Murder Story of Minsk Jews in Maly Trostenets-Blagovshchina (Gas Vans)

…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.

…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…

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…

…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….

…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…

…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…