Maly Trostenets

alt=Field of Burial|upright=1.3|thumb|"Field of Burial" where the ashes of murdered and cremated prisoners were scattered

Maly Trostenets (Maly Trascianiec, , "Little Trostenets") is a village near Minsk in Belarus, formerly the Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic. During Nazi Germany's occupation of the area during World War II (when the Germans referred to it as Reichskommissariat Ostland), 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 were taken by train to Maly Trostenets to be lined up in front of the pits and were shot. 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, who numbered 39,000 to almost 100,000.

Camp establishment and destruction

thumb|Maly Trostenets, [[Reichskommissariat Ostland. The camp's location is marked by the black-and-white skull icon.]]

The primary purpose of the camp was the murder of Jewish prisoners of the Minsk Ghetto 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 Red Army 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, 1944, 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 Red Army reached the decimated camp.

Cora Berliner (most likely)
Elsa Bienenfeld, Austrian music historian and music critic
Grete Forst
Mitzi Freud and Paula Winternitz née Freud
Vincent Hadleŭski [Wincenty 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 (debated)
JUDr. Walter Krafft, Austrian Lawyer, cousin of Kurt Adler, including his wife Lilly Sara Krafft
Alfred Nichtenhauser, Modling, Austria shop owner
Arthur Ernst Rutra, author and translator

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

</gallery>

Maly Trostenets

Camp establishment and destruction

Memorial

See also

Notes

References

Further reading