The Minsk ghetto is a terrible page of the most bloody war in history. Wehrmacht troops occupied the Belarusian capital on June 28, 1941. Three weeks later, the Nazis created a ghetto, which subsequently contained one hundred thousand prisoners. A little more than half survived.
What is a ghetto?
This word is translated from Italian as “new foundry”. The term appeared in the 16th century, when a special area for Jews was organized in Venice. Ghetto nuovo is a special settlement for people who are discriminated against on racial or national grounds. But in the 20th century, it was otherwise possible to answer the question: "Ghetto - what is this?" The Second World War turned this word into a synonym for the death camp. The Nazis created isolated Jewish neighborhoods in many occupied cities. The largest were Warsaw, Terezin, Minsk. The ghetto on the map of Minsk is presented below.
The occupation of the Belarusian capital
Three days after the Germans captured the city, they forced all Jews to surrender their money and valuables. At the end of June, a Judenrat was created. Ilya Mushkin was elected chairman of this organization - he was fluent in German. Before the war, this man owned one of the local trusts.
On July 19, as part of the program for the extermination of Jews, the invaders organized the Minsk ghetto. In the city, advertisements were distributed listing the streets included in its composition. Jews were supposed to move there within five days. Future prisoners did not yet know that few would survive in the Minsk ghetto.
Control
Judenrat did not have any administrative rights. At first, Mushkin was responsible for collecting indemnities from the Jewish population, as well as for registering houses in the ghetto and each of its inhabitants. The power here belonged to the chairman of the German command. The occupiers appointed to this position a certain Gorodetsky - a native of Leningrad, who had German origin. This man, according to eyewitnesses of those terrible days, showed a pathological tendency to sadism.
Jews were supposed to resettle in the ghetto, according to the order of the German command, within five days. But it turned out to be difficult to implement. Several tens of thousands of Jews lived in the city. In addition, before they moved, the residents of the streets that were part of the Minsk ghetto had to vacate their homes. All this took about ten days. By August 1, the Minsk ghetto contained 80 thousand people.
Conditions
The ghetto was located in the area of the Lower Market and the Jewish cemetery. It covered 39 streets. The whole territory was fenced with barbed wire. Among the guards there were not only Germans, but also Belarusians and Lithuanians. The rules here were the same as in the Warsaw ghetto. The prisoner did not have the right to go out without an identification mark - a five-pointed yellow star. Otherwise, he could be shot on the spot. However, the yellow star did not save from death. From the first days of the creation of the Minsk ghetto, both Germans and policemen robbed and killed Jews with complete impunity.
The life of the Jews was imposed by many prohibitions. The ghetto prisoner did not have the right to move along the sidewalk, visit public places, heat the living quarters, make an exchange of things for groceries from a representative of another nationality, wear fur clothes. When meeting with a German, he had to take off his hat, and at a distance of at least fifteen meters.
Many bans were related to food. At first, Jews were still allowed to exchange things for flour. Soon, it was banned. Products entered the territory of the ghetto, as a rule, illegally. The one who made the exchange risked his life. Inside the Minsk ghetto, the so-called black market operated, in which some Germans also took part. The population density here was extremely high. In a one-story house, which consisted of three apartments, up to a hundred people could live.
Hunger, unbearable crowding, unsanitary conditions, cold - all this created favorable conditions for the development of various diseases. In 1941, the German command allowed the opening of a hospital and even in an orphanage. In 1943 they were destroyed.
The mass executions of 1941
The first pogrom occurred in August. Then about five thousand Jews were killed. The Germans called the mass killings of ghetto prisoners the neutral word "share." The second such "action" was held on November 7.
In the fall, the Nazis killed six to fifteen thousand Jews. They carried out this operation with the active assistance of the Lithuanian policemen, who, having cordoned off the area, gathered women and children, and then carried out a mass execution. Researchers do not give exact numbers regarding this event. According to various estimates, from five to ten thousand people were killed. After the second pogrom, the ghetto territory was significantly reduced.
