The Minsk Ghetto

Before the war began, in the summer of 1941, about one hundred thousand Jews lived in Minsk. The overwhelming majority of them, more than 80,000, disorganized and betrayed by the authorities, found themselves in the city occupied by the Nazis. Minsk was occupied by Wehrmacht troops for three years—from June 28, 1941, to July 3, 1944. The Nazis included Minsk in the territory administratively assigned to the General District of White Ruthenia of the Reichskommissariat Ostland, where the highest civilian administrative body was the General Commissariat headed by General Commissioner Wilhelm Kube, and from September 1943 by SS Gruppenführer Kurt von Gottberg. Repressive functions in this territory were carried out until December 1941 by the operational groups of Reichsführer SS Himmler (Einsatzgruppen A, B, C), and later by the Security Police and SD. To implement the policy of genocide and conduct punitive operations, immediately after the troops, punitive units of the SS troops, Einsatzgruppen, Sonderkommandos, secret field police (GFP), security police and SD, gendarmerie, and Gestapo arrived in the city. Police collaborationist units were staffed in the city.

Just three days after the city was captured, on July 1, 1941, the occupation authorities imposed a "contribution" on the Jews of Minsk, forcing them to hand over a certain amount of money and valuables. Immediately after this, it was ordered to create a Judenrat (Jewish council) to carry out German orders concerning the Jews of Minsk and to elect its chairman. The Germans appointed Ilya Mushkin (before the war, head of one of the Minsk trusts) as chairman of the Judenrat due to his knowledge of the German language (until April 1942), then appointed Ioffe (until the end of July 1942) and Epstein (until October 1943).

After this, the field commandant issued an order for the mandatory registration of Jews and their conscription for forced labor (men aged 14 to 60, women aged 16 to 50), with Jews forbidden to change residence, travel, or receive wages in money (only food was allowed).

On July 19, 1941, three weeks after the capture of Minsk, the Germans, implementing Hitler’s program of Jewish extermination, decided to create a ghetto. On that day, a meeting was held in Minsk between the rear commander of Army Group Center, General Schenkendorf, and the highest SS and police leader of the General District "Belorussia," SS Brigadeführer Zenner, where issues of cooperation in the extermination of Jews were discussed. The decision was announced (posted on poles) the next day—July 20, 1941—in Belarusian and German.

Order No. 812 of the field commandant on the creation of the ghetto in Minsk (excerpts):

“1. Starting from the date of this order, a special part of the city of Minsk will be allocated exclusively for the residence of Jews.

2. All Jewish population of Minsk must, within 5 days after the announcement of this order, move to the Jewish district. Anyone found outside the Jewish district after this period will be arrested and severely punished. Non-Jewish residents living within the boundaries of the Jewish residential district must immediately leave the Jewish district. …

4. The Jewish district is bounded by the following streets: Kolkhozny Lane with the adjacent Kolkhoznaya Street, then across the river along Nemiga Street, excluding the Orthodox church, along Respublikanskaya Street, Shornaya Street, Kollektornaya Street, Mebelny Lane, Perekopskaya Street, Nizhnyaya Street, including the Jewish cemetery, along Obuvnaya Street, Second Opansky Lane, Zaslavskaya Street to Kolkhozny Lane …

7. Jews are allowed to enter and exit the Jewish district only through two streets: Opansky and Ostrovsky. Climbing over the wall is prohibited. German guards and order service guards are ordered to shoot violators.”

The Judenrat, having no administrative rights, was initially responsible for collecting the contribution from the Jews of Minsk, meticulously registering all houses in the ghetto and each prisoner, and maintaining sanitation in the ghetto—as the Germans feared epidemics greatly.

The plan allotted 5 days for the relocation of Jews to the ghetto, but practically it was impossible to resettle tens of thousands of people in such a short time, so the deadline was extended until the end of July. By August 1, 1941, the relocation of Jews to the ghetto was completed, with 80,000 people driven there. By September–October 1941, the number of inmates in the ghetto was about 100,000.

