memorial. The list of Holocaust victims in Pochep continues to grow as new information is discovered.