Pin made in Belarus. The text on the pin reads:”Vawkavysk”. Vawkavysk or Volkovysk is a town in Grodno Region, Belarus, and the administrative center of Vawkavysk District. Its population is estimated at 43,826 inhabitants. It is one of the oldest towns in the region. Vawkavysk was occupied by the German Army on 28 June 1941. At that time, about 7,000 Jews lived in the town, around 40 percent of the population. Around 1,000 people, mostly but not entirely Jews, were killed in the Luftwaffe bombardment of the town.
Upon arrival, the Germans, with some assistance by local Poles and Belarusians, murdered several dozen Jews within the first week; another 200 were murdered in mid July, mostly business and professional men along with those who had handicaps. That summer, the Germans established a ghetto, forcing the town’s Jewish population into it. Five to ten families lived in each residence. The Germans conscripted Jews for forced labor of demolishing buildings and constructing new ones.
The ghetto became a transit ghetto for Jews of Kreis Wolkowysk. About 20,000 Jews passed through it; most were sent on to Treblinka where they were immediately murdered. Others died in the ghetto from typhus or starvation. About 70 Jews of the original 7,000 Jewish residents survived the war. Some of the survivors had fled to the Soviet Union at the beginning of the war; others fought in the forests as partisans and a few survived Auschwitz.