In July 1941, immediately after the occupation of Minsk, the Nazis created a concentration camp 2–3 kilometers from the city, near the village of Drozdy, for Soviet prisoners of war and civilians. More than 100,000 prisoners of war and about 40,000 men of conscription age, who were seized during the registration of men in Minsk after the city’s capture, ended up in this camp. Jews in the camp were separated from the others. The Germans took the possibility of Jewish resistance very seriously, so in most cases they first killed educated and simply young Jewish men aged 15 to 50. Based on this, the Germans selected engineers, doctors, and accountants among the Jews in the camp and immediately shot them.

The remaining Jews were transferred to the city prison, then about 100 more were selected and shot, and the rest were sent to the Judenrat for relocation to the forming ghetto.

According to archival data and witness testimonies, there were three ghettos in Minsk during the war:

1. The “Large” ghetto—existed from July 19, 1941, to October 21, 1943. The ghetto territory covered 39 streets and lanes around Jubilee Square—in the area of the Jewish cemetery and the Lower Market. The total area was 2 square kilometers. Respublikanskaya Street (during the occupation—Mittelstrasse, now Romanovskaya Sloboda) cut through the ghetto, fenced off on both sides with barbed wire, and was used as a roadway for regular traffic. More than 80,000 Jews were driven into this ghetto by the Nazis. Entry and exit were possible only through two special checkpoints—on Opansky Street (now Kalvariyskaya) and Ostrovsky Street (Rakovskaya).

2. The “Small” ghetto—located in the area of the Molotov Radio Factory (later the Lenin Factory) from October 1943 to June 30, 1944.

3. The “Sonderghetto” (part of the ghetto on Sukhoi and Obuvnaya streets)—a ghetto for 20,000 Jews deported by the Nazis from seven countries of Western, Central, and Eastern Europe. It existed from November 1941 to September 1943. (https://reveal.world/story/zondergetto-v-minske)

The ghetto was enclosed by a perimeter fence made of barbed wire. It was guarded around the clock by SS forces together with Belarusian and Lithuanian policemen.

All ghetto inmates were ordered under penalty of death to constantly wear special identification marks—yellow cloth “patches” 10 centimeters in diameter and white house number badges on the chest and back.

The Germans and policemen robbed and killed ghetto residents with impunity, raped girls and then killed them. The representative of the German command in the ghetto with unlimited powers was the pathological sadist Gorodetsky—a half-German, former resident of Leningrad. Gorodetsky’s assistant and the direct organizer of mass killings were German officers Gotenbach and later Reider, both sadists who loved personally killing and torturing inmates and creating unbearable living conditions for them.

The unbearable labor of the inmates gave them very meager food. Former ghetto prisoner Polina Krasikova (Klebanova) recalled: “I was only 14 years old. To avoid starving and to get a ration of bread (which seemed to be made of clay) and a bowl of broth, I had to sign up for work. We were escorted to the station to unload railway wagons with coal.”

From the very beginning, the ghetto was created for the “convenience” of liquidating its inhabitants. The occupation authorities were interested in free labor from inmates—specialists, skilled workers, craftsmen—but the main task was the total extermination of Jews. The SD Sonderkommandos—7A and 7B of Einsatzgruppe SD “B”—distinguished themselves especially, regularly conducting raids, arrests, and shootings in the ghetto streets day and night. “Night pogroms along designated streets became a constant measure of physical extermination of people,” recalls former inmate Ella Malbina. “Going to bed, no one knew whose turn it was that night, and we said goodbye before sleep. It was very scary. At night, screams, cries, and pleas of children and women, gunshots, and the noise of engines were heard in different streets of the ghetto.”

On September 23, the Einsatzgruppe SD “B” reported that by August 13, the SD Sonderkommando 7A had killed 103 people, 7B—1,153, and in the following month—Sonderkommando 7A—1,261, 7B—1,544 people.

