The Trostenets Extermination Site Within European Commemoration by Mechthild vom Büchel

The Trostenets Extermination Site within European Commemoration Materials from the Minsk International conference 21st â&#x20AC;&#x201C; 24th March 2013

IBB INTERNATIONALES BILDUNGS- UND BEGEGNUNGSWERK MINSK

Contents

Preface to the english edition Joachim Gauck, Federal President of Germany Metropolitan Philaret, Metropolitan of Minsk and Slutsk, the Patriarchal Exarch of All Belarus Archbishop Monsignor Tadeusz Kondrusiewicz, Archbishop of Minsk and Mogilev

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Greetings

History of Events in Trostenets and Blagovshchina

Contributions to the History of Trostenets (Conference Papers)

a. Kuzma Kozak: Extermination Site Trostenets: History and Culture of Remembrance

b. Jens Hoffmann: “Action 1005” – Covering the Tracks of Mass Crimes in Maly Trostenets by German Perpetrators

c. Manfred Zabel: Societal Debate on the Topic of Trostenets in Germany

d. Waltraud Barton: The Extermination Site Maly Trostenets and its Meaning for Austria

e. Tomáš Fedorovič (Memorial Terezín) The Extermination Site Maly Trostenets and the Jews from the Ghetto Terezín

Kuzma Kozak: Territory of Death – Territory of History

Anna Aksyonova: Plan of the Memorial

Leonid Levin: Trostenets (Blagovshchina)

Astrid Sahm: Obituary for Leonid Levin

The Trostenets Extermination Site within European Commemoration – In the Beginning is the Memory

Statements on the Erection of the Trostenets Memorial

International Education and Exchange Dortmund

The Authors

Bibliography

Imprint

Preface to the english edition

highlighted the necessity of a memorial in Trostenets in their welcoming remarks. The English version will now be published one year after the conference. It is overshadowed by a bitter loss – on March 1st 2014, the initiator and creator of the Path of Death, Leonid Levin, passed away. Dr. Astrid Sahm acknowledges his life and work in her obituary.

The brochure The Extermination Site Trostenets within European Commemoration was first published in German in 2013 as a compilation of materials from the international conference that took place from 21-24 March 2013 in Minsk. For the first time, representatives from Germany, Austria and the Czech Republic came to Minsk to jointly discuss the project of erecting a memorial in Trostenets. The shocking statements of the speakers illustrated the dimensions of the war crimes that were committed during the Second World War in Trostenets and reinforced the participants’ wish to perpetuate the commemoration of the victims by erecting Leonid Levin’s memorial: the Path of Death. The memorial project gained new supporters through the Russian edition of the brochure which was published in autumn 2013. The German Federal President, Joachim Gauck, as well as Metropolit Filaret and Archbishop Kondrusiewicz from Belarus

Meanwhile, the memorial project is proceeding and is backed by more and more supporters. In Germany, associations that collected donations for Trostenets were founded in all cities from which the deportations took place. Numerous local authorities, churches, foundations, associations, and private citizens collected an amount of 500,000 Euros within the shortest of time. In Minsk, the Council of Architects and the Cultural Affairs Committee decided to merge Leonid Levin’s project and the municipal memorial plans. On the 8th of June 2014, more than 500 people from eight European countries will come to Trostenets to hand over the lists of the deported and murdered to the authorities of the city of Minsk. By handing over these lists of names to the authorities on a ceremony in Blagovshchina, the promise to erect the memorial in Trostenets is made in public. May 2014 Peter Junge-Wentrup Executive Director IBB

Preface

In 2014, people in Belarus, Russia and Ukraine will celebrate the 70th anniversary of liberation from Fascism. In 2015, we will commemorate the 8th of May 1945: “The defeat that was a liberation”. Seventy years later, the sites of mass murder in Belarus are still hardly known within the European culture of remembrance. One of these sites is the Trostenets extermination camp near Minsk. Thousands of citizens from Belarus, prisoners of war of the Red Army, partisans, detainees and Jews from Germany, Austria and the Czech Republic were murdered at this site. It is hardly possible today to identify the exact number of people murdered there. In March 2013, the conference The Extermination Site Trostenets within European Commemoration took place, with more than 200 participants from Belarus, Germany, Austria and the Czech Republic at IBB “Johannes Rau” in Minsk. Dr. Kuzma Kozak, historian and director of the History Workshop Minsk, revealed how difficult the process of remembrance was within Belarus itself. Three small memorial stones erected in the 1960s at the different sites of murder are a symbol of these efforts: the crematorium in Shashkovka, the barn at the farmstead Maly Trostenets and the forest of Blagovshchina. The journalist Jens Hoffmann, from Berlin, concentrates on Aktion 1005 – the excavation and incineration of human remains. With the retreat of the German troops in mind, the Nazi henchmen were seeking ways to erase all traces of mass crimes in Trostenets. Manfred Zabel, social ethicist and board member of IBB Dortmund, recalls the journalist Paul Kohl, who worked at Trostenets for many years and revealed in his books that the German war of extermination did not stop at Poland’s eastern border. Waltraud Barton, who travelled to Minsk for the first time in 2010 and lost some of her 5

