Murder Story of Minsk Jews at the 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.