Minsk ghetto

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Map of the Minsk Ghetto (1941/1943)

The Minsk ghetto was a district in the north-west of the Belarusian capital Minsk , sealed off by the German occupation forces , in which the Germans held the Jewish population of Minsk from July 1941 to October 1943 , and from November 1941 also deported Jews from German cities. Some Jews who were considered "fit for work" were assigned to do forced labor from there .

When the German Wehrmacht occupied Minsk at the end of June 1941, around 75,000 Jews were still in the city, the great majority of whom were deported to the ghetto . After Germans initially murdered people unable to work, fewer than 9,000 inmates remained in the ghetto by August 1942. The ghetto was wiped out on October 21, 1943 by the murder of most of the prisoners, with hardly any survivors.

history

The establishment of a ghetto was initiated at the local level by military services under Field Commander Lieutenant Colonel Karl Schlegelhofer with the advice of Einsatzgruppe B. The preparations were made while mass murders of Jewish men of military age from Minsk were taking place in the Drozdy prison camp . A temporal parallel that was typical of the early phase of the German occupation in the Soviet Union. From July 19, Minsk fell under the command of the Berück of Army Group Center , Max von Schenckendorff .

Jewish forced laborers at the turntable of the railway works, Minsk, February 1942

In July 1941, around 60,000 Minsk Jews were concentrated in a two-square-kilometer district in the north-east (including the former Klebnaya, Ostrowski, Shornaya, Kollektornaya streets, Jubilejni Square and a cemetery). This area was calculated on the basis of 1.5 m² per adult. A so-called Judenrat was created which, like in other ghettos, was responsible for the implementation of German orders. All Jews had to wear yellow stains as identification tags on the front and back of their clothing. A “job exchange” was set up, which registered Jews fit for work and forced them to do forced labor outside the ghetto.

According to a decree by the City Commissioner Dr. To register with Kaiser from November 1, 1941. In the Minsk Opera, the General Commissioner for the East, Hinrich Lohse, set up a huge warehouse with clothing from the “Jewish estate”. Jews from the ghetto had to sort the clothes. The proceeds were credited to the “Jewish assets” account at the Riga financial administration under Friedrich Karl Vialon .

Raids and mass murders

In August 1941, the first so-called “actions” took place - raids during which residents of the ghetto were rounded up and taken to a Minsk prison to be shot (August 14, 26 and 31; almost exclusively men, around 5,000 people).

On August 15, Heinrich Himmler , accompanied by his chief of staff Karl Wolf , Erich von dem Bach-Zelewski, the HSSPF Russia-Center, Hans-Adolf Prützmann , the HSPFF Russia-North and the leader's cameraman, Walter Frentz , observed the execution of about a hundred people, the majority of whom had been brought to the execution site from the Minsk ghetto. The delegation then visited the ghetto and the Drozdy camp near Minsk.

Large massacres were called pogroms according to Russian usage , while the term action was common in the Polish and Lithuanian ghettos .

The first pogrom began on November 7, 1941 to make room for Jews from the Reich territory. According to the SS and police reports, 6,624 Jews from the ghetto were killed near the barracks in Tutschinka alone . On November 20, 1941, in the second pogrom, probably 5,000 to 7,000 people were rounded up under the leadership of Sonderkommando 1b by alien protection teams of SS and police leader Carl Zenner and shot at Tutschinka. After that there were no large-scale pogroms for several months, partly because there was a need for trained workers and partly because the unusually severe winter frost prevented the digging of mass graves .

On March 2, 1942, the Purim festival , the next pogrom began, apparently from a local initiative, under the direction of SS-Sturmbannführer Walter Hofmann. According to the security police, 3,412 people were murdered and there were 5,000 victims in the ghetto. The civil administration used the mass murders to reduce the size of the ghetto. Further nocturnal murders, based on the German side with the hunt for partisans, took place on March 31, April 3, 15 and 23, 1942 and one in May 1942, when two four-story buildings were set on fire and all residents were alive Bodies were burned.