Preface

relatives in Trostenets, initiated a debate in Austria on the 13,500 Jews from Austria who were deported to Minsk and Trostenets and murdered. Tomáš Fedorovič of the memorial in Terezín focuses on six transports in his paper. More than 6,000 Jews from the Czech Republic (Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia) were deported to Minsk and Baranovichi and murdered. The City of Minsk is allocating over 100 ha to the Trostenets memorial. Anna Aksyonova, director of Minsprojekt, presented the plans of the memorial complex which are already finalised for the crematorium in Shashkovka and the barn at the Trostenets farmstead and were approved by the City of Minsk. For the first time, Leonid Levin, architect and artist, presented his plan of the memorial in the forest of Blagovshchina, the site where mainly Jews from Germany, Austria and the Czech Republic were murdered, at the conference. On behalf of the City of Minsk, Sergey Khilman pointed out that it is possible to integrate Leonid Levin’s plan. Ambassador Wolfram Maas hopes with concern that the debate on Trostenets will not open up rifts within Belarusian society and at an international level. For the memorial in the forest of Blagovshchina can only be erected if it is financially supported by Germany. All conference participants consider it essential to erect an appropriate memorial -- to commemorate the dead -- to provide a place of mourning for relatives -- to establish a place of warning that prevents such atrocities from recurring There is a need for an active, international civil society that promotes “NEVER AGAIN”. If we succeed in giving the victims back their names by shaping memorial sites, we can thwart the strategy of the Nazi henchmen to make their acts of murder and the victims fall into oblivion. Therefore, the statement of IBB Dortmund which was presented at the conference starts with: “In the beginning is the memory”.

A memorial will only be successful if it is largely supported by the public and politicians in Germany, Austria and the Czech Republic. We hope for this support. Dortmund and Minsk, April 2013 Peter Junge-Wentrup, Executive Director of IBB Dortmund Dr. Astrid Sahm, Director of the IBB office Berlin Matthias C. Tümpel, Chairperson of IBB Dortmund Professor Manfred Zabel, Board Member of IBB Dortmund Dr. Viktor Balakirev, Director of IBB “Johannes Rau” Minsk Olga Rensch, Director of IBB “Johannes Rau” Minsk

Joachim Gauck Federal President

“During the German occupation of Eastern European countries in the Second World War crimes against humanity were committed whose dimension and cruelty are inconceivable and cause horror. Today, places like the concentration camp Auschwitz are fixed notions within the European and German discourse and commemoration. However, there is a large number of other places where thousands and thousands of people were brutally murdered. More than two decades ago the fall of the Iron Curtain enabled exchange on incidents which took place during this dark age of European history between Germany and the freed peoples of Europe. It is of great importance that Europeans jointly deal with the crimes of the past in order to pave the way for reconciliation and togetherness in the future. Therefore, I welcome the joint European approach to commemorate the murdered people of Blagovshchina and Trostenets who came from different European states. Thousands of Jews – among others from Germany, Austria and Belarus – as well as forced workers from the former Soviet Union encountered death in these places. We would like to commemorate these people and draw lessons from history within a European dialogue. Erecting a memorial in Trostenets contributes to this endeavour.”

Preface of the Brochure Material of the International Conference ‘The Extermination Site Trostenets within European Commemoration’

Metropolit Filaret of Minsk and Slutsk Patriarchal Exarch of Belarus

The Second World War caused great damage to mankind. Horrible devastation, losses, the extermination of millions of people – these are the results of the acts of war, including those on Belarusian territory. Reconstructing our White Ruthenia from the ashes took several decades after the end of the War. Today, Belarus is a flourishing European country. Only the unhealed and bleeding wounds of history remind us of the years of unrest. The human memory works in such a way that all that is bad falls into oblivion after some time and is alleviated by positive perceptions. This is important for the mental health of a person. But there is the holy remembrance of many lives, tragedies, innocent victims... and it is our duty to preserve these memories. The human victims of the Second World War were an irreplaceable loss. Death camps are one of the criminal acts and unhealed wounds of history that reveal the crimes of the Nazi invaders. The largest of these camps in Belarus was established near Minsk during the Nazi occupation. Trostenets became a symbol of grief, pain and the abuse of mankind. In total, more than 206,500 citizens of various nationalities and denominations were tortured to death, shot and burned by Hitler’s Fascists in Trostenets. I am firmly convinced that it is our holy duty to perpetuate the remembrance of these events. Determined efforts in this direction are currently being made. 8

Collecting and systematising material, organising conferences, reviewing different opinions: all contribute to finding the best method to perpetuate the remembrance of the dead. The Church strictly condemns all forms of violence against persons. Violence is inconsistent with the spiritual and moral values that were proclaimed by the Redeemer in the Holy Scripture. By commemorating the innocent dead in our prayers, the remembrance of the tragic events and victims of Fascist terror are consecrated. I am pleased that the idea of the religious significance of Trostenets has been understood by the high authorities of the Belarusian state; but also that there are efforts to erect a memorial at this site together with the international and national community, religious denominations and international memorial associations. The implementation of the conference “The Extermination Site Trostenets within European Commemoration” and the publication of the conference documentation reaffirm this endeavour.

Archbishop Tadeusz Kondrusiewicz Metropolite of Minsk-Mogilev

and the tragic events that resulted from them must not fall into oblivion. New generations must learn from history in order not to repeat the mistakes of the past. One of these lessons is the tragedy of Trostenets, which was turned into a site of crimes against humanity. It is our holy duty to perpetuate the remembrance of the innocent dead. We are pleased that things are advancing. Official and societal structures, as well as different denominations, are included in the implementation. The work undertaken hitherto takes into account research and project work, conferences, fora and publications, among others. It is also particularly important to integrate a spiritual component into the concept of the future memorial in Trostenets. In accordance with the Holy Scriptures, the Church calls upon its members to pray for the dead, in particular for the martyrs, and thus welcomes this idea. Fortunately, the idea met with approval and support from the state, as well as inter-governmental organisations and the public. Time passes relentlessly and heals all wounds. However, there are events in human history and places attached to them which we should always remember. The brochure The Extermination Site Trostenets within European Commemoration tells of such a place, where more than 200,000 people of all nationalities and denominations were tortured to death. We do not remember in order to reopen old wounds and to rub salt into those wounds, but to prevent a similar thing from recurring. In accordance with the teaching of Christianity that “blessed are the peacemakers” (Mat. 5:9), the Church firmly opposes war and strives for worldwide peace. It courageously proclaims: “No war!” War not only means destroyed cities and villages or shattered infrastructure, but above all a crime against the gift of God: Life, the most precious gift of all. War leads to an irreparable debasement of customs and to the moral decay of the world.