In the first months after the creation of the Minsk ghetto, the Germans killed the disabled. Later, large-scale pogroms began, during which the Nazis and policemen destroyed everyone indiscriminately.
March pogrom
In the spring of 1942, the Nazis used gas chambers. What it is? This device was also called a gas car. The machine in which the gas chamber is integrated. The total number of victims who ended up in such a death vehicle is unknown. In Minsk, the Germans used murderers to kill children. Sometimes such machines were made several flights a day.
In 1942, pogroms became almost an everyday occurrence in the Minsk ghetto. They were committed at any time: day and night. But at first it was more often when the able-bodied part of the ghetto population was at work. The Nazis committed one of the mass executions on the territory of the Putchinsky Village Council.
More than three thousand Jews were taken out of the ghetto and killed on the western outskirts of Minsk. Then the Germans gathered about five thousand people. On March 2, the Nazis drove to the outskirts of the city, according to various estimates, from two hundred to three hundred children. Shot, bodies thrown into the quarry. At this place today is a memorial dedicated to the victims of fascism. The monument is called the "Pit".
At the end of July 1942, the Germans staged a pogrom, in which about thirty thousand people died. In December of the same year, all patients were shot, including children. At the beginning of April 1942 there were about 20 thousand able-bodied Jews in the ghetto. Six months later, this number was halved. Until 1943, at least forty thousand more Jews died.
Wilhelm Cuba
During the occupation, the commissar-general gained fame as one of the most cruel executioners. Among German officers, he was known as a squabbler and schemer.
Cuba became famous not only for its cruelty, but also for its cynicism: he treated children with dooms to death a few minutes before their death with sweets. However, some researchers argue that Cuba was against the mass execution of ghetto prisoners. But not because I felt compassion for them. To destroy able-bodied Jews, in his opinion, was unprofitable from an economic point of view. When the inhabitants of Germany were brought to the ghetto, Cuba was furious. Among German Jews there were many participants in the First World War. Nevertheless, the Gauleiter was a small fry in the fascist system. He was not entitled to challenge the decisions of higher ranks.
Wilhelm Kube was liquidated by the Soviet partisans in September 1943. Elena Mazanik, who worked as a servant at the Gauleiter, was associated with an underground organization. She put a clockwork under his mattress.
Helen Mazanik
This woman was known to both Soviet partisans and SS men under the name Galina. After the fall of Minsk, she got a job in a German military unit, then worked for a while in a factory-kitchen. In June 1941, Helen recruited Wilhelm Kube to a mansion located at 27 Teatralnaya Street. Gauleiter lived here with his family.
By that time, Soviet partisans were already hunting for Cuba. Several operations to eliminate the Commissioner General failed. Elena had met with members of the underground organization before, but agreed to take part in the liquidation of Cuba only on the condition that the partisans would help her family members get out of occupied Minsk. This condition has not been met. Mazanik refused.
What ultimately affected the woman, because it was she who laid the bomb in the bed for Gauleiter on September 21, 1943, is unknown. Mina worked on the night of September 22. Cuba's pregnant wife was in the house at that moment in the house, but was not injured. Elena Mazanik was taken out of Minsk, she had to interrogate for many hours, in which the head of the NKVD Vsevolod Merkulov took part. In 1943 she was awarded the title Hero of the Soviet Union.
It is known that Himmler, learning about the death of Cuba, said: "This is happiness for the fatherland." However, mourning was declared in Germany. Cuba was posthumously awarded the cross for military merits. The wife of Cuba dedicated a book of memoirs to her husband.
After the murder of the Gauleiter, three hundred prisoners were shot in the Minsk ghetto. Kurt von Gottberg was appointed to the vacant post.
