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

…Beginning in the autumn of 1943, the Germans stopped burying the bodies of their shooting victims. They built a special oven at a site hidden in the Shashkovka forest (half a kilometer from the [Maly Trostenets] camp), to destroy the bodies of those who had been tortured to death. Both living people (transported in open and covered vehicles) and the bodies from the gas vans were taken here daily. Judging by the huge quantity of spent cartridges found, shootings were carried out at the oven's entrance and inside the oven itself. Some groups of victims were murdered with grenades (there are many fragments of exploded grenades around the oven and inside it). The bodies were piled onto rails placed on top of the furnaces, doused with fuel (tar), covered with firewood, and then set on fire. To increase the heat, clusters of incendiary bombs, boxes of grenade fuses etc., were placed underneath them. The remaining large bones were pulverized with special rammers. The remains of charred bodies and a large quantity of ash and small burned bones have been discovered inside the oven… At the oven's entrance and near the gates in the wall surrounding the oven, there are many burned fragments of clothing and small objects that belonged to the dead: women's blouses, children's socks, buttons, combs, powder cases, pen-knives, cigarette lighters, mugs, mess tins, small potato sacks, etc. Apparently, it was here that the Germans forced the doomed people to strip naked….

… There is a barbed wire fence, 500 meters from the [Maly Trostenets] camp…in the Shishkovka [Shashkovka] Forest on the northern slope of the hill surrounding the 1-km area. In the middle of this fence, there is a large, half-sunken pit with a sloping approach to it on the northern side. This pit is surrounded by a sturdy 3-meter-high wooden fence painted green. Inside this pit, there are many charred logs, 15-25 cm in diameter, covered with sand. The walls of the pit are reinforced with 10-15-cm-thick logs, up to the pit's mouth. 6-10 meter long rails were placed across the pit, with an iron grating placed atop them. Both rails and grating are burned, blackened with smoke, and lightly covered with sand. There is a large amount of human ashes, small bones, and pieces of rotten soft tissue under the rails….

…In winter or spring 1944, the Germans built an "oven," to burn the bodies of the shot and gassed innocent citizens, at the edge of the Shashkovka Forest, half a kilometer from the Karl Marx collective farm, at the village of Maly Trostenets. I did not see the internal structure of this "oven." I saw it only from the outside. It was surrounded by a high fence and barbed wire. There was an opening on the northern side, into which both open and covered "Black Maria" vehicles, transporting the living prisoners and the bodies of the shot, entered. After the vehicles had entered, the opening would be closed, and it was impossible to see what was going on inside the "oven." Only occasionally, when the people were brought alive, could shots fired by the firing squad be heard. On the northern side near the road, about twenty meters from the oven, there was a signboard nailed to a pine tree. It read: "This area is off-limits." I personally saw smoke billowing from the "oven" as the people were being burned…. Prior to the German retreat, which followed the Red Army offensive, the "oven" at the edge of the Shashkovka Forest had been in continuous operation. Until the day when the Reds returned and the Germans left, one could see a constant stream of vehicles filled with people heading toward the oven. All the people taken there were annihilated – either burned, or shot and buried.

…Almost daily, I saw German gas vans transporting Soviet citizens, elderly people and children, from the city of Minsk. They [the Germans] carried out their shootings in the forest of Shashkovka, 500 meters from the town of Maly Trostenets. The German bandit Rieder [apparently Heinz Riedel, commander of the 570th group of the Secret Field Police] ordered his subordinates to burn the bodies of the shot Soviet citizens - women, children, elderly people, and men. Early in June this year, I pastured my flock near the pit where the German bandits were burning people, and heard children and women crying in a heartrending voice, begging the killers not to shoot and burn them. I heard their cries for help. However, the voices of the Soviet citizens could be heard [only] for about two-three minutes, and then their moaning and weeping stopped as Rieder [or Riedel], the butcher, shot them.… After the shooting of the Soviet citizens, the German beasts set fire to the pit - and, apparently, burned the bodies. I just saw thick black smoke billowing out of this pit, and heard an explosion…. The Germans started transporting Soviet citizens from Minsk to the abovementioned pit to be shoot in October 1943. The last group of people was shot [and] burned on June 30, 1944….