I am convinced that the joint efforts of the state, the non-governmental and inter-governmental organisations, as well as different denominations, will contribute to erecting a memorial in Trostenets that is appropriate for commemoration of the innocent dead. Among the evidence of these joint efforts is the conference The Extermination Site Trostenets within European Commemoration, which took place on March 23rd 2013 at the international education centre “Johannes Rau” in Minsk. The results of the conference are published in this brochure. The conference documentation contributes to bringing the tragic events of Trostenets to life in our memories and also reveals the efforts made to perpetuate remembrance of the people murdered at this site. I hope that this publication will bring its readers closer to the lessons learned from history – the tragedy of Trostenets – and help to establish the memorial. All-merciful Lord, give us your blessings for this godly endeavour.

A Latin saying states historia est magistra vitae – history is life’s teacher. Hence, the lessons of the Second World War, as well as of every other war,

Greetings

Wolfram Maas, The Ambassador of the Federal Republik of Germany in Belarus Distinguished Guests, Ladies and Gentlemen,

Trostenets and Blagovshchina are places where horrible crimes were committed. I am standing here, particularly ashamed, since alone in the name of Germany tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of innocent people were killed. Our mourning cannot bring the victims back to life. But we can thwart the aim of their executioners and prevent the victims from fading into oblivion. We owe it to those who were murdered to keep their memory alive. For this reason, your conference will also address the issue of an appropriate memorial: a memorial to the dead; for us, however, a warning and the mission to never look away again when man becomes thy neighbour’s devil. And we should not believe that the atrocities cannot be repeated – or at least not in our part of the world. If we keep our eyes and ears open today we can see everywhere that cruelty and brutality continue to exist also here in our time. And we can see that too many people today still – or again – turn away and do not want to be drawn into anything.

The brutality and cruelty witnessed in Belarus in Trostenets and Blagovshchina surely has a scale that cannot be exceeded. But is evil not growing again, for example, if we look at the violence that is happening here in sports stadiums, on metro lines, in public spaces, but also at home – while far too many look away? This is proof of the readiness of individuals to cross all lines. If this predisposition of human beings, maybe in combination with despair about something, is linked to an inhuman ideology and exploited by unscrupulous manipulators, we will again witness outbursts of uninhibited hatred. Therefore, the debate on a suitable memorial does not only address the question of commemorating the victims, but also of confronting those who have not yet learned their lesson from history with a clear “never again.” Hence, I encourage you not to differentiate meticulously between the origins of the victims or the uniforms of the slaughterers of the dead that rest in Trostenets and Blagovshchina, but to equally pay tribute to all that were murdered and to express a clear and complete disapproval of terror and violence. Thank you!

Sergey Khilman, Director of the Central Administration, City of Minsk

Dear Conference Delegates, Ladies and Gentlemen,

I cordially welcome you to the capital of the Republic of Belarus, to the City of Minsk. This conference venue is of great importance for relations and cooperation between Belarus, Germany and Austria, for developing and consolidating cordial relations between our countries. The topic of today’s conference – the death camp at Trostenets - brings pain and grief for all Belarusian people. The fascists shot and burned 206,500, people according to our figures. They were civilians, partisans, prisoners of war, citizens of Poland, Austria, Germany and Czechoslovakia. It is symbolic that this conference is taking place on the same days that we are commemorating the 70th anniversary of another tragic chapter in the history of the Belarusian people – the burning of the village of Chatyn. Our memory of these events will never fade and the city administration is doing everything possible to ensure this. It is the historic task and duty of our people who live in peace. The Trostenets memorial will be an expression of the bravery of undefeated peoples who have made a great sacrifice. The city has been constructing the memorial since 2004. Situated on the territory of the death camp, it unites several sites of mass extermination: the memorial stone in Blagovshchina; a memorial at the location of the most horrible crimes in Schaschkowka; a memorial to the victims of fascism in the village of Maly Trostenets; while across the border there is a large memorial and the eternal flame in Bolshoi Trostenets; and also at this location is a memorial for the soldiers that liberated the City of Minsk.

The decision to build a memorial was also supported by the leader of our country, Aleksandr Lukashenko. From our perspective, the aim of the memorial is to commemorate and to serve cultural-educational and research purposes. This memorial will be a location for republican and international historic and cultural events. Presently, the first fundamental preparations for the project are being completed. In March of this year, the institute Minskprojekt will complete the preparations for the first phase. The first phase involves finding the landscaping design for the Trostenets memorial complex. This includes the “Path of Death”, the territory for the monument “Doors of Memory”, a pedestrian path from the parking area to the monument, as well as the parking area itself. The plan is to enclose the entire territory with a wooden fence. Information plaques for visitors are to be installed at all entrances to the memorial, including at the former barn where 6,500 detainees of the concentration camp were burned. Construction work at the memorial will commence this year. The City of Minsk has set aside funds in its investment programme for 2013 and the money has already been approved. The support for the project provided by state structures proves the continuous attention that the Belarusian Government pays to commemorating the victims that lost their lives for freedom and independence. Dear conference delegates, allow me to express my hope that during this conference new ideas will be suggested in the discussions on how we can implement the planned tasks. I wish all participants interesting and fruitful discussions and all the best!

