Encyclopaedia Judaica<Holocaust Period.
Jews in Minsk 02: 1941-1970
(1941-1944 German Nazi rule, 1944-1970 Soviet BSSR)
Holocaust - Soviet rule
from: Minsk; In: Encyclopaedia Judaica 1971, vol. 12
presented by Michael Palomino (2008 / 2023)
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Though the 1939 census gave no detail of individual Jewish communities, it is estimated that the Jewish population of Minsk at the outbreak of the German-Soviet war (June 1941) numbered about 90,000 (around 37% of the total).
[1941: Big Flight from Barbarossa]
Some 100,000 inhabitants were left in the city when the German forces entered on June 28. (col. 53)
[[Before 1941 Minsk had about 240.000 inhabitants which is written in the master's thesis of Uwe Gartenschlaeger: Die Stadt Minsk während der deutschen Besetzung (The town of Minsk during the German occupation, chapter 3). So the Big Flight from Barbarossa was well organized, but a certain part of the civil refugees was catched by the fast NS Wehrmacht and brought back. Some parts of the Red army also gave it up and went into the forests and became guerrilla forces. And during the rest of the year of 1941 a lot of the rural population was brought into the town]].
[1941-1944: catched and murdered Jews - Jews deported to Minsk - slave labour camp]
The population rose to 150,000 as the front line moved farther east, and tens of thousands who had fled and had been overtaken by the speek of the German advance, turned back. About one third of these were local Jews. Their number was increased by refugees from as far west as *Bialystok, as well as by survivors of mass executions carried out by the Einsatzkokmmandos (mobile killing squads) in the vicinity, so that another 30,000 Jews were added.
Later, about 8,000 German, Austrian, and Czech Jews were deported to Minsk, so that despite the fact that a large number of Minsk Jews had been murdered before the establishment of the ghetto, at least 85,000 Jews were confined in it. Their choice of Minsk as a site for a large Jewish slave labour camp was dictated by military needs and the geographical position of the city in the rear of two German army groups advancing on Leningrad and Moscow.
[Jewish intelligentsia murdered - ghetto - yellow badge - communal organization implemented]
[[The German occupation was composed of many collaborators. In the SS there were many Baltic and Ukraine members who terrorized now the staying Jews]].
Immediately following the occupation of Minsk, the German city commandant ordered all males between the ages of 15 and 45 to report for registration under the penalty of death. About 40,000 reported and, in a field at Drozdy outside Minsk, were segregated in three sections: Jews, Red Army men, and non-Jewish civilians. On the fifth day the non-Jewish civilians were released. All Jewish members of the intelligentsia were ordered to step forward; the several thousand who did so were marched off to the nearby woods and machine-gunned. The remaining Jews were moved to Minsk prison and released on Aug. 20, 1941.
On the same day the city commandant issued an ordinance for the establishment of a ghetto in a suburb consisting mostly of wooden cottages, and ordered every Jew to wear the yellow badge. All Jews had to be inside the ghetto by July 25, but the Judenrat managed to delay the date until the middle of August by means of bribes.
As there were no Jewish communal organizations to provide the Germans with officials to carry out their orders, a group of Jews was arrested. One of them, Ilya Mushkin, who knew a little German, was appointed head of a Judenrat and ordered to select the other officials.
[Ghetto Minsk hard life: murders and kidnappings - labour camp on Shirokaya Street with Jews and with Russians from the Red Army]
Once inside the ghetto, the Jews were terrorized by nightly murders and kidnappings carried out by the Germans and their local henchmen. On the nights of August 14, 25, and 31, thousands were taken away and only a few appeared in the dreaded "labour" camp on Shirokaya Street, where in addition to Jews the Germans held non-Jewish Red Army men.
[7 Nov. 1941: 12,000 Jews murdered at Tuchinka - ghetto reorganized]
On Nov. 7, 1941, 12,000 Jews were seized and taken to Tuchinka, where they were machine-gunned at the side of the newly dug pits. Some of the emptied streets were used to house 1,500 German Jews, most of them from *Hamburg.
By means of barbed wire fences, the ghetto was henceforth divided into three sections:
-- the main ghetto for "unskilled" Jews;
-- a section for "skilled" workers and Judenrat employees, including the ghetto police;
-- and a section housing the German, Austrian, and Czech Jews.
