In the first half of October 1942, the Gestapo was given secret orders to liquidate the ghettos in Bialystok and other localities in the district. Because military and economic leaders were afraid to paralyze munitions industries in the area, the decree was made conditional on its impact on these industries. Thus, the population of the Bialystok Ghetto was to be reduced and all other Jews in the district were to be evacuated in the manner stipulated in the original order. On November 2, 1942, with the help of the local Gendarmerie, all ghettos in the district were suddenly encircled and quarantined. Within a few days, the Germans assembled the Jews in town squares, loaded them on wagons, and transported them to five concentration points and thence to the extermination camps. Concurrently, control of the Bialystok Ghetto was removed from civilian auspices and handed to the SS.
Between November 1942 and February 1943, approximately 100,000 Jews in the Bialystok district, including some 10,000 from Bialystok proper, were sent to the Treblinka and Auschwitz death camps. The final liquidation of the Bialystok Ghetto took place in August 1943, when the remaining 30,000 Jews there were sent to extermination. It was then, too, that the Bialystok Ghetto uprising erupted.