Thus far, all of the cultural objects have been separate from one another. We are meticulously assessing the question of implementing the project and we see it as a holistic compositional ensemble.

History of Events in Trostenets and Blagovshchina

1. September 1939 Germany unleashes the Second World War with its attack on Poland. 22. June 1941 Germanyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s invasion of the Soviet Union. 28. June 1941 The Wehrmacht takes control of Minsk, capital of the Belarusian Soviet Republic. 19. July 1941 The Minsk Ghetto is established. Around 60,000 Jews are concentrated in a city district of two square kilometres. September 1941 After the decision to exterminate the European Jews is taken, Minsk becomes one of the most important destinations for the deportation of Jews from Western Europe. November 1941 Between 12,000 and 14,000 people are shot by the Sicherheitspolizei (SIPO) (Security Police) and the Ordnungspolizei (ORPO) (Regular Police) during the so-called Judenaktionen (actions against Jews) in the Minsk Ghetto to make space for the first deportees. 11. November 1941 Around 1,000 Jews from Hamburg arrive on the first transport. 15. November 1941 Among the approximately 1,000 Jews that arrive on the train from DĂźsseldorf, 244 are from Wuppertal and 128 from Essen. 17. November 1941 The largest transport to Minsk arrives, with around 1,050 Jews from Frankfurt on the Main. 18. November 1941 A train from Berlin carries around 1,000 Jews from Berlin. 20/21. November 1941 Approximately 1,000 Czech Jews from Brno (Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia) arrive in Minsk. 22. November 1941 Five hundred Jews from Hamburg, 440 from Bremen and 130 from Stade arrive on another collective transport. 5. December 1941 A train from Vienna arrives at the Minsk Ghetto with the first 1,000 Jews from Austria. Due to bad transport and winter conditions, the deportations come to a temporary halt.

History of Events in Trostenets and Blagovshchina

20 January 1942 Reinhard Heydrich, head of the Reichssicherheitshauptamt (RSHA) (Reich Security Head Office), presents his programme for the Endlösung (Final Solution) at the Wannsee Conference. It provides for the killing and deportation of 11 million Jews. March 1942 Adolf Eichmann, responsible for Jews Section at the RSHA, Reinhard Heydrich and Heinrich Himmler, Reichsführer-SS (General of the SS Army), visit Minsk. The details of the programme of murder are defined. April 1942 The Sicherheitspolizei set up a camp at Maly Trostenets, around 12 km south-east of Minsk, where detainees are subjected to forced labour. Blagovshchina, a forest glade near Trostenets that can be reached on abandoned rail tracks, is chosen as the execution site for the murder of Jews. May-October 1942 Around another 16,000 Jews are deported from the Reich to Minsk/Maly Trostenets. Newcomers are undressed and directly led to the execution site in the forest, cordoned off by a fence. On the edge of a large pit, they are shot in the neck with pistols. 11 May 1942 Around 1,000 Jews deported on the second transport from Vienna arrive at the Minsk goods depot. Eighty-one of them are used as forced labourers at Maly Trostenets and survive for the moment. The other 900 people are immediately shot in Blagovshchina. June 1942 From June 1942 at the latest, the use of several “special vehicles” (mobile gas vans) is documented. The loading space of these vans is equipped with airtight cabins in which, depending on the model, from 50 to 100 people can be cooped up together. By transmitting exhaust gases to the cabin, the detainees are gassed on the way to Blagovshchina. 26 June 1942

The first transport from Königsberg arrives in Minsk/Maly Trostenets. Among the 770 deportees, 202 are from Berlin.

July 1942

The first three transports from Terezín arrive at Minsk/Maly Trostenets. Two more follow by September 1942. During a four-day action, approximately 10,000 ghetto inmates classified as unfit for work are brought to Blagovshchina. The majority die on the way in the mobile gas vans.

10 August 1942 A provisional train station is put into operation in Blagovshchina. The trains with Reichsjuden (Jews from the Reich) now arrive directly at the execution site.

9 October 1942 The tenth transport from Vienna, with 547 Jews, arrives in Maly Trostenets. Winter 1942/1943 The course of war on the German Eastern Front turns into the battle of Stalingrad (September 1942 - February 1943). July 1943

The inevitable military defeat is confirmed after the lost Battle of Kursk, where the Wehrmacht launched its last great offensive against the Red Army. With the withdrawal of the German army, the civil administration in the hinterland is also forced to prepare the evacuation of the occupied territories.

September 1943 The liquidation of the Minsk Ghetto is initiated. During a Judenaktion, 6,500 detainees are shot. October 1943 A secret special command (Aktion 1005) is deployed to conceal Nazi war crimes from the approaching Red Army. The corpses of the victims are exhumed, piled up on large pyres, doused in petrol and burned. The action continues until December and is a futile effort to erase evidence. End of October 1943 An incineration pit is built several hundred metres away from Maly Trostenets in the forest of Schaschkowka, to replace Blagovshchina. According to estimates, around another 50,000 people were burned at this site until July 1944. From March 1944, the facility also served as an execution site. 21 October 1943 The Minsk Ghetto is liquidated. 28 June 1944 Shortly before the Red Army invades Minsk, Heinrich Seetzen, Commander of the Security Policy, decides to liquidate the Jews deemed â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;fit to workâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; remaining in an SS collection camp, along with the detainees of an SS prison, during a major action. As the crematorium in Shashkovka is too small, people are brought to a barn at Maly Trostenets, which used to be a store for the belongings of those murdered with IKWs (large trucks), and shot. Afterwards, the barn is burned down. According to estimates, between 2,000 and 6,500 people died. 3 July 1944

Minsk is liberated by the Red Army.