[20 Nov. 1941: 5,000 people murdered at Tuchinka - new Jews from Central Europe]
On Nov. 20, 1941, 5,000 people were removed to Tuchinka, where they were murdered. Some of the emptied streets were used to house 6,500 Jews brought from Germany, Austria, and Czechoslovakia.
[Feb. / 1/2 March 1942: 5,000 Jews murdered in the ghetto - orphanage inhabitants murdered - several 1,000 working Jews murdered at Koidanovo - further mass murder at Ratomskaya Street]
At the end of February 1942, the *Gestapo asked the Judenrat to turn over 5,000 Jews not employed in Wehrmacht enterprises. The resistance leaders ordered Serebryanskiy, the chief of the ghetto police and a member of the resistance organization, to use his trustworthy policemen to warn the Jews of the impending massacre and tell them to hide.
On March 1 the Germans ordered the Judenrat to dig a pit in Ratomskaya Street, an unpaved ravine in the center of the ghetto. On the following morning, after the columns of workers had left the ghetto, Nazi officials arrived and demanded the 5,000 victims. (col. 54)
Informed that the Judenrat had been unable to collect them, the Germans [[and their collaborators]] began a hunt for their victims. Dr. Chernis, the woman in charge of the ghetto orphanage, and Fleysher, the supervisor, were ordered to bring their charges in front of the Judenrat building. Unaware of what awaited their children, they led them, dressed and washed, and carrying the youngest in their arms, toward the building, but when they arrived in Ratomskaya Street they were all thrown into the pit and buried alive.
When the columns of workers returned at night, several thousand were taken to *Koidanovo and murdered there. Others were forced to join the people rounded up inside the ghetto and butchered in the Ratomskaya Street ravine.
Shortly after the March 2 massacre, the Germans discovered the existence of the underground organization in the "Aryan" part of Minsk (the Nazis regarded the Slavs as "Aryans", since they intended to germanize part of them) and its connection with a similar organization inside the ghetto. On the night of March 31, 1942, the Gestapo raided the ghetto and arrested several resistance leaders, but failed to capture the head of the resistance, Hersh *Smolar. The raid was followed by nightly massacred directed against relatives and neighbours of runaways, in an attempt to discourage Jews from fleeing to the forests to join the partisans.
On July 28, 1942, after the labour columns left the ghetto, the Germans and their local collaborators invaded the ghetto and for three days murdered and tortured the inhabitants. Some 10,000 were murdered, including 3,500 German, Austrian, and Czech Jews, most of whom were old people, women, and children. Nine thousand Jews still survived.
[1 Feb. 1943: 1,500 Jews murdered at Maly Trostenets - further shootings and gassings in vans - 18 Sept. 1943: transport to Sobibor]
On Feb. 1, 1943, 1,500 Jews were rounded up and shot over open pits at Maly Trostenets. The number of survivors was systematically reduced by the shooting of smaller groups of men and the gassing of women and children in vans during the summer. To speed up the total annihilation, a transport of some 2,000 people, including a group of Jewish Red Army men held in the Shirokaya Street camp, were sent to *Sobibor on Sept. 18, 1943. This transport included Lt. Alexander *Pecherski and Shelomo Lejtman, the latter a Jewish Communist from Poland, who together led the revolt in the death camp on Oct. 14, 1943.
[[It's possible that these Jews were brought to work in tunnel systems for the Fuehrer's bunkers and for the underground weapon production, the "Underground Reich"]].
[22 Sept. 1943: murder of Kube - liquidation of the ghetto on 21 Oct. 1943]
On September 22, Generalkommissar Kube was killed by a bomb placed by his Belorussian maid, E.G. Mazanik. The assassination was organized by David Keymakh, the political commissar of the detachment commanded by G.M. Linkov, who as "Uncle Batya" became one of the most successful Soviet partisan leaders. This event speeded up the final liquidation of the ghetto, which took place on Oct. 21, 1943.
Resistance.
[Structure and personalities]
The resistance record of the Jews imprisoned in Minsk Ghetto is unique. One Sunday in 1941, within days of finding themselves inside the ghetto, a group of local Jews and Jewish Communists from Poland met and decided that it was the duty of the Minsk Jews to take an active part in the war against the German invaders. They rejected the possibility of armed resistance inside the ghetto and decided to devote all their efforts of effecting the escape of the largest possible number of Jews into the forests in order to become partisans.
