Maly Trostenets (Maly Trascianiec, , "Little Trostenets") is a village near

Minsk Minsk (, ; , ) is the capital and largest city of Belarus, located on the Svislach (Berezina), Svislach and the now subterranean Nyamiha, Niamiha rivers. As the capital, Minsk has a special administrative status in Belarus and is the administra ...

Belarus Belarus, officially the Republic of Belarus, is a landlocked country in Eastern Europe. It is bordered by Russia to the east and northeast, Ukraine to the south, Poland to the west, and Lithuania and Latvia to the northwest. Belarus spans an a ...

, formerly the

Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic The Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic (BSSR, Byelorussian SSR or Byelorussia; ; ), also known as Soviet Belarus or simply Belarus, was a Republics of the Soviet Union, republic of the Soviet Union (USSR). It existed between 1920 and 19 ...

. During

Nazi Germany Nazi Germany, officially known as the German Reich and later the Greater German Reich, was the German Reich, German state between 1933 and 1945, when Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party controlled the country, transforming it into a Totalit ...

's occupation of the area during

World War II World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...

(when the Germans referred to it as ''

Reichskommissariat Ostland The (RKO; ) was an Administrative division, administrative entity of the Reich Ministry for the Occupied Eastern Territories of Nazi Germany from 1941 to 1945. It served as the German Civil authority, civilian occupation regime in Lithuania, La ...

''), the village became the location of a Nazi extermination site. Throughout 1942, Jews from Austria, Germany, the Netherlands, Poland, and the

Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia The Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia was a partially-annexation, annexed territory of Nazi Germany that was established on 16 March 1939 after the Occupation of Czechoslovakia (1938–1945), German occupation of the Czech lands. The protector ...

were taken by train to Maly Trostenets to be lined up in front of the pits and were shot. From the summer of 1942, mobile gas vans were also used. According to

Yad Vashem Yad Vashem (; ) is Israel's official memorial institution to the victims of Holocaust, the Holocaust known in Hebrew language, Hebrew as the (). It is dedicated to preserving the memory of the Jews who were murdered; echoing the stories of the ...

, the Jews of Minsk were murdered and buried in Maly Trostenets and in another village, Bolshoi Trostinets, between 28 and 31 July 1942 and on 21 October 1943. As the

Red Army The Workers' and Peasants' Red Army, often shortened to the Red Army, was the army and air force of the Russian Soviet Republic and, from 1922, the Soviet Union. The army was established in January 1918 by a decree of the Council of People ...

approached the area in June 1944, the Germans murdered most of the prisoners and destroyed the camp. The estimates of how many people were murdered at Maly Trostenets vary. According to

, 65,000 Jews were murdered in one of the nearby pine forests, mostly by shooting. Holocaust historian Stephan Lehnstaedt believes the number is higher, writing that at least 106,000 Jews were murdered at the location. Researchers from the Soviet Union estimated there had been around 200,000 murders at the camp and nearby execution sites. Lehnstaedt writes that the estimates include the Jews of the

Minsk Ghetto The Minsk Ghetto was created soon after the Operation Barbarossa, German invasion of the Soviet Union. It was one of the largest in the Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic, Byelorussian SSR, and the largest in the German-occupied Europe, Germa ...

, who numbered 39,000 to almost 100,000.

Camp establishment and destruction

The primary purpose of the camp was the murder of Jewish prisoners of the

and the surrounding area. Firing squad was the chief execution method. Mobile gas vans were also deployed. Baltic German SS-'' Scharführer'' Heinrich Eiche was the camp administrator. As the

approached the camp in June 1944, toward the end of World War II, between June 28 and June 30, the Germans murdered the majority of prisoners by locking them inside of the camps, burning their barracks, and when anyone tried to escape the burning building they were shot. By June 30 the entire camp had been destroyed, however, a few Jewish prisoners were able to escape into the surrounding Blagovshchina forest and survive until July 3 when the approaching

reached the decimated camp.

After the war

Victims

The names of 10,000 Austrian Jews murdered in Maly Trostenets were collected in a book, ''Maly Trostinec – Das Totenbuch: Den Toten ihre Namen'', by Waltraud Barton. * Cora Berliner (most likely) * Grete Forst * JUDr. Walter Krafft, Austrian Lawyer, cousin of Kurt Adler, including his wife Lilly Sara Krafft * Mitzi Freud and Paula Winternitz née Freud * Arthur Ernst Rutra, author and translator * Vincent Hadleŭski incenty Godlewski Roman Catholic priest and Belarusian nationalist resistance fighter ( 1888), arrested in Minsk on 24 December 1942 and shot at Trostenets the same day. * Margarete Hilferding (in transit to the camp from Terezín) *

Norbert Jokl Norbert Jokl (February 25, 1877 – probably May 1942) was an Austrian Albanologist of Jewish descent who has been called the father of Albanology. Early life Jokl was born in Bzenec (then Bisenz), Southern Moravia (now the Czech Republic) ...

(debated) * Alfred Nichtenhauser, Modling, Austria shop owner

Memorial

A memorial complex has been built at the site of the camp. File:Maly Trastsianets sign 4.jpg, Memorial sign on the place of main massacres File:Trascianiec memorial complex (Minsk) 01.jpg, The plate of the planned memorial complex File:Trascianiec memorial complex (Minsk) 12.jpg, Memorial complex, built in 2015

Camp establishment and destruction

After the war

Victims

Memorial

See also

Notes

References

Further reading