Contributions to the History of Trostenets (Conference Papers)

Kuzma Kozak Extermination Site Trostenets: History and Culture of Remembrance The first Belarusian war memorials – Brest HeroFortress, the Hill of Glory or Stalin’s Line – are in line with the motifs of heroes and victory that dominated the Soviet Era. Erected in 1969, Chatyn Memorial commemorates the victims of the burned-down villages. It turned into a new phenomenon and met with a large international response.

On its way to national independence, from 1990 Belarus went along with the Soviet tradition of commemorating war. However, during that time the history of the Trostenets extermination site found its way into public debates. The first evidence of the Nazi crimes committed in Maly Trostenets was brought to light in 1943 by the underground press during the occupation of Belarus. In 1944, the report of the Special State Commission of the USSR (Russian ChGK of the USSR) on the findings of the assessment and investigation of the crimes by the Germanfascist occupiers in Minsk and its surroundings, was first published in newspapers of the USSR and the republic and later on as a separate brochure. In 1946, this report was published in a compendium of files by the ChGK. However, the history of the extermination site was strongly affected by the general tendency to conceal the topics of the Holocaust, forced labour and war captivity because they did not fit into the myth of victory. Figures on the numbers of victims were not attached to the documents of the Nuremberg Trials. The post-war period in Belarus was characterised by anti-Semitism, and a selection

of documents on this matter was therefore only published in 1965 in the compendium Verbrechen der deutsch-faschistischen Okkupanten 1941–1944 (Crimes of the German-Fascist Occupiers 1941 – 1944). This volume mentions Trostenets as a site of the extermination of 206,500 people. A more open attempt to come to terms with the history of the Second World War was initiated by the Belarusian department of historical science in the 1970s by Prof. W. F. Romanowskij. During Belarusian independence, Evgeniy Tsumarov, Deputy of the Supreme Soviets of the Republic of Belarus (19901996) and Deputy Chairman of the association Historische Gedenkstiftung Trostenez (Historic

Memory Foundation Trostenets) (1993), was engaged in bringing the history of the extermination site to the public’s attention. At this time, Trostenets was being turned into a rubbish dump. The city administration did not take action, which led to suspicions that it had an interest in concealing such historic sites and letting them fall into oblivion. For they are not only related to Nazi crimes, but also to Stalinist repressions. A comprehensive research project that aims to set up a source database including files from archives in Russia, Germany, Austria, Israel and the USA was initiated at the National Archive (Galina Knatko, Vladimir Adamushko and Vyacheslav Selemenev). The research work by Prof. Emmanuil Ioffe, as well as the compilations of documents by Sergej Žumar and Raisa Chernoglasova, resulted from this project. During the assessment of specific aspects, a group of young historians (Marina Savonyako, Kuzma Kozak, Sergey Novikov, Marat Botvinnikov, Anna Bogdanova) used a source that had hitherto not been taken in to account: the statements of contemporary witnesses. At the end of the 1990s and the beginning of the new millennium, more than 100 smaller scientific papers that are of great importance from a historiographic point of view were published. This new trend finally gained ground after a joint conference of the Belarusian State Museum of the Great Patriotic War History, the Belarusian State University and the history workshop. The IBB “Johannes Rau”, an educational and conference centre, initiated cooperation with foreign academics that were supported by students and lecturers of the Minsk State Linguistic University (under the direction of Jürgen Eberhard). Translations of works by Hartmut Lenhard, G. G. Wilhelm (1996), Bernhard Chiari, Uwe Gartenschläger, Paul Kohl and Clara Hecker (2008), as well as the dissertation by Petra Rentrop on the history of the Minsk Ghetto and the extermination site Maly Trostenets (2011), were produced by this initiative. Scientific texts from the Czech Republic (Jana Šplichalová), Israel and the USA (Leonid Smilowickij, Vladimir Levin, David Melzer, Martin Dean et al.) also form part of this project. The term Trostenets refers to a number of extermination sites: the site of mass shootings in the forest of Blagovshchina, the camp itself, located 10 kilometres from Minsk near the village of Maly Trostenets, and the site where the corpses were

burned in the forest near Shashkovka. The village of Maly Trostenets by the river Sinjavka comprised 55 farms and was subordinated to the Karl-MarxKolkhoz, with a total area of 200-250 ha. During German occupation, the village was turned into a property of the Schutzstaffel (SS) (Paramilitary and Security Organisation of the NSDAP) and subordinated to the commander of the Security Policy and Security Service (SD) in Belarus. The construction of the camp began in April of 1942. At the beginning, around 30 detainees were housed in the camp. However, the number increased daily. From May 1942, agricultural production was undertaken to cover food supply for the garrison headquarters and the Ordnungspolizei (regular police) in Minsk and its surroundings. In the fringe area, two searchlights, one receiving transducer and air defence artillery, were installed. On the opposite side near the village of Bolshoi Trostenets, a fictitious town was built and illuminated to fool soviet planes.

