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Zamkovaya Street in Minsk

According to one testimony, in early 1943 German soldiers set fire to several buildings on Zamkovaya Street, in the eastern section of the ghetto, and shot anyone trying to flee the burning houses.

More information: Yad Vashem

Dzerzhinsk-Stankovo Railway Line

In March 1942 1,300 Jews, apparently brought from Minsk, were murdered about two kilometers from the Dzerzhinsk railway station, west of Stankovo, 50 meters to the left of the tracks, not far from Ryabinovka village. Brunno Mittmann, head of the local police station, supervised the operation.

The victims were taken to the site in railway cars, carts, and trucks. There were ten pits, already prepared by prisoners of war. The victims were forced to undress, taken up to the pits, and shot to death. The murders were carried out by Finns, Lithuanians, Germans, and members of the local police. After the murder the victims’ clothes were collected and put into a storehouse.

Numerous murders took place at the site from the fall of 1941 until the spring of 1942. It is impossible to determine the exact number of Jews killed since, after the first group was shot, acid was poured over the bodies -- both to destroy them and to create more room for the next group of victims. According to reports of the Extraordinary State Commission, the pits had enough room for [only] 10,541 bodies. However, local testimonies state that between 13,000 and 15,000 people from the area, including many Jews, were murdered there.

The witnesses mention the same number of victims for the town of Ryzhovka, close to Dzerzhinsk. However, this may [be an error and] refer to the same town [i.e., Dzerzhinsk].

More information: Yad Vashem

Drozdy

In early July 1941, the entire male population of Minsk, including Jews, was interned at a civilian camp in the town of Drozdy, north of the city (today, it lies within the limits of the city, in its northern section). The camp was situated on the grounds of the former Nadezhda Krupskaya collective farm. After about two weeks, the camp authorities separated the Jews from the non-Jews. Members of Einsatzgruppe B, together with officers of the secret military police, combed through the camp in search of Jews, Communists, and Soviet government officials. Afterward, about 1,000 Jews were driven by truck to a nearby water supply ditch, where they were shot. Between July 14-16, 1941, several hundred members of the Jewish intelligentsia were removed from the camp and shot at the same location. These massacres were carried out by members of Sonderkommando 7a and 7b, and Einsatzkommando 8 (all belonging to Einsatzgruppe B); officers of the secret field police, and a squad from the Warsaw security police station.
According to some testimonies, some inmates of the Minsk Ghetto were taken by truck to be shot at the town of Drozdy during a mass-killing operation on March 2, 1942.

More information: Yad Vashem

Zelyonyi Lug

On August 31, 1941, a German squad, consisting of members of the 7th Company of the 322nd Order Police Battalion, the National Socialist Motor Corps, and the Security Police, rounded up several hundred Jewish men of military age, as well as about 60 women, and took them all to a Minsk prison. The next day, all the prisoners, together with some other Jews (a total of about 1,000 individuals), were taken, some on foot and some by truck, to an area near the town of Zelyonyi Lug (which has since become a neighborhood in Minsk, but retains its old name), about 10 km east of the city, near the Minsk-Smolensk-Moscow highway. There, the victims were forced to lie face down in pits and then shot in the back of the head by members of the Security Police and of the 9th Company of the 322nd Order Police Battalion.

More information: Yad Vashem

Kolodishchi Military Barracks

On August 15, 1941, during an inspection of the Novinki Mental Asylum north of Minsk, SS-Reichsfuehrer Heinrich Himmler assigned Arthur Nebe, the commander of Einsatzgruppe B, to devise a "more humane" killing method, to "put the asylum patients out of their misery." Afterward, the mental patients from Novinki and other Minsk hospitals became "guinea pigs" for the testing of these new killing methods. Thus, in mid-September 1941, a group of Jewish mental patients from the 1st Minsk Clinical Hospital, numbering between several dozen (according to postwar German trials) and several hundred, were taken by truck to the military barracks at the town of Kolodishchi, about 15 km east of Minsk, forced into dug-outs, and killed with explosives.

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Novinki Mental Asylum

On August 15, 1941, during an inspection of the Novinki mental asylum 15 km north of Minsk, SS-Reichsfuehrer Heinrich Himmler assigned Arthur Nebe, commander of Einsatzgruppe B, to devise a more "humane" killing method to "put the asylum patients out of their misery." Thereupon, the facility became a testing ground for new murder techniques. Thus, on September 18, 1941, German policemen forced about 120 (or about 250, according to one testimony) patients, including Jews, into the asylum's bathhouse, which had been turned into a gas chamber, and gassed them to death. On September 19, 1941, an additional 80 patients, including Jewish ones, were shot – apparently, in the area of the asylum.