The diet for registered residents in the “ghetto” consisted of 200 grams of bread per day, and workers in some factories got a thick soup at noon.

On July 28, 1942, the Germans first used gas vans (in Russian: Duschegubki ) for their “actions” , with which all “ unfit for work” people in these converted trucks were transported and murdered. The next day, all of the hospital's patients were shot on the spot, and the staff and doctors were taken away. Until August 1, local police officers and Germans searched the houses for hiding (so-called maliny ). An eyewitness reports that after they discovered a hiding place and the residents did not come out, German detainees threw hand grenades into it. A total of 3,500 Reich German and 6,500 Belarusian Jews were murdered in Minsk in this "action". On the evening of the same day the workers who had been detained in the factories for four days were returned to the ghetto. Almost 9,000 people remained.

As of February 1943, SS - Hauptscharführer Adolf Rübe , who had excelled in the "liquidation" of the Sluzker Ghetto, began his work in the Minsk ghetto. He was feared because of his brutality and shootings on the street.

In May 1943 the Jewish workers in the prison were murdered, in April 1943 the children's home and the disability home were "liquidated", the residents shot on the spot or transported away and murdered. At the same time, the resistance increasingly pushed out residents of the ghetto and brought them to the partisans.

On June 21, Himmler's order to dissolve the ghettos was issued in the Reichskommissariat Ostland . On September 14th a transport with 300 young men from the Reich and 480 inmates from Maly Trostenez to Majdanek was put together. Almost 2,000 people were shot dead in Blagovshchina probably on the same day . The last remaining Jews were crowded together in the special ghetto near the Jewish cemetery. Between October 21 and 23, the Sipo invaded the ghetto under BdS Erich Ehrlinger . The remaining inmates, probably 1,000 people, were killed in Blagovshchina.

Special ghetto for Reich German Jews

For the second evacuation of Jews from the Altreich including Ostmark and the Protectorate of Bohemia-Moravia , the RSHA planned twenty transports to the Minsk ghetto for the months of November and December 1941.

In fact, between November 11 and December 5, 1941 , around 7,000 Jews arrived in seven trains from Hamburg , Düsseldorf , Frankfurt am Main , Berlin , Brno , Bremen and Vienna .

Deportations to the Minsk ghetto
train Place of departure date Place of arrival Arrivals number Survivors
Since 51 Hamburg November 8, 1941 Minsk November 11th 968 / 1.004 10
Since 52 Dusseldorf November 10, 1941 Minsk 15th of November 993 4th
Since 53 Frankfurt (Main) November 12, 1941 Minsk November 17th 1,042 / 1,052 8th
Since 54 Berlin November 14, 1941 Minsk November 18 956 / 1.030 4th
Since 55 Brno November 16, 1941 Minsk 20th November 999 13
Since 56 Bremen / Hamburg November 18, 1941 Minsk 22nd of November 978 / 1.010 6th
Since 57 Vienna November 28, 1941 Minsk December 5th 1,001 3

Further planned trains were canceled due to blatant supply problems of the Wehrmacht in the Battle of Moscow and diverted to the so-called Riga Ghetto or to the Jungfernhof camp . Around 1,400 of the Jews deported to Minsk were assigned to do forced labor in repair workshops, supply camps of the Wehrmacht, the Nazi building organization Todt and the Reichsbahn.

The Hamburg Jews first had to clear hundreds of corpses from the first pogrom from their first accommodation in the so-called “Red House”. Then two special ghettos were fenced in with barbed wire. The Jews from Hamburg, Düsseldorf and Frankfurt were housed in Special Ghetto I (Hamburg Ghetto), while Special Ghetto II was used to house the deportees from Berlin, Brno, Hamburg / Bremen and Vienna. They received a joint Judenrat under the Hamburg transport manager Dr. Franck, who set up a communal kitchen and a makeshift hospital ward and had to coordinate the workforce.

