Maly Trostenets-Blagovshchina (Gas Vans) Related Communities
Minsk Related Murder Sites
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Murder Story of Minsk Jews in Maly Trostenets-Blagovshchina (Gas Vans)
Murder Site
Maly Trostenets-Blagovshchina (Gas Vans)
Belorussia (USSR)
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.
Related Resources
Written Testimonies
Written Accounts
German Reports / Romanian Reports
Soviet Reports
ChGK Soviet Reports
"Everyone…was loaded into the murder vans…" From the Testimony of Shlyk, a former policeman of the 11th Battalion and a resident of the Vitebsk District, about the annihilation of the last Jews of the Minsk ghetto in late October-early November 1943:
…In the fall of 1943, having been attached to the 3rd Company of this Battalion [the 11th Auxiliary Police Battalion of the SD], I arrived in the city of Minsk.
Sometime in October or November 1943, the policemen, acting on orders of the Battalion headquarters, which was made up of [local] Fascists, participated, in the course of several days, in the mass annihilation of Soviet Jewish citizens incarcerated in the Minsk Ghetto. The policemen from the 3rd Company, including myself, stayed in the ghetto all those days from dawn to dusk, driving the Jews out of their homes and escorting them to the ghetto gates, where they were pushed into the special vehicles used to annihilate people with gas. The policemen nicknamed these vehicles "the murderers". Other inmates of the ghetto were herded into the bodies of ordinary trucks covered with tarpaulin. Every murder van or truck could accommodate 30-50 people. The Ghetto inmates were taken in these vehicles out of the city of Minsk and into a large forest in the vicinity of the village of Trostenets. There, in a clearing, the bodies of the victims were unloaded by the policemen into pits that had been prepared in advance. The prisoners brought by truck were shot by the policemen who had accompanied them on the way from Minsk…
In the course of several days in December 1943 (or thereabouts), police battalions took Soviet citizens incarcerated in the Minsk jail to the vicinity of the village of Trostenets. There, acting on the Hitlerites' orders, the prisoners burned the bodies of the Minsk Ghetto inmates who had been annihilated there previously, in order to erase [all traces of] the committed crimes. At the end of each day, the policemen from the 11th SS battalion, acting on the Fascists' orders, would shoot inmates of the Minsk jail in the same location, next to the pits with the bodies. On a given day, the policemen would shoot 30-50 Soviet citizens who, on the orders of the occupiers, had burned the bodies.
Yitzhak Arad, ed., The Destruction of the Jews of the USSR during the German Occupation (1941-1944), Jerusalem, 1991, pp. 271-272 (Russian)
From "Five pogroms in Minsk. The Accounts of Perla Aginskaya, Malka Kofman, Darya Lyusik, and Raisa Gelfond":
…Near the end of summer 1942, orders were posted along the streets of the ghetto. Those Jews who were left alive were to assemble on Twenty-Fifth of October Square to receive new patches. When the people had gathered, police ringed the square. Those same covered black trucks that had been working for four straight days drove up. The bodies of those martyred by the Germans were transported to the small town of Trostyanets [i.e., Maly Trostenets], where they were dumped into a pit…
Rubenstein, Joshua and Altman, Ilya. The unknown black book : the Holocaust in the German-occupied Soviet territories . Bloomington, Ind. : Indiana University Press, 2010, pp. 245-246.
From "'The Camp consisted of several rotten old barns and stables'. From the notes of a Viennese Jew about the murders in Maly Trostenets (Belorussia) in summer 1942"
On May 6, 1942, we left the collection camp [in Vienna]… We learned at the train station… that we were being taken to Minsk… We arrived in Minsk on May 11, and were met at the train station by SS [men] and police[men]… Out of the arrivals, 81 people were selected for work and sent to a Security Police and SD camp at Maly Trostyanets [Trostenets] (12 km from Minsk). The camp consisted of several rotten old barns and stables. We were housed there… When new people arrived, the veteran inmates – who, as we were told, were not 100 percent fit for work – would be taken away. We were told that some of them were being taken to a hospital, while the rest would be sent to other towns to work… The transports stopped in late 1942. It was then that we learned that there were no "other towns" near Minsk, and that the people had been taken to "town No. 16". This was a code name for the [mass grave] of thousands of people shot [or murdered] in gas vans, situated 4-5 km from Maly Trostenets along the Mogilev highway…
Yitzhak Arad, ed., The Destruction of the Jews of the USSR during the German Occupation (1941-1944), Jerusalem, 1991, p. 233 (Russian)
From a letter written by a group of former inmates of the Minsk Ghetto protesting against the "farcical" trial of Adolf Eichmann in Jerusalem, 1961:
…The largest pogrom took place in July 1942. The German authorities lured the people from their homes, announcing that ghetto residents should come forward to receive new patches. However, upon arriving in Jubilee Square, the inmates began to be herded into vehicles and gas vans, and were then taken to the Maly Trostenets extermination camp. For three days – July 27, 28, and 29 – the ghetto streets ran with blood….