Hamburg Prisoners
In the Minsk ghetto, Jews were kept not only Belarusian, but also German. In September 1941, the deportation of Jews from Germany began. About nine hundred people were brought to Belarus. Of these, only five survived. For German Jews, a separate zone was allocated, which was called the "Sondergetto". Prisoners from the Czech Republic, Austria and other countries of Western Europe were also kept there. But since most were from Hamburg, they were called "Hamburg Jews." They were strictly forbidden to communicate with the inhabitants of another part of the ghetto.
German prisoners were in worse conditions than Belarusian ones. They experienced a catastrophic shortage of food. Despite everything, they kept their territory clean and even celebrated Saturday. These prisoners were shot in Koidanovo and Trostenets.
Hirsch Smolar
From the SS documents on the Minsk ghetto after the war, Soviet and foreign researchers received data on the death toll. But even the meticulous Germans did not give exact numbers. More complete information was obtained thanks to the recollections of prisoners of the Minsk ghetto. Hirsch Smolyar not only survived the Holocaust, but also talked about what happened in the period from 1941-1943 in the Belarusian capital.
In August 1942, he ended up in the Minsk ghetto. The chronicle of the events of those years is reflected in his autobiographical book. In 1942, Smolyar led an underground organization. He managed to escape from the ghetto. Joining the partisan detachment, Smolyar took part in the publication of underground newspapers in Russian and Yiddish. In 1946 he left for Poland as a repatriate. Smolyar’s book is called The Avengers of the Minsk Ghetto. The chronicle of events is set out very carefully in this journalistic work. The first chapter is called The Way Back. The author tells in it about the first August days, about the resettlement in the Minsk ghetto. In the photo below - a column of prisoners on the streets of the Belarusian capital in 1941.
Underground organizations
Already in the fall of 1941, there were more than twenty such groups in the Minsk ghetto. A photo of one of the leaders of the underground organizations is presented below. This man's name was Isai Kazints. Other leaders of the resistance movement are Mikhail Gebelev and the aforementioned Hirsch Smolar.
Underground groups brought together more than three hundred people. They committed acts of sabotage at the railway junction and German enterprises. Participants in the underground movement removed about five thousand prisoners from the ghetto. These organizations also collected weapons, medicines needed for the partisans, and distributed anti-fascist newspapers. By the end of 1941, a single underground organization was formed on the territory of the ghetto.
The leaders of anti-fascist groups organized the withdrawal of prisoners to partisan detachments. As a rule, children acted as guides. The names of little heroes are known: Vilik Rubezhin, Fanya Gimpel, Bronya Zalo, Katya Distillation, Bronya Gamer, Misha Longin, Lenya Modkhilevich, Albert Meisel.
Prisoners Escape
The first armed group from the ghetto tried to get out to the partisans in November 1941. It was headed by B. Khaimovich. The escaped prisoners wandered around the forests for a long time. However, the partisans were never found. Almost all former prisoners died at the end of the winter of 1942. The next group got out in April of that year. The leaders were Lapidus, Losik and Oppenheim. These prisoners managed to survive, moreover, later they created a separate partisan detachment.
On March 30, 25 Jews were taken out of the ghetto. The operation was not led by a former prisoner, but by a German captain. This person is worth telling in more detail.
Willy Schulz
At the beginning of the war, the captain of the Luftwaffe was injured in a battle on the Western Front. He was sent to Minsk, where he took the post of head of the quartermaster service. In 1942, German Jews were brought to the ghetto. Among them was eighteen-year-old Ilse Stein, whom Schulz fell in love with at first sight.
The captain tried in every possible way to alleviate the fate of the girl. He arranged her as a foreman, and Ilsa Leah's girlfriend as her assistant. Schultz regularly brought them food from the officer’s canteen and warned about the upcoming pogroms more than once.
The military command began to suspect the captain. In his personal file, the following records appeared: "he is listening to Moscow radio," "he is suspected of having a connection with the Jewish I. Stein." Schultz tried to organize the girl’s escape. However, to no avail.