Life for Jews was burdened with many prohibitions, for any violation of which the only punishment was execution. For example, it was forbidden to leave the ghetto without permission, appear without identification marks, have and wear fur items, exchange goods for food with non-Jews. Jews were forbidden to walk on central streets and sidewalks—only on the roadway, and when meeting a German, a Jew had to remove his headgear 15 meters before. It was forbidden to greet acquaintances who were non-Jews. It was forbidden to enter gardens and other public places. In winter, even in severe frost, it was forbidden to bring even a chip for heating into the ghetto. The occupation authorities imposed several “contributions” on the ghetto. The first time—2 million rubles, 200 kilograms of silver, and 10 kilograms of gold. The second time, 50 kilograms of gold and silver were demanded, and even more the third time. The looting in the form of contributions was conducted personally by Gorodetsky with the forced participation of the Jewish committee and Jewish police under threat of death.

All valuable items were quickly exchanged for food—in the beginning, non-Jews were allowed to bring flour into the ghetto for exchange, but soon this was prohibited, and exchanging goods for food was only possible secretly through the barbed wire fence. Brine from herring barrels was considered a delicacy; ordinary food was pancakes made from potato peels; lard scraped from old hides at the leather factory was used as food. Jews from the ghetto used for forced labor were given a bowl of thin gruel once a day.

There were no legal ways to supply food to the ghetto, and the main source of survival for Jews became illegal, deadly exchanges with the non-Jewish population through work columns and through the wire at the border with the Russian district. A “black market” also operated inside the ghetto, with some Germans who had access participating. An example of the exchange value of goods for food: inmates gave gold watches for a loaf of bread and three onions.

Throughout the existence of the ghetto, from its creation to its destruction, the Nazis maintained an extremely high population density—up to 100 people were crammed into a one-story house with 2–3 apartments, up to 300 people in a similar two-story house, calculated at 1.2–1.5 meters per person excluding children. Usually, several families lived in one room.

The unbearable overcrowding, hunger, and absolute unsanitary conditions caused widespread diseases and epidemics in the ghetto. The danger of infection spread was so serious that in 1941 the Germans allowed two hospitals and even a children’s orphanage (destroyed in April 1943) to open in the ghetto. The hospital, with almost no medicines or equipment, was staffed by brilliant medical personnel. It was headed and organized by Dr. Charno.

At first, the Nazis killed those who could not work, then large-scale pogroms began. From spring 1942, many children in the ghetto were killed in gas vans, seized right on the streets and stuffed into the vehicles. On some days, these vans made several trips.

In the square where the Minsk cinema "Belarus" now stands, in the fall of 1943, there were 10 gallows. On one of them, Sima Levina hung for three days. "The policemen came and told my mother to get dressed," her daughter Maya recalled. "She wanted to take me, but my brother Joseph said that my four-year-old sister Sara would be left alone. Mom took her with her. They did not return; later we were told that mom was hanged, and we found her on the gallows. She had long hair down to her heels, waving in the wind. She hung for three days. Sara was not among them, and we do not know where she died."

Maya Krapina (Levina) survived, experiencing the horrors of the ghetto, the blockade of partisan zones, and half-starved orphanages as a six-year-old girl. Her family had four other brothers and sisters. Her grandfather and grandmother died during one of the pogroms in the enclosed Minsk ghetto: the grandfather, who by then had lost fingers during forced labor, decided not to leave, and the grandmother stayed with him.

The youngest sister suffocated when mother Sima tried to hold back her crying to protect the others—the boots of the punitive forces were pounding above the hastily dug basement in the ghetto where the family hid. Maya’s father died during the pogrom on November 7, 1941.

During this pogrom, when the Hitlerites closed the ring around the ghetto and, killing, reduced the size of the doomed territory, according to researchers, from 5,000 to 10,000 inmates died.

The hellish machine of Jewish extermination continued to gain momentum. Every day the number of victims in the ghetto increased. A report from the Security Police and SD sent to Berlin stated that by April 1, 1942, 41,228 Jews had been killed in Minsk.

The most brutal pogrom occurred at the end of July 1942, lasting four days. On July 28, as soon as the workers left the territory, the ghetto was blocked. For four days, a “conveyor” was established between the ghetto and Maly Trostenets. In gas vans and covered trucks, inmates were taken to prepared graves.