More information: Yad Vashem

Tuchinka NKVD Penal Colony

In late October-early November 1941, Jewish deportees from Germany and the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia (the German-occupied Czech territory) were expected to arrive in Minsk. To make room for them, the German authorities decided to cull the population of the Minsk Ghetto. On November 7, 1941, German order and security policemen and auxiliaries surrounded part of the territory of the ghetto and rounded up in Jubilee Square, in the center of the ghetto, all those Jews deemed unfit for work. Those assembled were lined up, given red placards and banners, and led along Opanski (now Kalvariya) Street in a mock procession marking the anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution. After marching for some time, the victims were loaded onto trucks and driven to the former 6th Penal Colony of the NKVD (the present-day Kaskad condominium) in Tuchinka, an eastern suburb of the city (the present-day Kaskad neighborhood). Here, the victims were held in overcrowded conditions for several days, either inside the barracks or in the open air. Afterward, some of them were shot at nearby pits by members of Sonderkommando 1b of Einsatzgruppe A and by men of the 46th Ukrainian Auxiliary Police Battalion, while the rest were shot at the quarries further south. According to various documents, this mass-killing operation claimed the lives of several thousand people.

More information: Yad Vashem

Tuchinka Brick Factory

On November 7, 1941, approximately 6,500 inmates of the Minsk Ghetto were taken to Tuchinka, an eastern suburb of Minsk. They were then held for several days in the area of the former 6th Penal Colony of the NKVD. Afterward, some of them were taken about 1.5-2 km south, to brick quarries located north and south of the present-day Kharkov Street. There, they were shot by members of Sonderkommando 1b of Einsatzgruppe A and by men of the 46th, 47th, and 48th Ukrainian auxiliary police battalions.
On November 20, 1941, a group of Jewish inmates of the southern part of the ghetto, between the Zamchishe neighborhood and Obuvnaya Street, were apparently taken to the same site and shot by the same perpetrators. According to survivors' testimonies, this group numbered about 5,000.

More information: Yad Vashem

Uruchye Forest

In early December 1941, approximately 2,000 Jews of all ages and both sexes were rounded up by members of Sonderkommando 1b of Einsatzgruppe A and Latvian auxiliary policemen, loaded onto trucks, and driven 9 km eastward along the Minsk-Moscow highway, to the Uruchye area (which is now part of Minsk). The victims were taken to a forest tract between the roads leading to Moscow and Rakov. Here, in the area of the former Soviet military barracks near the town of Kopishche and the Karniz Boloto farmstead, the victims were shot over pits dug in advance. According to Soviet reports, the shootings of "peaceful civilians," mostly Jews, continued at this site throughout 1941-1943.

More information: Yad Vashem

Tatar Suburb in Minsk

According to testimonies, some of the Jewish victims of the mass-killing action of November 7, 1941 were shot inside the ghetto, in the area known as the Tatar Kitchen Garden or the Tatar Suburb, which was located in the northeastern section of the ghetto, close to the Nemiga River.

More information: Yad Vashem

Dzerzhinsk-Stankovo Railway Line

On March 1, 1942, the Judenrat of the Minsk Ghetto was ordered to provide 5,000 Jews who were not working for the Germans. After being warned by Judenrat members, no Jews appeared. On either the same day or the next day, German security and order policemen, together with Lithuanian and Belarusian auxiliary policemen, entered the ghetto, forced the people out of their homes, loaded them onto a freight train, and took them in a southwesterly direction, toward Dzerzhinsk (Koydanov), about 40 km from Minsk. On the next day, the train stopped between Dzerzhinsk and Stankovo, a locality about 10 km south of Dzerzhinsk. The Jews were taken to a pit that had been dug in advance and shot in the back of the heads by German security and Latvian auxiliary policemen. According to the testimonies of Jewish survivors of the Minsk Ghetto, the train carrying the victims to Dzerzhinsk departed on March 2, 1942, and the victims were members of the working columns who had been caught on their way back from work to the ghetto.

More information: Yad Vashem

Yama

According to numerous testimonies, in the course of the mass-murder operation carried out in early March 1942, some ghetto inmates were shot at a sand quarry on the ghetto's northern outskirts, near Ratomskaya (present-day Melnikayte) Street, known popularly as Yama (the pit). According to the inscription on the monument erected on the site after the war, the total number of victims murdered at Yama was 5,000, although this number certainly includes Jews who were shot elsewhere in the ghetto during the March 2 massacre and taken there to be buried.

