Maly Trostinets

The Death Camp near Minsk

Maly Trostinets is a village in Eastern Belorussia some 12 kilometres East of Minsk, where the Nazis established a camp. The site chosen was a former collective farm. Russian prisoners of war and Jews were forced to build the barracks for the six hundred slave labourers and their guards.

The camp initially held Soviet prisoners of war that were captured after the German advance on the Soviet Union, which began on June 22, 1941, known as Operation Barbarossa. But it became a Vernichtungslager, or an extermination camp, on May 10, 1942, when the first transport of Jews arrived there, from Germany, Poland, the Netherlands, Austria, and the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia.

However, the primary purpose of the extermination camp was the eradication of the Jewish population of Minsk and the surrounding areas, such as the  adjacent village of Bolshoi Trostinets. Jews were killed by means of mobile gas chambers between the 28 July 1942 and 31 July 1942, and subsequently on the 21 October 1943.

However, many were even killed before reaching the camp, as they were brought to the nearby Blagovshchina and Shashkovka Forests, where they were shot in the back of the neck. Most of the victims were lined up in front of large pits and shot. Tractors then flattened the pits out. The prisoners in the camp were forced to sort through the victims’ possessions and maintain the camp.

The killing routine at Maly Trostinets:

Beginning on the 10 May 1942 and continuing every Tuesday and Friday Jews were brought to Minsk from the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, Austria, Germany and driven by truck towards Maly Trostinets. Some of the trucks were gas vans, and after they had been gassed a sonderkommando took them out of the gas vans and threw them into deep pits.

One such transport destined for Maly Trostinets was from Theresienstadt in Bohemia Moravia. On the 4 August 1942 a train with a thousand Jews left the Theresienstadt camp. Six days later it reached Maly Trostinets where it stopped in open country.

Forty “experts” were removed from the train at Minsk. The remaining 960 deportees were ordered out of the train and into vans for the next stage of their journey, and were driven off towards the Blagovschchina forest. The vans were gas vans, once they reached the forest the doors were unlocked and the bodies of the gassed deportees were thrown into open graves.

Read the full article about Maly Trostenets here:

http://www.holocaustresearchproject.org/nazioccupation/malytrost.html

The Holocaust Education & Archive Research Team

www.HolocaustResearchProject.org


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