During these days, the Latvian police battalion commanded by Major Bernard Aris particularly “distinguished” itself. The executioners organized a massacre in the hospital. No one was spared: neither the sick, nor doctors, nor nurses.

Former inmate Mikhail Pekar recalls: “On July 28, 1942, I went to work as usual. But in the evening we were not returned to the ghetto but driven into some barrack. We were held there for three days. When I returned home, everything was destroyed: I found neither my mother nor my brothers.”

Gauleiter Kube reported to Reich Minister of Ostland Loze on July 31 with satisfaction: “In Minsk itself, about 10,000 Jews were liquidated on July 28 and 29. Of these, 6,500 were Russian Jews, mostly elderly, women, and children, as well as incapacitated Jews from Vienna, Bremen, and Berlin, sent to Minsk last November by the Führer’s order.” Kube assured his chief: “Naturally, the SD and I would like the Jewish population in the General District of Belarus to be completely eliminated once their labor is no longer needed by the Wehrmacht—the main consumer of Jewish labor.”

The brutal massacre continued on July 30 and 31. The executioners killed 18,000 Minsk Jews and 3,500 Jews from the “Sonderghetto.”

Memoir literature contains accounts that the executioners forced people to raise red flags and a poster with slogans glorifying the October Revolution—and photographed this.

The history of the Minsk ghetto included many pogroms—day and night. Mass killings (the Germans used the euphemism “aktion”) of ghetto residents remaining in their homes while able-bodied ones were taken to work were common practice.

August 1941—the first major pogrom. About 5,000 Jews were killed.

November 7–8, 1941, after the work columns were taken away, Germans and Lithuanian policemen cordoned off the area from Zamkovaya, Podzamkovaya, and Nemiga streets and began a pogrom. Reaching Opansky Street and leaving behind many dead Jews, the Germans gathered a crowd of women and children, drove them to Tuchinka, and shot them. Estimates vary from 5,000 to 10,000, 12,000 inmates, or 18,000 Jews killed that day. After this pogrom, the ghetto area was reduced by the Ostrovskaya Street district, and the remaining Jews began building secret shelters of various designs in the ghetto—so-called “malinas.”

November 20, 1941—6,000 to 15,000 Jews were killed in the area of Oboynaya Street and nearby.

January 21, 1942—more than 12,000 Jews were shot.

March 2–3, 1942:

On March 2, a large group of Jews under escort was driven toward Dzerzhinsk, and those who did not die or freeze on the way were shot, most likely on the territory of the Putchinsky village council. On the same day, 3,412 Jews were taken from the Minsk ghetto in railway wagons to the west and shot.

Immediately in the ghetto, after the able-bodied inmates left, trucks with Germans and policemen arrived and carried out another mass killing throughout the ghetto. The bodies of about 5,000 killed were dumped into a former quarry, where the “Yama” memorial now stands. https://reveal.world/story/chernyj-obelisk-ili-istoriya-ob-antisovetskom-pamyatnike

On the same day, March 2, before 10 a.m., not finding enough people for execution, the Germans lined up children from the orphanage and took them to 35 Ratomskaya Street, where they were thrown into a pit. At that time, the General Commissioner of Belarus Wilhelm Kube arrived at the pit and threw candies to the children being buried alive. That day, the Germans killed 200 to 300 children along with medical staff and caregivers.

On the same day, the executioners shot a column of people returning from work. These events are known in historical literature as the “massacre of March 2.” A total of 8,000 Jews were killed that day.

July 28–31, 1942—the pogrom lasted four days, with able-bodied inmates kept at work all this time. About 10,000 or even 25,000 people were killed during these days.

December 29, 1942—able-bodied inmates were detained at work, and everyone else in the ghetto was destroyed. During this pogrom, all the sick in the ghetto hospital were killed (except typhus patients—the Germans were afraid to enter), including children:

There were seven children in the children’s ward. Riebe, the police chief, put on white gloves and stabbed all the children with a knife. He came out, took off the white gloves, lit a cigarette, and ate a chocolate bar.