More information: Yad Vashem

Masyukovshchina

According to one testimony, in December 1941 (probably during the mass-murder operation of early December 1941) an unidentified group of several thousand Jews of all ages and both sexes were taken to Masyukovshchina, an area northwest of Minsk (now part of Minsk), and shot near the site known as Petrashkevichi, or Petrashkevich's Farmstead, in the vicinity of the 352nd Soviet POW Base Camp. According to testimonies gathered by East German investigation offices and cited by the German historian Christian Gerlach, as well as the postwar testimony of the former commander of the Order Police in the General Commissariat of White Ruthenia (who, however, erroneously identified Drozdy as the killing site), some Jews from the ghetto were also taken to this site during the massacre of March 2-3, 1942, and shot there. Furthermore, according to the materials of the postwar German judicial proceedings cited by Christian Gerlach, the Nazis also used Petrashkevich's Farmstead as a killing site during the large-scale massacre of July 28-31, 1942. The victims were both local and foreign Jews.

More information: Yad Vashem

Jubilee Square in Minsk

According to testimonies, on March 2, 1942, a large group of Jews was gathered in Jubilee Square in the middle of the ghetto (nowadays, this area is a park bounded by Melnikayte, Romanovskaya Sloboda, and Rakov Streets), near the Judenrat offices and the ghetto's labor exchange. When some of the assembled had been sent off to work, German security and local auxiliary policemen machine-gunned the remaining ones, as well as other Jews brought there subsequently. The exact number of victims of this massacre is unknown. Jubilee Square was also the site of public executions of ghetto inmates accused of various transgressions. Thus, according to one testimony, on an unspecified date (apparently, in 1942), a group of about a dozen Jewish women, who worked as cleaners at the "October" textile factory outside the ghetto, were taken there and publicly shot, having been accused by the German authorities of neglecting their work. According to another testimony, a different group of approximately 15 Jewish women were publicly shot in Jubilee Square on an unspecified date, for alleged ties with the partisans.

More information: Yad Vashem

Minsk Jewish Cemetery

According to a single testimony, on February 23, 1942 several thousand inmates of the Minsk Ghetto were taken to the old Jewish cemetery, which was located in the western part of the ghetto, at the intersection of the present-day Sukhaya and Kollektornaya Streets, and were shot there. According to multiple testimonies, the Jewish cemetery was used as a killing site of ghetto inmates throughout the ghetto's existence. Large and small groups of Jews would be taken to several pits that had been dug there and shot. One such massacre took place in the summer of 1943, when SS-Hauptscharfuehrer Adolf Ruebe, the official at the Security Police office who was responsible for the Minsk Ghetto, personally shot a group of 10-15 young Czech Jewish women, who had been accused of failing to wear yellow badges at their workplace.

More information: Yad Vashem

Wallpaper Factory in Minsk

According to one testimony, during the mass-murder operation of early March 1942, several hundred Jewish women and children were collected in the courtyard of the wallpaper factory in Shpalernaya Street in the center of the ghetto. There, they were subjected to abuse, and then shot.

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Zaslavskaya Street in Minsk

According to one testimony, on the evening of March 2, 1942 – the first day of the large-scale murder operation in the Minsk Ghetto – Oberfelwebel Richter, the commander of the German police station responsible for the ghetto, ordered approximately 50 inmates to be herded into a house located between Zaslavskaya and Tankovaya Streets, which was then set on fire. Those trying to flee the burning building were shot.

More information: Yad Vashem

8th Kilometer Military Barracks (Gas Vans)

Following the Wannsee Conference (January 1942) and the visit of Reinhard Heydrich, director of the Reich Main Security Office, to Minsk in April 1942, the German authorities decided to resume the deportations of German, Czech, and Polish Jews, which had been halted in late 1941, and to murder the majority of deportees immediately upon their arrival. The deportation trains were directed to the Minsk freight train station – and from there, via Kolodishchi, to the Maly Trostenets area. According to one testimony, in the summer of 1942 the deportees who had arrived on at least one such train were taken, either by truck or by gas van, to the vicinity of the abandoned military barracks at the 8th kilometer along the Minsk-Mogilev highway, about 20 km west of Kolodishchi, and were either shot or gassed to death.

More information: Yad Vashem

Maly Trostenets-Blagovshchina (Gas Vans)

