The Old Staircase

According to legend, this staircase was built during the German occupation of Grodno during the Second World War.

The path we are walking along once led from Ghetto No. 1. Between 1941 and 1943 there were two ghettos in Grodno, where more than 25,000 Jews were forced to live — almost half of the city’s pre-war population.

It is believed that the Germans forced Jewish prisoners to build this staircase using stone gravestones, or matzevot, taken from the old Jewish cemetery on the left bank of the Gorodnichanka.

This historic cemetery existed until the 1950s and was located roughly where today’s parking area on Bolshaya Troitskaya Street stands.