At the beginning of April 1942, according to official data from the occupation General Commissariat, 20,000 able-bodied Jews were registered in Minsk. By the end of September 1942, this number had halved. By October 1942, the ghetto territory was divided into five parts, with 273 houses.

By the end of 1942, more than 90,000 Jews had been killed in the ghetto, and by early 1943, only 6,000 to 8,000 inmates remained alive.

Federal Archive of Koblenz 9ks/62, justice and Nazi crimes files (volume 19, current No. 552) report on the action in Minsk and Koidanovo March 1–3, 1942: (abridged)

“…on the morning of March 1, 1942, the ghetto was surrounded, Jews were marched in a column to Minsk-Tovarnaya station. Many did not leave their homes voluntarily or tried to avoid being sent. Force was used against them, and some were shot on the spot. After clearing the ghetto, many corpses lay in houses and streets. At the station, people were loaded into a train bound for Koidanovo.

On March 2, 1942, the entire Security Police and SD unit went to execute the train passengers. Many trenches were prepared near Koidanovo for the action. First, Jews were unloaded from the wagons, then divided into small groups. Under Lithuanian guard, they were taken to the trenches. Force was used. They were ordered to remove coats and outer garments to facilitate shooting. Then Jews were ordered to walk along the trenches, near which shooters armed with pistols stood.

The shooting team numbered 10–20 people. Each shooter periodically chose a victim. He ordered the person to stop or stopped them by hand. If the victim was in a convenient position, the soldier shot them in the back of the head. If the person did not fall into the trench after the shot, they were pushed or thrown in.

Not all people were shot that day, so the execution continued on March 3, 1942. According to report No. 178 dated March 9, 1942, during the action in Minsk-Koidanovo on March 2–3, 1942, 3,412 Jews were shot.”

On June 21, 1943, the Nazi leadership decided to completely liquidate all ghettos in the occupied territories. The last day of the Minsk ghetto’s existence is considered October 21, 1943—the day the last pogrom began. From October 21 to 23, 1943, the Nazis killed all the still-living inmates except for 500 skilled craftsmen taken to Germany. On the territory of the Minsk ghetto, as it later turned out, only 13 people survived, who hid for several months in the basement of a house near the Jewish cemetery on Sukhoi Street and were able to leave the shelter only on the day Minsk was liberated in July 1944. A total of 22,000 were killed from October 21 to 23, 1943.

Some inmates of the Minsk ghetto were killed in the Tuchinka area, located at the end of Opansky Street (now Kalvariyskaya). There, three huge pits were dug, in which on November 20, 1941, 12,000 Jews were machine-gunned.

Some Jews from the ghetto were killed in the SS concentration camp on Shirokaya Street (now Kuibyshev Street, near the intersection with Masherov Avenue). About 2,000 Jews from the Minsk ghetto were taken by one train on June 11, 1943, to Poland, to the Majdanek concentration camp, and after forced labor, almost all were exterminated.

Of more than 100,000 Jews who ended up in the Minsk ghetto, only 2–3% of inmates survived.

From August 1943 until almost the liberation of Minsk in July 1944, inmates were constantly taken from the camp in 4 gas vans to the extermination camp “Maly Trostenets.” On the way to the camp, people died from exhaust gases, and their bodies were burned in Trostenets. About 20,000 people were killed this way, almost all Jews from the Minsk ghetto.

Deportation of Jews from Germany to Belarus began in September 1941. On November 10, 1941, 992 German Jews were transported by train from Düsseldorf to the Minsk ghetto. Only five of them survived the Holocaust.

By November 1941, the Germans had already fenced off part of the Minsk ghetto with barbed wire along Respublikanskaya (now Romanovskaya Sloboda), Opansky, and Shornaya streets, calling this area “Sonderghetto No. 1.” Sonderghetto No. 2 was created between Kustarnaya (no longer existing), Dimitrova, Shpalernaya, Ostrovsky, and Nemiga streets. All Jews from Western Europe were settled only in these two places.

Communication with other ghetto inmates was strictly forbidden; brought-in items were quickly exchanged for food, and German Jews starved much more than locals. Despite extreme exhaustion, they maintained perfect order in their territory and demonstratively celebrated the Sabbath.