When deportation trains from the Reich returned to Minsk in May 1942, the deportees were no longer taken to the ghetto, but were driven directly to the Maly Trostenez extermination camp in trucks for execution or murdered in gas vans on the way there.

Resistance movement

Mikhail Gebelev, organizer of the ghetto resistance, June 22, 1941

Resistance against the occupiers was organized in the ghetto . The aim was to save as many people as possible from the camp, as the forests in the surrounding area could offer protection. The resistance movements in Minsk worked from the beginning in the Soviet-Communist spirit without receiving specific orders or deliveries of material from the Soviet side. Connections were made to the urban resistance in the non-Jewish part of Minsk and to the partisans in the forests around Minsk, and weapons, clothing and medicine (from the factories where Jews were forced to work) and individuals from the ghetto were smuggled there. In February 1942, the chairman of the “Judenrat” Eliyahu (Ilya) Mushkin, who had supported the partisans, was arrested and shot.

The communist German air force pilot Willi Schultz fell in love with the Jew Ilse Stein and fled with her and about 25 other people with the help of the resistance in a truck to the partisans.

The ghetto resistance succeeded in bringing several thousand Jews to the Soviet partisan units. The exact number is unknown.

Work-up

A police report of the transport from Düsseldorf to Minsk was later discovered in a London archive.

A group of figures reminiscent of the Jewish victims of the Minsk ghetto at the so-called “Jama” (pit), designed by the sculptor Leonid Levin, who also became known beyond Belarus with other works, especially with the design of the Belarusian monument complex in Chatyn .

See also

literature

  • Waltraud Barton: Murdered in Maly Trostinec - The Austrian victims of the Shoa in Belarus . New Academic Press Vienna 2012. ISBN 978-3-7003-1845-3 .
  • Wassili Grossman , Ilja Ehrenburg : The Black Book - the genocide of the Soviet Jews , pp. 227-277. 1994, Reinbek. ISBN 3-498-01655-5 .
  • Barbara Epstein: The Minsk Ghetto, 1941-1943 Jewish Resistance and Soviet Internationalism . University of California Press, 2008, ISBN 978-0-520-24242-5 .
  • Monica Kingreen: Forcibly abducted from Frankfurt . In: After the Kristallnacht . Campus 1999, ISBN 3-593-36310-0 , p. 362 ff.
  • Kuzma Kosak: The Minsk Ghetto . In: Murdered in Maly Trostinec . Ed .: Waltraud Barton, New Academic Press Vienna 2012, ISBN 978-3-7003-1845-3 , pp. 79 ff.
  • Karl Loewenstein : Minsk - In the camp of the German Jews . In: Supplement to “The Parliament”, B. 45/46 of November 7, 1956. - Experience report of the former head of the Jewish security service.
  • Petra Rentrop: Crime scenes of the “Final Solution” - The Minsk ghetto and the extermination site of Maly Trostinez . Metropol 2011, ISBN 978-3-86331-038-7 .
  • (after Dan Zhits): Minsk . In: Guy Miron (ed.): The Yad Vashem encyclopedia of the ghettos during the Holocaust , Yad Vashem, Jerusalem 2009 ISBN 978-965-308-345-5 , pp. 474-482.
  • "Does the ghetto still exist?" - Belarus: Jewish survival against National Socialist rule . Ed .: Project Group Belarus, Association A, 2003, ISBN 3-935936-12-5 .
  • Anja Reuss, Kristin Schneider: Berlin - Minsk. Unforgotten life stories. A memorial book for the Berlin Jews deported to Minsk , Metropol-Verlag 2013, ISBN 978-3-86331-116-2 .