Jewish detainees, as well as forced workers from the surrounding villages, mostly 16-17-year-olds, were used to build the camp. A security building, a grain silo, a saw mill, a cobbler’s shop, a tailor’s shop, a carpenter’s workshop, a smith’s shop and a parking garage were constructed. Furthermore, land for cultivation and gardens was located in the area of the camp and several animal husbandries, an orangery and a mill were operated.

Kuzma Kozak Contributions to the History of Trostenets (Conference Papers)

The small asphalt concrete plant produced asphalt for the strategically important road from Minsk to Mogilev, which was also built by camp detainees. Further, a health unit was constructed in the camp. However, medical care was only provided to German soldiers and officers, as well as to “civilian employees”. According to a former detainee, a football stadium was later constructed. Some detainees were regularly forced to entertain the Security Police with a football match.

Police units made up of collaborating local inhabitants were employed to guard the camp. Several units were placed around the camp: 160 in the camp itself, 75 people in the village of Trostenets and 28 people in the village of Optchak (figures from October 1943). An anti-aircraft battery was placed in the west of Trostenets and a large system of trenches was constructed. The units could be deployed in the case of partisan attacks or when transports arrived. The proximity to the garrison in Minsk was strategically significant. According to varying information, the Security Police and the SD had 30 to 40 trucks that were used for transporting deportees. Mobile gas vans were used at a later time. The trip from Minsk to Trostenets or Blagovshchina took approximately 30 minutes, depending on the weather conditions. In the beginning, marches to the camp also took place. In August 1942, a provisional train station for arriving transports was constructed. Hence, from

the sixteenth deportation train onwards, which arrived on August 10th 1942, trains stopped in the immediate proximity of the village of Bolshoi Trostenets. The railway tracks that originally led to the village of Mikhanovichi ended several hundred metres north of Trostenets. A base was erected at this site. Upon arrival, all passengers were assembled in a meadow and deprived of their belongings. Those fit to work that were needed in the camp, in particular electricians, carpenters, locksmiths and construction workers, were separated from the rest. The majority, however, were brought to the pits and shot with pistols and machine guns. Later, the victims were killed in mobile gas wagons on the way to the pits. Their corpses were afterwards thrown into the pits. From October 1942, the SD kept documents for the administration of the camp, including lists of all camp detainees. There is evidence that the responsible chief assistant of the Security Police and the SD in Minsk, Ernst Friedl, visited Trostenets. Supposedly, he drew up lists on site, since some of the camp detainees were directly brought to Trostenets without being registered on the list in Minsk. Not a single list has been found so far. In the official correspondence of the Security Police and the SD, the mobile gas wagons were called “special wagons”. They were not only used to speed up the extermination process, but rather out of fear that the psychological burden on the people responsible for shooting the detainees would become too high. These mobile gas wagons were in use from the beginning of June 1942. The victims were killed by transmitting exhaust gases into the transport cabin on the way to the pits or by keeping the motor running upon arrival. Four to seven transports were carried out per wagon each day. Each time, around 100 people were forced to enter the wagon. Before the next usage, the mobile gas wagons were entirely cleaned by the camp detainees. At the beginning of 1944, a nine-metre long and two-three metre wide pit was dug by 30 detainees in the forest near the village of Shashkovka, several hundred metres away from the camp. It was converted into a crematory. In May, a two-three metre high fence was erected around the site. From then on, this site was also used as an execution site. The victims were forced to lie down on the pyre and were shot. The corpses were then burned. A road led to the crematory to facilitate

access for mobile gas wagons and transports. The passengers were shot, doused with flammable liquids and thrown at with incendiary bombs. A barn in Maly Trostenets was turned into another site of mass extermination for the inhabitants of the village who refused the eviction order, as well as the remaining camp detainees and inmates of the Minsk prison on Shirokaya Street.

Blagovshchina There is a lack of investigation into the history of the Blagovshchina extermination site. At the beginning of 1941, the first pits were excavated in the forest of Blagovshchina, located nine kilometres from Minsk behind the village of Bolshoi Trostenets. The earthworks were executed by prisoners of war from the Stalag 352 (Masyukovshchina). At this site, Soviet prisoners of war and Jews from the Minsk Ghetto were murdered and buried. From May 1942, an SS special unit is supposed to have carried out the executions. Road section no. 2 (Russian DSP-2), which already existed in the pre-war period, was used for transporting people and wood.

of sabotage or for supporting partisans, and over 3,000 deported Jews from other regions of Belarus (in particular from the Polotsk Ghetto). According to contemporary witnesses, around 50,000 people were burned near Shashkovka. Approximately 6,500 people were murdered in the barn of Maly Trostenets. The total number of victims ranges from 50,000 to 60,000 people according to German historic research, and from 206,500 to over 500,000 according to Belarusian research. We assume that the number of victims will hardly be adjusted in the near future. However, we expect broad scientific discussions, in particular surrounding the deportation of Jews from Austria and the Czech Republic from the Terezín concentration camp. Comprehensive research with the aim of assessing the number of Trostenets victims should be conducted in order to give the memory of the Nazis’ victims a name. This should be a lesson of remembrance for us and about us.