According to official data, from November 1941 to October 1942, 23,904 Jews were relocated from Western Europe to Minsk. German historian Monika Kingreen provides other data—that in 11 months of 1941–1942, 15,500 Jews were deported to Minsk from 250 European settlements, of whom only 500 survived. Based on this data, it can be asserted that Minsk was the central place of Jewish extermination during this period.

The Sonderghetto housed Jews from Germany, Austria, Czechoslovakia, and other countries. The first of them brought to the Minsk ghetto were German Jews from Hamburg, and for this reason, all foreign Jews were called “Hamburgers.”

Several thousand of these Jews were taken to Koidanovo in March 1942 and killed there; the rest were killed in Trostenets. Some Jews from Western Europe were not even brought into the ghetto but taken directly to Trostenets for execution.

In the Minsk ghetto, under the leadership of Isai Kazinets, Mikhail Gebelev, Hirsch Smolyar, and Matvey Pruslin, 22 underground groups actively operated from the first months of the ghetto’s existence, uniting more than 300 people. Their combat record includes sabotage acts and sabotage at German enterprises and the railway junction, about 5,000 people taken from the ghetto to partisan detachments, collection of weapons and medicines for partisans, and distribution of underground press. By the end of 1941, a unified underground center was organized in the ghetto. Hirsch Smolyar, one of the leaders of the underground combat organization of the ghetto, was a Jewish writer and journalist who later left memoirs about the years of struggle against Nazism.

The underground organized the escape of Jews from the ghetto to the forests, often guided by children. Some of their names are known: Katya Kesler, Sima Fiterson (11 years old), David Klionsky, Rakhilya Goldina, her younger brother Lazar Goldin, Monya, Benya (12 years old), Fanya Gimpel, Bronya Zvalo, Vilik Rubezhin, Bronya Gamer, Katya Peregonok, Lenya Modkhilevich, Misha Longin, Lenya Melamud, Albert Maizel.

In November 1941, the first armed group of Jews led by Khaimovich escaped from the ghetto. Not finding partisans, almost all of them died in February–March 1942. On April 10, 1942, an armed group left Minsk with Lapidus, Oppenheim, and Losik, from which later the Kutuzov detachment of the 2nd Minsk brigade was formed.

Accounts of pogroms, shootings, gas vans where people were killed by gas on the way to burial pits are known from survivors and post-war interrogations of perpetrators. The fates of hundreds of victims remain unknown.

Those who survived were people led out of the ghetto to partisans or simply to the forests, inmates who united into underground resistance groups. The names of two underground leaders—Isai Kazinets and Mikhail Gebelev—are now given to Minsk streets; the names of more than 300 other underground members remain in memoirs or have been erased by time.

It is believed that the underground helped about 5,000 people escape from the ghetto, including children who often served as guides. According to researchers, those who fled the ghetto formed from 7 to 10 partisan detachments.

On March 30, German Captain Willy Schulz took 25 Jews by truck from the ghetto to the partisans.

In total, from the inmates of the Minsk ghetto, according to various data, from 7 to 10 partisan detachments were formed: the 5th Kutuzov detachment, detachments named after Lazo, Budyonny, Frunze, Parkhomenko, Shchors, the 25th anniversary of the BSSR detachment, detachment 406 and detachment 106, and the 1st battalion of the 208th separate partisan regiment.

The underground group of the Judenrat was led by its first chairman, Ilya Mushkin. Through his efforts, two hospitals—general and infectious—two orphanages, and a home for the elderly were created and operated in the ghetto. Under Mushkin’s leadership, warm clothes were collected for partisans. This underground group also included Zyama Serebryansky—the head of the Jewish police of the Minsk ghetto.

The infectious hospital became the center of the ghetto’s underground organization, and its chief physician Lev Kulik was one of the underground leaders.

After the arrest and murder of Ilya Mushkin, his successor as chairman of the Judenrat, Ioffe, also continued the underground struggle.

