The Slutsk affair was a mass killing that occurred near

Slutsk Slutsk is a town in Minsk Region, in central Belarus. It serves as the administrative center of Slutsk District, and is located on the Sluch (Belarus), Sluch River south of the capital Minsk. As of 2025, it has a population of 59,450. Geography ...

Byelorussian SSR The Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic (BSSR, Byelorussian SSR or Byelorussia; ; ), also known as Soviet Belarus or simply Belarus, was a republic of the Soviet Union (USSR). It existed between 1920 and 1922 as an independent state, and ...

in the

Soviet Union The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR), commonly known as the Soviet Union, was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until Dissolution of the Soviet ...

from 27 to 28 October 1941. Members of the

Gestapo The (, ), Syllabic abbreviation, abbreviated Gestapo (), was the official secret police of Nazi Germany and in German-occupied Europe. The force was created by Hermann Göring in 1933 by combining the various political police agencies of F ...

and the Lithuanian Auxiliary Police launched an operation to liquidate the Jewish ghetto in Slutsk without proper authorisation. Around 8,000 to 10,000 people were rounded up and taken to a nearby site where they were killed. Many victims of the operation were non-Jewish

Belarusians Belarusians ( ) are an East Slavs, East Slavic ethnic group native to Belarus. They natively speak Belarusian language, Belarusian, an East Slavic language. More than 9 million people proclaim Belarusian ethnicity worldwide. Nearly 7.99&n ...

which caused backlash from the Nazi civil administration in Byelorussia and the Belarusian population.

Background

On 27 June 1941, following the German invasion of the Soviet Union, the city of

in the

was captured by

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 ...

and incorporated into '' Generalbezirk Weißruthenien'' (White Ruthenia). Slutsk had a large concentration of both Jews and

, and the Nazi authorities soon established a Jewish ghetto within the city. By September, most Jews in Slutsk and the surrounding area were confined to the city ghetto and required to wear the yellow star. Those deemed unfit to perform

forced labour Forced labour, or unfree labour, is any work relation, especially in modern or early modern history, in which people are employed against their will with the threat of destitution, detention, or violence, including death or other forms of ...

in factories and workshops, mainly the elderly, were taken out in small groups to Gorevakha on the western outskirts of Slutsk and shot.

Massacre

On 27 October 1941, four

companies A company, abbreviated as co., is a legal entity representing an association of legal people, whether natural, juridical or a mixture of both, with a specific objective. Company members share a common purpose and unite to achieve specifi ...

of Lithuanian Auxiliary Police stationed in

Kaunas Kaunas (; ) is the second-largest city in Lithuania after Vilnius, the fourth largest List of cities in the Baltic states by population, city in the Baltic States and an important centre of Lithuanian economic, academic, and cultural life. Kaun ...

entered Slutsk with the assignment of liquidating the city's Jewish population within two days. This "special security operation" was led by the ''

Einsatzgruppen (, ; also 'task forces') were (SS) paramilitary death squads of Nazi Germany that were responsible for mass murder, primarily by shooting, during World War II (1939–1945) in German-occupied Europe. The had an integral role in the imp ...

'' (mobile

death squads A death squad is an armed group whose primary activity is carrying out extrajudicial killings, massacres, or enforced disappearances as part of political repression, genocide, ethnic cleansing, or revolutionary terror. Except in rare cases in ...

) of the

, and acted without authorization from the local German civil administration and SS authorities that had marshaled various specialized workers from the population. The Jews in Slutsk were surrounded, removed from their houses, rounded up and marched to Gorevakha to be killed ''en masse''. The operation was such a frenzy that many Belarusians outside of the ghetto were also rounded up accidentally.

Aftermath

An estimated 8,000 to 10,000 people were marched from Slutsk to Gorevakha where they were subsequently shot, with around only half to two-thirds of the victims being Jews. The high proportion of Belarusian victims is believed to have contributed to an uptick of youths joining the Belarusian resistance movement. The German civil administration was outraged, after having made great efforts to gain the favor of the local Belarusian population in accordance with the instructions of

Adolf Hitler Adolf Hitler (20 April 1889 – 30 April 1945) was an Austrian-born German politician who was the dictator of Nazi Germany from 1933 until Death of Adolf Hitler, his suicide in 1945. Adolf Hitler's rise to power, He rose to power as the lea ...

. Commissioner General of White Ruthenia

Wilhelm Kube Wilhelm Kube (13 November 1887 – 22 September 1943) was a German Nazi politician and official who served as the '' Generalkommissar'' of '' Generalbezirk Weißruthenien'' in the ''Reichskommissariat Ostland'' from 1941 to 1943. Kube was invol ...

wrote in protest to his superior and to ''

Reichsführer-SS (, ) was a special title and rank that existed between the years of 1925 and 1945 for the commander of the (SS). ''Reichsführer-SS'' was a title from 1925 to 1933, and from 1934 to 1945 it was the highest Uniforms and insignia of the Schut ...

Heinrich Himmler Heinrich Luitpold Himmler (; 7 October 1900 – 23 May 1945) was a German Nazism, Nazi politician and military leader who was the 4th of the (Protection Squadron; SS), a leading member of the Nazi Party, and one of the most powerful p ...

: The letter concluded: Hitler, by all accounts, was never notified of the incident and thereafter mistakenly believed that Nazi partisans among the Belarusian population would support the Germans in the continuing invasion.

References

External links

"The Murder of Soviet Jews"
* {{Authority control Holocaust massacres and pogroms in Belarus Jewish Belarusian history Slutsk Massacres in 1941 October 1941 in Europe

Background

Massacre

Aftermath

See also

References

External links