Four resistance groups arose in the "Aryan" part of the city in August and September 1941. However, it was only after the November 7 massacre [[1941]] that Hersh Smolar, the Polish-born leader of the Jewish resistance, met Isac Pavlovich Kozinets, known as Slavek, the leader of one of the four groups, who subsequently became the leader of the entire underground movement in Minsk. It was only in 1969 that it became known that Kozinets was a Jew born at Genichesk on the Azov Sea and that his first name was Joshua. A petroleum engineer by profession, Kozinets had been in charge of the installations (col. 55)
in Bialystok at the outbreak of the war.
The underground organization inside the ghetto then became an integral part of the city underground and was known as the "Ernst Thaelmann district", in recognition of the part played by the ghetto inhabitants in the struggle against the Nazis. The Judenrat itself, under Mushkin, took orders from the city-underground committee and played a unique part in diverting much of the production from the workshops and factories manned by Jews to the needs of the partisans.
[Means - flight into the forests - developing the partisan movement - rebuilding resistance groups after spring 1942]
The Jewish organization provided the city underground with news of what was happening in the outside world by establishing a radio monitoring station. It also supplied a printing press and printers, while the ghetto hospital provided surgical and other treatment for wounded partisans. Moreover, Jews employed in the factories working for the Wehrmacht set an example to their Belorussian fellow workers in how to sabotage production.
In 1942 the ghetto resistance was better organized and more efficient than the city organization, and the Jews, who ran incomparably greater risks than their Russian and Belorussian fellow citizens, contributed greatly in the common fight against the Germans. In return, the Jewish resistance leaders asked their "Aryan" comrades to help them save the maximum number of Jews from slaughter by making possible their escape into the forests to become partisans.
As their assistance proved inadequate, the Jews also had to take the initiative in developing the partisan movement. They organized the nuclei of future partisan detachments inside the ghetto, while M. Gebelev and M. Pruslin, two of the Jewish resistance leaders, helped organize similar ten-man teams in the "Aryan" part of the city. Furthermore, when most of the "Aryan" resistance leaders fell into the hands of the Germans in the spring of 1942, Gebelev and other Jews played a decisive role in rebuilding the city organization.
Gebelev was actually captured when preparing the escape of a group of Russian prisoners of war to the forests. The first organized group of Jewish partisans left the ghetto in December 1941 to join Captain Sergeyev-Bystrov's detachment, which in time grew into the Stalin Brigade.
[Flight by the railwaymen's resistance group]
Many Jews escaped with the help of the railwaymen's resistance group headed by Kuznetsov;
[Partisan detachments and brigades]
they formed a large proportion of the Narodny Mstitel ("People's Avenger") Brigade, which Kuznetsov later commanded. The Jews of Minsk created the 406, Kutuzov, Budyonny, Dzerzhinskiy, Sergei Lazo, and Parkhomenko Detachments, as well as the 106 Family Detachment, which provided protection in the forests for over 600 Jewish women and children. Jews also formed a large percentage of the Frunze Detachment. The Kutuzov Detachment became the nucleus of the Second Minsk Brigade, while the Parkhomenko Detachment, formed mostly by Jews who had been helped to escape from the ghetto by boys and girls ranging in age from 11 to 15, served as the basis of the Chapayev Brigade. Hundreds of Minsk Jews were also active in other brigades.
Altogether some 10,000 Minsk Jews succeeded in escaping from the Minsk ghetto - a proportion without parallel in the history of the city ghettos of Poland and the occupied territories of the Soviet Union. Of those who escaped, perhaps no more than half survived the war.
[[There were also some occupied forces who let them go]].
Contemporary Jewry.
[Holocaust memorial - murder of Solomon Mikhoels - Jews coming back from Inner of the Soviet Union - new anti-Semitism waves - census of 1959 - restricted community life]
A memorial to the Jewish victims of the Holocaust was erected in Minsk immediately after World War II - the only one in the U.S.S.R. - bearing a Yiddish inscription which explicitly mentions Jewish victims. On Jan. 13, 1948, Solomon *Mikhoels, the chairman of the Jewish *Anti-Fascist Committee and the director of the Jewish State Theater in Moscow, was murdered in Lodochnaya Street in Minsk while visiting the city on an official mission. Later the murder was acknowledged to (col. 56)
have been the work of the secret police (on Stalin's orders).