In October 1942, the special command 1005 under SS-Standartenführer (SS Colonel) Paul Blobel was deployed to wipe out traces of the crimes at Trostenets. Not only the archives, but also the graves, were to be destroyed. Around 20 Jews from Germany, Austria and the Czech Republic survived. After the liberation of Minsk on July 2nd 1944, some were accused of being spies by the Red Army and were sent to Soviet camps. Approximately 100 former detainees and local citizens were able to hide in the forest. The claim that Trostenets was the fourth or even fifth largest extermination site during the Nazi period has so far not been verified at the international level. According to Belarusian historiographic figures, the number of Trostenets victims amounts to 206,500 people. It is assumed that 150,000 people were murdered in Blagovshchina. Among them were over 20,000 deported Jews from Germany, Austria and the Czech Republic, around 60,000 Soviet prisoners of war, more than 50,000 Jews from the Ghetto of Minsk, around 15,000 inmates of the SD camp on Shirokaya Street in Minsk arrested because 19

Jens Hoffmann, Berlin “Action 1005” – Covering the Tracks of Mass Crimes in Maly Trostenets by German Perpetrators

At the end of June 1941, the Germans occupied a farmstead of approximately 250 hectares, a couple of months after they had invaded Minsk 1. The former Karl-Marx-Kolkhoz was now given the name SSGut Trostenez (SS-Farmstead Trostenets) and was gradually turned into an extermination camp with several functions.

From the beginning of May 1942 at the latest, Soviet prisoners of war and deported Jewish men and women from Germany, Austria and the Czech Republic had to cultivate the farmstead under the first Commandant of Trostenets, Gerhard Maywald 2, and were forced to produce consumer goods in handicraft workshops for the duty station of the KdS (Commander of the Security Police and SD). At first, detainees were crammed into cattle sheds. Later on, they lived in barracks that they had to build themselves. The number of detainees ranged significantly between 200 and 1,000 people, most of whom did not survive. Apart from its purpose as a camp for forced labourers, Trostenets became the final destination for tens of thousands of mostly Jewish men, women and children, whose murder was meticulously planned by German officials of the KdS duty station from mid May 1942 3. As part of the preparations for the mass murders, the camp territory was secured against escape attempts by detainees and partisan groups, who had succeeded in liberating some detainees and in killing guards in March 1942 4. As a consequence, the number of guards was increased to 250. Furthermore, the camp administration gave instructions that the barracks be fenced with barbed wire, while aisles for dogs were to be built, watchtowers with machine gun-guards were to be erected, a rampart was to be raised and the whole site was to be cordoned off with triple-strand barbed wire, the middle strand of which was electrically 20

charged. The first execution of Jewish civilians in the forest of Blagovshchina took place on May 11th 1942 5. From the beginning of June 1942, the German perpetrators also used mobile gas wagons for their programme of murder. The KdS duty station in Minsk used a large Saurer truck and two smaller ones from the manufacturer Diamond that were camouflaged as caravans with fake windows and chimneys. A group of detainees made up of Soviet war prisoners and Jewish men had to unload the corpses of the suffocated and drag them to the pits. Another group of detainees was forced to clean the cabin of the mobile gas wagon after each trip at the pond of the Trostenets farmstead. Once a pit was considered “full” by the perpetrators, slaked lime was scattered on the corpses and the pit was filled with earth. The belongings and clothes of the murdered that were left at the crime scene were brought to the Trostenets camp by the Germans and cleaned and sorted for further use by detainees 6. Most of the people murdered in the forest of Blagovshchina were Jewish men, women and children from the Minsk Ghetto, which was cordoned off by the Germans at the end of July 1941. At times,

up to 80,000 people were crammed into the Ghetto 7. Upon arrival at the rail-freight terminal of Minsk, many Jewish deportees from Germany, Austria and the Czech Republic were also transported directly to Trostenets on trucks or trains by German officials, without stopping over at the Ghetto. The deportees were then killed in Trostenets. The estimated number of people murdered in Trostenets varies. After the liberation of Minsk on July 3rd 1944, a Soviet commission investigated the crime scenes surrounding the camp and came to the conclusion that the Germans and their helpers had killed up to 150,000 people in Trostenets. The historian Christian Gerlach, however, estimated the number of victims at 60,000 after a close analysis of sources 8. The reconstruction of the crimes committed by the Germans in Trostenets was hampered by the work of the Sonderkommando 1005-Mitte (special command 1005-Mitte) 9, one of at least 17 commands of the RSHA charged with covering up the German mass murders in Eastern Europe under the code name “Action 1005”, which was organised by SSStandartenführer (SS Colonel) Paul Blobel. The first crime scene of Action 1005 was the Janovska camp in Lvov in early summer 1943. The men of the SK 1005-Mitte started covering the tracks in the Blagovshchina forest on October 27th 1943, one week after the last detainees of the Minsk Ghetto had been murdered. To procure the personnel for Action 1005, First Commandant Arthur Harder 10 worked together with employees of the Commander in Chief of the Security Police and the SD (BdS), as well as with the duty post of the Commander of the Security Police and the SD (KdS) in Minsk. It is likely that Harder, who had been employed as an interim head of the special command from the beginning, had already established first contacts during his first stay in the city at the end of September 1943. The special command 1005-Mitte was made up of at least 75 perpetrators. Among them were approximately 30 Schutzpolizisten (security policemen) of the 4th platoon of the 9th tank squadron of the police (Pol.Pz.Kp.) under the command of Otto Goldapp 11. Just eight to ten of these men were active policemen. They had been redeployed from Smolevichi to Maly Trostenets on October 27th 1943. The majority were reservists of

