Liquidation of Minsk ghetto is one of the most monstrous crimes of Nazism
- 20.10.2008, 11:42
A ghetto where about 100,000 Jews from Belarus, Poland, Germany, Austria, France, the Netherlands, and Belgium lived, was destroyed in Minsk 65 years ago.
A rally in Yama (Pit) memorial complex takes place today, and a memorial will be opened at the site of execution of more than 5,000 people. A thematic book exhibition will be opened in the National Library, and a special exposition about the Minsk ghetto will be presented in the Museum of the Great Patriotic War.
As deputy chairman of the Israeli National Association of Survived in Concentration Camps and Ghettos David Taubkin, “the programme of marking this sorrowful date contains about 15 points. Many points are related with concrete dates, concrete events of those times. We remember this well, and know it well.”
Israeli citizens, who went through calamities of the war, will come to the capital of Belarus to pay tribute to 100,000 slaughtered prisoners. Israeli citizens, born in Belarus, are former prisoners of ghetto and war veterans will represent five organisations in Minsk. In the beginning of the year the Belarusian organising committee of preparing the day of memory agreed the programme of mourning actions with the representatives of these organisations.
About a million Jews had live in Belarus before the German occupation. After invasion of Nazis, 200 ghettos were created. The biggest one was in Minsk, 100,000 people were driven here since summer 1941. In the second half of 1942, a planned extirpation of Belarusian Jews began, Nazis slaughtered dozens of thousands civilians on ghettos of Brest, Pinsk, Baranavichy, Slonim, and Białystok.
The Minsk ghetto, one of the biggest in Europe, was opened for 27 months that was unique for the USSR. Each family had bon ore than 1.5 square meters to live in the ghetto - some streets, enclosed by barbed wire.
The so called Sonderghetto in Sukhyaya and Obuvnaya Streets were the last refuge on the way to death for more than 26,000 deportees from Germany, Austria, the Czech Republic, and Poland.
On June 21, 1943, Himmler ordered to destroy all ghettos in Eastern Belarus (populated by 400,000 people). The speed of murdering of Belarusian Jews increased: only in Białystok 30,000 Jews were killed. The last victims of Holocaust in Belarus were dwellers of the Minsk ghetto: on October 21, 1943, SS soldiers rounded up and transferred to Maly Trostinec.
The tragedy of the Minsk ghetto steps over the bounds of a local event. It stands in the same line with the most monstrous crimes of Nazism against the Jews.