On July 28-31, 1942, those inmates of both the main Minsk Ghetto and the "special" ghetto for Jewish deportees from Central Europe who were deemed unfit for work (mostly women and children) were taken by truck to the Blagovshchina Forest near the village of Maly Trostenets, about 15 km southeast of Minsk, where they were shot by German security policemen, men of the Order Police, and local auxiliary policemen. Wehrmacht soldiers from the anti-aircraft battery stationed in Minsk took part in this massacre as guards, as did several hundred of the Third Reich's railway personnel. Some of the victims were taken to the murder site in gas vans, and their bodies were tossed into the pits at Blagovshchina. The total number of victims of this massacre has been estimated at about 10,000 people.
In September 1943, during the final liquidation of the Minsk Ghetto, special German police squads assigned to "cleansing" the ghetto collected at least 4,000 surviving inmates, transported them to the Blagovshchina Forest, and shot them. In the course of 1943, Jewish inmates of the labor camp on Shirokaya Street in the northeast of Minsk, who were deemed unfit for work, would periodically be taken to the Blagovshchina Forest to be executed. In early 1942, the Blagovshchina Forest became the killing site of Jews deported to Minsk from Central Europe. Until late July 1942, the trains with the deportees would arrive at the Minsk freight train station; from early August 1942, the trains would be brought to within several hundred meters of Maly Trostenets. First, the deportees would undergo a selection, with a few of them being led away to become forced laborers at the Maly Trostenets farm, which had been transformed into an SS labor camp; the remainder would then be taken, either by truck or on foot, to the pits in the Blagovshchina Forest and shot. From May-June 1942, a significant percentage of the victims would be put into gas vans upon their arrival in Minsk, and their bodies would be unloaded in Blagovshchina. These murders were committed by German security policemen and Waffen SS soldiers. According to estimates, a total of at least 13,500 German, Austrian, and Czech Jews, who had arrived in 16 transports, were murdered in the Blagovshchina Forest between May and October 1942. At the end of June 1944, shortly before retreating from Minsk, German security policemen carried out a final massacre in the Blagovshchina Forest. The victims were approximately 500 surviving Jews from Minsk (who could still be rounded up), in addition to 80-100 Jews working at the SS-run Maly Trostenets estate.

More information: Yad Vashem

Shirokaya Street Camp

According to one testimony, in late 1942 or early 1943 a group of Soviet Jewish prisoners of war who had tried to escape into the woods were brought to the labor camp on Shirokaya (present-day Kuybyshev) Street, and murdered on the camp grounds.

More information: Yad Vashem

Minsk City Prison

According to one testimony, several hundred inmates of the Minsk Ghetto were shot in the courtyard of the Minsk prison on Volodarskiy Street in early April 1943, in retaliation for the death of a German soldier or official. According to the testimonies of survivors of the Minsk Ghetto, in late April 1943 SS-Haupscharfuehrer Adolf Ruebe, the security police official responsible for the Minsk Ghetto, ordered the ghetto physicians to assemble at the Judenrat offices. The assembled physicians were held overnight in the ghetto labor exchange building, where they were later joined by their families. On the next day, they were taken to the prison on Volodarskiy Street, just south of the ghetto, where they were stripped naked, beaten, and then shot. Some time later, following another order by Ruebe, a group of about 200 German Jews of all ages and both sexes were taken to the prison, abused, and shot.

More information: Yad Vashem

Hospital in the Ghetto of the Central European Jews

In late July-early August 1943, SS-Hauptscharfuehrer Adolf Ruebe, accompanied by a squad of Latvian auxiliary policemen, arrived on the premises of the hospital set up in the ghetto of the Central European Jews deported to Minsk. The hospital occupied two three-story buildings – the so-called "White House," which contained the hospital proper, in addition to a surgery clinic; and the so-called "Red House," where the patients confined to bed were hospitalized. The killers first shot the patients in the "Red House," and then the doctors and patients in the "White House." This massacre claimed the lives of at least 50 people.

More information: Yad Vashem

Moscow Street in Minsk

According to information gathered and cited by the German historian Christian Gerlach, in 1943 several dozen Jews performing various jobs at the editorial office of the German-language newspaper Minsker Zeitung, which was quartered in house no. 62 on Moscow Street, were shot in the courtyard of the building.

More information: Yad Vashem

Maly Trostenets-Shashkovka (Gas Vans)

In late 1943 or early 1944 – as part of "Aktion 1005", which was aimed at erasing all traces of Nazi atrocities – a cremation pit surrounded by a fence was dug in the Shashkovka Forest, 500 meters west of the village of Maly Trostenets. Those Minsk Jews who had managed to survive the liquidation of the Minsk Ghetto were taken here by truck or gas van. Those still alive were shot at the pit, while the bodies of those who had been gassed were thrown into it. The corpses were immediately burned. According to testimonies, some of the victims were burned alive. The shooting and burning of the bodies were apparently carried out by German members of Sonderkommando 1005 and by members of the 570th group of the Secret Field Police under the command of Heinz Riedel.

More information: Yad Vashem

Security Police Headquarters in Minsk

In late June 1944, shortly before the German retreat from Minsk, approximately 30 Jews forced to perform various tasks at the command office of the security police of the General Commissariat of White Ruthenia were shot in the cellar of the office building located in Lenin (present-day Independence) Square, on the campus of the Belarusian State University.

More information: Yad Vashem