NARB, MINSK 4683-3-837 copy YVA M.41 / 3445
From "The History of the Minsk Ghetto"
…The morning of July 29 arrived. The day was overcast – as if in premonition of a continuation of the slaughter. From time to time the sun emerged from behind the black storm clouds and then immediately disappeared again. The ghetto was deserted.
At 10:00 AM, German trucks appeared on Yubileiny Square, their horns honking. A group of soldiers from the Minsk garrison under the command of the chief of police, Major Wentske, set out to loot and discover new hiding places. Wentske was a German officer and executioner. Since it was about to rain, the festive tables were removed from the square and carried into the committee building. The elderly, the women, and the children discovered in hiding places were also brought here to be killed. Many hiding places were discovered on that day, and many homes were looted. Furniture and dishes were smashed in the apartments.
The Germans and police burst into the ghetto hospital, which had not been touched on the first day of the pogrom, and killed all the patients and personnel with daggers.
On August 1, after four days of slaughter, the Germans again dragged a table out onto Yubileiny Square. It was heaped with food and wines, and the same leaders sat at it.
The Gestapo agents and police were ordered to deliver up the last inhabitants of the ghetto who were still in hiding.
On this last day of the pogrom the Fascists exceeded all boundaries of human imagination. Before the eyes of the mothers, who were either fainting or losing their wits, the drunken Germans and policemen shamelessly raped the girls before each other or others. They cut out the sexual organs with daggers, forced living and dead bodies to assume the most disgusting poses, cut off noses, breasts, and ears.
Mothers rushed at the Fascists in a rage and fell dead with crushed skulls. Feeble old people were killed by blows on the head with rubber truncheons or were beaten to death with leather whips. The hysterical cries, wails and curses did not cease all day; the dozens of accordions could not drown them out.
At 3:00 PM, everything was over. In an hour Richter's assistants had left the ghetto…
Suffocated in…machines of death, robbed and stripped, the people had been taken in the gassing vans to Trostinets [Trostenets]…and dumped into pits which had been prepared in advance…
Ehrenburg, Ilya and Grossman, Wassili. The black book : the ruthless murder of Jews by German-Fascist invaders throughout the temporarily-occupied regions of the Soviet Union and in the death camps of Poland during the war of 1941-1945 . New York : Holocaust Library, 1981, pp. 169-171.
From "The Liquidation of the Minsk ghetto. An account by Abram Mashkeleyson"
…In accordance with the plan drawn up by the Gestapo ahead of time, they first moved the Jews from one residential district. This area, which was now "liberated", was excluded from the ghetto. Then they moved the barbed wire barriers to the next district. In this way, they removed block after block from the ghetto, which became smaller and smaller.
They took the Jews away to Trostyanets [Trostenets]…not far from Minsk. They brought them there in enormous groups of five or six thousand people, stripped them naked, and drove them into a ditch, after which motorcyclists with machine pistols [light machine guns] would drive up and down the ditch shooting these unfortunates. They covered the dead and wounded with a thin layer of earth, whereupon they smoothed the burial site over with tractors…
Rubenstein, Joshua and Altman, Ilya. The unknown black book : the Holocaust in the German-occupied Soviet territories . Bloomington, Ind. : Indiana University Press, 2010, p. 248.
Maly Trostenets-Blagovshchina (Gas Vans)
Murder Site
Belorussia (USSR)
53.902;27.559