Ilsa's friend was connected with the partisan movement, thanks to which in March 1943 they still managed to organize an escape. Willy Schulz risked his life primarily for his beloved girl. He was ready to help her friend, moreover, Leia spoke Russian. But members of the underground organization used the captain to organize the escape of a large group of Jews.
On March 30, 25 people left the Minsk ghetto, among them were women and children. After the escape, Willy Schulz was sent to the Central Anti-Fascist School, located in Krasnogorsk. He died in 1944 from meningitis. Ilsa Stein gave birth to a boy, but the child died. In 1953, she got married. Stein died in 1993.
According to one version, Ilsa loved only Schulz all her life. According to another, she hated him, but was ready to do anything for the sake of saving relatives (among the participants in the escape on April 30 were her sisters). In 2012, the film "Jewess and Captain" was shot in Germany. In 2012, the book "Lost Love Ilse Stein" was published.
Isai Kazinets
The future leader of the Minsk underground was born in 1910 in the Kherson region. In 1922, Isai Kazinets moved to Batumi, where he received the profession of engineer. In 1941, he, together with the retreating units of the Soviet army, reached Minsk. Kazinets remained in the city and joined an underground organization.
In November, he was elected secretary of the Underground City Committee. Under his leadership, about a hundred diversionary actions were carried out. In early 1942, the Germans managed to arrest several leaders of the underground. One of them issued Isaiah Kazintsa. During the arrest, he put up armed resistance and killed several three soldiers. On May 7, 1942, Kazintsa, as well as another 28 members of an underground organization, were hanged in the city center.
There are many monuments to the victims of the Minsk ghetto in the capital of Belarus . There is a memorial sign at the place of Kazints execution. A street and a square are named in his honor.
Mikhail Gebelev
This man was born in 1905 in one of the villages of the Minsk region, in the family of a cabinet maker. In 1927, Mikhail Gebelev was drafted into the army. After demobilization, he settled in Minsk.
On the second day after the outbreak of the war, Gebel went to the army assembly point, but then there was a complete mess. He returned to the city, and in July led an underground organization. Fearless Herman - the so-called other members of the underground Gebelev. He dealt with many issues, including the organization of sending prisoners to partisan detachments. He participated in the distribution of anti-fascist newspapers. According to Smolar's memoirs, at the end of March 1942, Gebelev became one of the main leaders of a single underground organization.
He was arrested in July 1942. Members of the underground tried to rescue their leader. However, he was suddenly transferred to another prison and hanged. Thanks to the efforts of Mikhail Gebelev, about ten thousand Jews in the period 1941-1943 joined the Soviet partisans.
Memory
A lot of memoirs and heartfelt poems about the Minsk ghetto were created after the war. Most were written by direct witnesses to the tragic events. Children’s grandchildren of the former prisoners dedicated their works to the Minsk ghetto.
Abram Rubenchik at the beginning of the war was 14 years old. His family suffered terrible trials. He dedicated to his mother, father and other victims in 1942, his book “The Truth About the Minsk Ghetto”. The chronicle of events is presented scrupulously - the author of a journalistic story was then at an age when memory is especially tenacious. This work describes all the important stages in the history of the occupation of the Belarusian capital - from the arrival of the Germans to the release of prisoners. Other novels and essays on this subject:
- “Glimpses of memory” M. Treister.
- “Minsk ghetto through the eyes of my father” I. Canon.
- “A Long Way to Starry Street” by S. Gebelev.
- "Sparks in the night" S. Sadovsky.
- "You must not forget" Rubinstein.
- “The Holocaust of Jews in Belarus” by L. Smilovitsky.
The main monument to the victims of the Minsk ghetto in Belarus - “Pit” - the first memorial in the USSR, on which there is an inscription not only in Russian, but also in Yiddish. The obelisk was opened two years after the end of the war. The words engraved on the monument belong to the poet Khaim Maltinsky, whose family died in the Minsk ghetto. The monument "The Last Way" was erected in 2000.