Minsk

German Occupation of Minsk

German forces occupied Minsk, capital of the Belorussian Soviet Socialist Republic (SSR) in the Soviet Union, shortly after the German invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941. During the German occupation, the western portion of the Belorussian SSR became General Commissariat White Russia (Generalkommissariat Weissruthenian), part of the Reich Commissariat Ostland (Reichskommissariat Ostland), with Minsk as its capital.

Ghetto

ID Card

Dora Rivkina (ID Card)

Dora was the second of three girls born to a Jewish family in Minsk, the capital of Belorussia. Before World War II, more than a third of the city was Jewish. Dora and her family lived on Novomesnitskaya Street in central Minsk. Dora's father worked in a state-owned factory building furniture.

1933-39: As a young girl, Dora was athletic and excelled at swimming and dancing. When she was in the second grade, she was chosen to dance the lead part in a New Year's performance. She was also a member of the Young Pioneers, a Soviet youth organization that held lectures on Soviet history, and also organized camping trips.

1940-43: The invading Germans reached Minsk in 1941 and Dora's family was ordered into the Minsk ghetto. In 1943, when the ghetto was emptied, 19-year-old Dora escaped from a transport and joined the partisans but the Germans soon captured her band. When the guards ordered them to identify any Jews, everyone remained silent at first. But after a guard threatened to shoot them all if they didn't speak, a woman pointed at Dora. The Germans bound Dora's hands, tied a rock around her neck, threw her in a river and shot her.

Some young girls who were in the partisan band later related the story of Dora's death to her sister, Berta, the only surviving member of Dora's family.

In late July 1941, the Germans established a ghetto in the northwestern part of Minsk. About 80,000 people, including Jews from nearby towns, were crowded into the Minsk ghetto.

Between November 1941 and October 1942, the German government deported nearly 24,000 Jews from Germany, Austria, and the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia to Minsk. SS and police authorities shot or gassed—in special gas vans—most of them upon arrival in Maly Trostinets, a small village about eight miles to the east. The German occupation authorities housed the others in a separate section of the ghetto in Minsk, segregated from local Belorussian Jews. Little contact was permitted between residents of the two ghettos.

The German authorities forced Jews to work on labor projects in factories inside the two ghettos, as well as outside the ghettos, especially in the Shiroka Street labor camp and the opera house (where the occupation authorities supervised the sorting and storage of confiscated Jewish private property).

Resistance in Minsk

In August 1941, Jews established an anti-German underground in the Minsk ghetto. Members organized escapes from the ghetto and formed partisan units in the forests to the southeast and northwest of Minsk. Jews from Minsk established seven different partisan units. In all, about 10,000 Jews fled to the forests; most of them were killed by German forces during the war.

Mass Killings

Beginning in August 1941, German authorities repeatedly conducted mass killing operations against the residents of the Minsk ghetto. In the fall of 1943, the Germans destroyed the Minsk ghetto. The SS deported some Jews to the Sobibor killing center, and killed about 4,000 remaining Jews at Maly Trostinets.

Photo

Charred remains of victims at Maly Trostinets (Photo)

View of the charred remains of Jewish victims burned by the Germans near the Maly Trostinets concentration camp.  Photograph taken ca. 1944. 

In the fall of 1943, the Germans destroyed the Minsk ghetto. The SS deported some Jews from Minsk to the Sobibor killing center, and killed about 4,000 remaining Jews at Maly Trostinets.

Credits:

• US Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of Belarusian State Archive of Documentary Film and Photography

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