[[Stalin ordered the Jews from the Inner of the Soviet Union back to Eastern Europe. By this Minsk got a lot of Jews again. Since 1948 Stalin and his successors suppressed the Jewish religion, institutions, and above all the Zionist movement by new anti-Semitism waves in the Soviet Union because of the foundation of Herzl Free Mason CIA Israel which was working as a "US" puppet state and was a member to encircle the Soviet Union. So the numbers of Jews who were confessing to be a Jew more and more declined. Considering that all communism was financed by banks of the "USA" the whole game of war of racist "USA" is detected...]]
In 1959 census 38,842 Jews were registered in Minsk, 5,716 of whom declared Yiddish to be their mother tongue. However, the population figure was estimated to be in fact between 50,000 and 60,000.
The Great Synagogue of Minsk was closed down by the authorities in 1959, and in the same year private religious services were dispersed by the militia. A small synagogue was left, but in 1964 it was destroyed, as the site was earmarked for new apartment buildings. Eventually the Jewish congregation was allowed to open a small synagogue in a wooden hose on the outskirts of the city.
There is no Jewish cemetery in Minsk, but Jews are buried in a separate section in the general cemetery. Mazzah baking [[unleavened bread]] was banned for several years, and on March 23, 1964, an article in the local newspaper, Sovetskaya Belorussiya, condemned the sending of packages of mazzah to Minsk from Jewish communities abroad. Kosher poultry, however, was available. In 1968 several young Jews were arrested for Zionist activity.> (col. 57)
Table. Jews in Minsk
xxxxxxYearxxxxxx
number of Jews
xxxxxxsourcexxxxxx xxxxxxremarkxxxxxx 1847
12,976xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
col. 52
1897
47,562xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx col. 52
1959
38,842xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx col. 57
census
50-60,000xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx col. 57
estimation
Table by Michael Palomino; from: Minsk; In: Encyclopaedia Judaica 1971, Vol. 12
<Bibliography
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-- S.A. Bershadski: Russko-yevreyskiy Arkhiv, 1 (1882), now. 20, 53, 63, 109; 3 (1903), now. 14, 41, 52, 60
-- A. Subbotin: V cherte yevreyskoy osedlosti, 1 (1888), 4-47
-- B. Eisenstadt: Rabbanei Minsk va-Hakhameha (1898); Regesty i nadpisi 3 vols. (1889-1913), indexes
-- Khorosh, in: Voskhod, no. 12 (1901), 100-10)
-- A.H. Shabad: Toledot ha-Yamim she-Averu al ha-Hevra Kaddisha "Shivah Keru'im" u-Veit ha-Midrash ha-Gadol ba-Ir Minsk, 2 vols. (1904-12)
-- Die Judenpogrome in Russland, 2 (1909), 458-65
-- S. Dubnow (ed.): Pinkas ha-Medinah (1925), index
-- Alexandrov, in: Institute of Belorussian Culture: Tsaytshrift, 1 (1926), 239-49; 2-3 (1928), 763-78; 4 (1930), 199-224
-- S. Agurski: Revolyutsionnoye dvizheniye y Belorussii (1928), 139-43 and passim (= Di Revolutsionere Bavegung in Vaysrusland (1931), 168-71)
-- Levitats, in: Zion, 3 (1938), 170-8
-- A. Liessin: Zikhronot ve-Havayot (1943), 1-78, 116-31
-- A. Yaari, in: KS, 20 (1943/44), 163-70
-- Yahadut Lita, 1 (1959), index
-- A. Greenbaum: Jewish Scholarship in Soviet Russia (1959), 22-27, 66-73, passim
-- J. S. Hertz (ed.): Geshikhte fun Bund, 3 vols. (1960-66), indexes
Goldstein, in: He-Avar, 14 (1967), 3-27
HOLOCAUST AND AFTER
-- H. Smolar: Fun Minsker Geto (1946)
-- idem: Resistance in Minsk (1966)
-- S. Schwarz: Jews in the Soviet Union (1951), index
-- J. Greenstein, in: Sefer Pabianice (1956), 349-73 (Yid.)
-- Sefer ha-Partizanim ha-Yehudim, 1 (1958), 501-37
-- K. Loewenstein: Minsk: im Lager der deutschen Juden (1961).> (col. 57)
Sources
Encyclopaedia Judaica 1971: Minsk, vol. 12, col. 53-54
Encyclopaedia Judaica 1971: Minsk, vol. 12, col. 55-56
Encyclopaedia Judaica 1971: Minsk, vol. 12, col. 57-58
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