Movie

  • Ulf von Mechow: Die Jüdin und der Hauptmann , 1996, documentary about Ilse Stein and Willi Schultz

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Petra Rentrop: Crime scenes of the "final solution". The Minsk Ghetto and the Maly Trostinez extermination site. Berlin 2011, ISBN 978-3-86331-038-7 , pp. 75f.
  2. ^ Grossman, Ehrenburg: Black Book . P. 236.
  3. ↑ Petra Rentrop: Crime scenes of the "final solution". The Minsk Ghetto and the Maly Trostinez extermination site . P. 135 ff.
  4. ^ Justice / Vialon . In: Der Spiegel . No. 46 , 1967 ( online ).
  5. ^ Grossman, Ehrenburg: Black Book . P. 238.
  6. ↑ Petra Rentrop: Crime scenes of the "final solution". The Minsk Ghetto and the Maly Trostinez extermination site . P. 84 f.
  7. ^ Barbara Epstein: The Minsk Ghetto, 1941-1943 Jewish Resistance and Soviet Internationalism . University of California Press, 2008, ISBN 978-0-520-24242-5 , p. 101.
  8. ↑ Petra Rentrop: Crime scenes of the "final solution". The Minsk Ghetto and the Maly Trostinez extermination site . P. 140 ff.
  9. ^ Barbara Epstein: The Minsk Ghetto, 1941-1943 Jewish Resistance and Soviet Internationalism . P. 104.
  10. ↑ Petra Rentrop: Crime scenes of the "final solution". The Minsk Ghetto and the Maly Trostinez extermination site . P. 143 ff.
  11. ^ Grossman, Ehrenburg: Black Book . P. 253.
  12. ^ Grossman, Ehrenburg: Black Book . P. 260.
  13. ^ Grossman, Ehrenburg: Black Book . P. 264.
  14. ^ Grossman, Ehrenburg: Black Book . P. 267.
  15. ↑ Petra Rentrop: Crime scenes of the "final solution". The Minsk Ghetto and the Maly Trostinez extermination site . P. 151 f.
  16. ↑ Petra Rentrop: Crime scenes of the "final solution". The Minsk Ghetto and the Maly Trostinez extermination site . P. 165.
  17. ^ Alfred Gottwaldt: Logic and logistics of 1,300 kilometers of railroad . In: Waltraud Barton (Hrsg.): Murdered in Maly Trosgtinec - The Austrian victims of the Shoa in Belarus . New Academic Press, Vienna 2012, ISBN 978-3-7003-1845-3 , p. 54.
  18. ↑ Petra Rentrop: Crime scenes of the "final solution". The Minsk Ghetto and the Maly Trostinez extermination site . P. 184.
  19. ↑ Alfred Gottwaldt, Diana Schulle: Die 'Judendeportationen' ... ISBN 3-86539-059-5 , pp. 89-97.
  20. ↑ Petra Rentrop: Crime scenes of the "final solution". The Minsk Ghetto and the Maly Trostinez extermination site . P. 232.
  21. ↑ Petra Rentrop: Crime scenes of the "final solution". The Minsk Ghetto and the Maly Trostinez extermination site . P. 177 ff.
  22. ↑ Petra Rentrop: Crime scenes of the "final solution". The Minsk Ghetto and the Maly Trostinez extermination site . P. 196 ff.
  23. ^ Barbara Epstein: The Minsk Ghetto, 1941-1943 Jewish Resistance and Soviet Internationalism . 2008, p. 232.
  24. ^ Grossman, Ehrenburg: Black Book . P. 248.
  25. ^ Barbara Epstein: The Minsk Ghetto, 1941-1943 Jewish Resistance and Soviet Internationalism . P. 221.
  26. ↑ Petra Rentrop: Crime scenes of the "final solution". The Minsk Ghetto and the Maly Trostinez extermination site . P. 153.
  27. ↑ Deportation of Jews: Historian discovers shocking Nazi police report. In: Spiegel Online . May 9, 2012, accessed January 5, 2017 .

Coordinates: 53 ° 54 ′ 35.2 "  N , 27 ° 32 ′ 34.4"  E