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Grodno Ghetto was created by Nazi Germans in November 1941, in the city of Hrodna (Grodno), which was part of the Second Polish Republic until the Soviet invasion of Poland, and subsequently incorporated by the Soviets into the Belarusian SSR. Hrodna (German: Garten) was annexed by the Nazis to the Bezirk Bialystok district of East Prussia in the aftermath of the German attack on the Soviet Union.
The Ghetto consisted of two interconnected units about 2 km apart.
(1) The Ghetto One was established in the Old Town district, around the synagogue (Shulhoif), with some 15,000 Jews crammed into an area less than half a square km.
(2) The Ghetto Two was created in the Slobodka suburb, with around 10,000 Jews incarcerated in it. Ghetto Two was larger than the main ghetto but far more ruined.
The reason for the split was determined by the concentration of Jews within the city and less need to transfer them from place to place. Their situation however, had considerably worsened with the ghettos' locations highly inadequate in terms of sanitation, water and electricity.
The separation of the ghettos would later enable the Germans to exterminate their population with greater ease. The larger ghetto was liquidated a year-and-a-half after its establishment, and the smaller one a few months earlier.