The head of the Security Police and SD in Minsk was SS Obersturmbannführer Eduard Strauch. Latvian volunteer company members also played a significant role in uncovering the Minsk anti-fascist underground network and, in particular, the Military Council of the Partisan Movement (MCMP), the Minsk underground city committee of the Communist Party (Bolsheviks) of Belarus, and other bodies.

Police formations created in the Baltic states began arriving in Belarus from autumn 1941. The first, in early October, was the 2nd Lithuanian Security Battalion (renamed the 12th Lithuanian Police Battalion in November 1941) from Kaunas to Minsk, commanded by Major Antanas Impulavičius. The battalion performed guard and sentry duties and participated in punitive actions against partisans and the extermination of the Jewish population.

A special unit (“Latvian company at the SD”) of the Higher SS and Police Leader (Höhere SS und Polizeiführer—HSSPF) Ostland, stationed at the Minsk SD, was predominantly staffed by Latvians. Its main task was to assist in the fight against the anti-fascist underground and partisans, as well as participate in mass killings of Belarusian Jews. By summer 1942, the 266th “E” Latvian Police Battalion was also stationed in Minsk, operationally subordinate to the HSSPF Ostland and tactically to the commander of order police in Belarus.

The highest SS and police leader in Belarus, Karl Zenner, appeared before the Koblenz regional court in 1961. He was sentenced to 15 years in prison for organizing the shooting of 6,000 people. He was released in 1967 due to health reasons and died in 1969 in Andernach.

On October 15, 1962, the trial of Nazi war crimes in Belarus, including in the Minsk ghetto, began in Koblenz. Georg Hoizer, Rudolf Schlegel, Friedrich Merbach, Arthur Wilke, Johannes Feder, Wilhelm Paul, Jakob Oswald, Eberhard von Toll, Franz Stark, and Karl Dalheimer stood trial. The main defendant was the head of the Gestapo in Minsk, Georg Hoizer, who was sentenced to 15 years for complicity in the murder of 11,103 people. He was released early in 1969 and died in 1989.

Incomplete lists of Jews killed in the Minsk ghetto have been published. Several monuments and memorials have been erected in Minsk in memory of more than 105,000 Jews killed in the Minsk ghetto.

At the site of the “Large” ghetto on Melnikayte Street, where about 5,000 Jews were killed on March 2, 1942, an obelisk was erected in 1947, and in 2000 a sculptural composition “The Last Path” (Memorial to the Victims of Hitler’s Genocide (Yama)) was installed. https://reveal.world/story/pamyatnik-razbityj-ochag-v-minske

In the Shashkovka tract (southeastern outskirts of Minsk), at the site of the Trostenets death camp, an obelisk was erected in 1963 and reconstructed in 1994. In 1995, a stele was unveiled at the site of the crematorium.

On Sukhoi Street is the grave of inmates of the Minsk ghetto and Sonderghetto (there, according to incomplete data, rest more than 7,000 murdered Jews). In 1993 and 1998, two steles were also installed there in memory of Jews from the Sonderghetto, and on September 22, 2002, a stone was placed in memory of 993 deported Jews from Düsseldorf killed in the Minsk ghetto. https://reveal.world/story/evrejskij-memorial-nyj-park-minsk

On the facade of house No. 13 on Romanovskaya Sloboda Street, in 1992, representatives of the Jewish community of Bremen installed a memorial plaque in memory of almost 450 Bremen Jews deported in 1942 and killed in the Minsk ghetto. (In 2007, the bronze plaque was stolen, and after its return, the original is kept in the Belarusian-German institution “Historical Workshop in Minsk,” and a copy is installed on the house.)

On Pritytsky Street, on the side of the Kalvariya cemetery, there is a monument to the victims of the Minsk ghetto with an inscription in four languages: “Not far from this place in 1941–1943, more than 14,000 inmates of the Minsk ghetto were shot by fascists.”

127 people from Minsk were awarded the honorary title “Righteous Among the Nations” by the Israeli memorial institute Yad Vashem “as a sign of deep gratitude for the help provided to the Jewish people during World War II.”

Sources:

https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Минское_гетто

https://evreimir.com/198733/tragediya-minskogo-getto-bol-i-skorb/