older generations. Otto Drews was Spieß (Sergeant Major) of the police force and Goldapp’s deputy and was in charge of administrative tasks 12. Apart from the policemen, around 40 men of a VolksdeutschenKompanie (ethnic German company) of the Security Service were part of the commando. These men came from Romania and Hungary and were, like the policemen, accommodated at the SS farmstead of Maly Trostenets. They replaced a group of Russian, Ukranian and Latvian ‘volunteers’ – also called Rosa-Russen (pink Russians) because of their collar patch – whom Harder had come to view as unreliable two weeks after the covering of tracks in the Blagovshchina forest had begun; he did not use them as guards again. The special command 1005-Mitte was completed by two drivers and six interpreters of the KdS duty station in Minsk. The latter reported to Kriminalsekretär (Detective Sergeant) Adolf Rübe 13, who was involved in the administration of the Minsk Ghetto as a member of department IV (Gestapo) and had committed several murders in the Ghetto. Rübe had already been informed about the purpose of the work at the Blagovshchina execution site – called ‘relocation site’ by the Germans – by Arthur Harder some time before the covering of tracks began. It is possible that Rübe had been designated to the post of Gesamtkommandoführer (Chief of Command) as Harder’s successor. There is evidence that he was leading a Teilkommando (subdetachment) of the SK 1005-Mitte 14. The members of the SK 1005-Mitte were informed about the purpose of their work upon arrival at Maly Trostenets at the latest. They committed themselves to secrecy by signature, including towards their wives and family members. The judges at the Hamburg proceedings against Max Krahner, guard post commander Otto Goldapp and Otto Drews described the ideological reasons for covering the tracks of the mass murders as follows: “When they assumed work at the special command, Goldapp explained to the members of the Schutzpolizei (Security Police) in an address that they were dealing with the corpses of Jews shot during the advance of the Germans in 1941/1942, which now had to be burned because they were unworthy of ‘soiling German territory’. It was clear to the command that

Jens Hoffmann, Berlin “Action 1005” – Covering the Tracks of Mass Crimes in Maly Trostenets by German Perpetrators

the graves were removed to cover the tracks of the mass murders before they were detected by Soviet troops.”

According to estimates by German perpetrators, 15 to 18 mass graves were located in the forest of Blagovshchina, with a total of 40,000 to 55,000 corpses 16. Chief of Command Harder estimated that he would need 100 men for the excavation work and for burning the corpses. Following the unwritten guidelines of Action 1005, he initially intended to use Jewish detainees as workers and thus separated 100 Jewish men from those murdered during the ‘clearance’ of the Minsk Ghetto. It seems that he had expected trouble from these Jewish men and, according to Adolf Rübe, they were murdered in two mobile gas wagons of the KdS duty station at Minsk shortly before the covering of tracks began. The six to eight Russian men who were most probably forced to unload the corpses of the suffocated Jews in the forest of Blagovshchina by members of the SK 1005-Mitte were also killed 17. Instead of the Jewish men, Harder decided to use 100 Russian prisoners from a work camp in Minsk. None survived. Most were forced to start opening the mass graves immediately after their arrival in Blagovshchina by Harder, Rübe and a couple of interpreters. A small group, however, had to build the accommodation for the workers under the guidance of handymen from the “ethnic German” company of the Security Service. It took them four 22

to five days to construct the earth bunker that was located in immediate proximity to the mass graves. The bunker was erected halfway into the earth and had a floor area of around 7 x 15-20 metres, so that each worker had a 50-cm wide sleeping place. At least one ventilation shaft led upwards from the ceiling of the bunker. A guard sitting next to the shaft listened to the conversations of the workers at night. In order to prevent escapes, the entrance to the bunker was so narrow that only one person could pass at a time 18. Arthur Harder claimed that he had planned the special way of constructing the bunker and had instructed the men to build the earth bunker in the same way as the bunker of the Todesbrigade (death brigade) of Lvov-Janovska 19. The workers received one warm meal a day, usually stews that the judges of the proceedings against Max Krahner described as a “simple but hearty meal” 20. There was only little water available for washing. In the case that one of the workers fell ill or was not able to work as quickly as the Germans indicated, the prisoner was led to a sickbay at the work place under the pretext that he would receive medical treatment. He was then shot 21. When the covering of tracks in the forest of Blagovshchina began, Otto Goldapp explained to the Russian detainees in a speech translated by the interpreters that they would be released after completing the work. In order to trick the workers, Harder, Goldapp and a couple of policemen drank schnapps and sang Russian songs with the men in their earth bunker for one evening 23. Adolf Rübe also claimed that members of the command made some efforts to prevent revolts by workers, whose murder had already been decided before the covering of tracks began: “The nature of our work was that of a civilian post. There were no beatings. Our instructions were determined but not unnecessarily harsh. I still remember that the interpreters even made jokes with the detainees. It might have played a role that the detainees were Russian. A decisive factor was that we actually had good reason to be scared of these people and therefore treated them as well as possible. […] I will stick to my description of how we treated the men, despite being confronted with the reports from the Lvov-Janovska camp”

To illustrate Rübe’s understanding of how to treat people in a “civilian post,” it must be noted that, while working in the Minsk Ghetto, he was famous for shooting Jews immediately instead of beating them up first 25. The judges of the Hamburg proceedings against Max Krahner et al. characterised Rübe as an ambitious, and at the same time soft and anxious, man.26 It is possible that only a scared German murderer could imagine the just revenge of the detainees he controlled. The work place of the command in the forest of Blagovshchina was surrounded by two cordons of guards. The outer cordon was made up of members of the “ethnic German” company of the SD, the inner cordon were policemen27. Otto Drews regularly controlled the guard posts28. In most cases, it was not difficult for the members of the command to locate the mass graves because of the valleys in the soil that emerged due to the decomposition of the corpses. Harder took care of providing work tools for the detainees. He gave orders that metal hooks used for pulling the dead bodies out of the graves and stretchers for transporting the corpses be produced in the workshops of the Trostenets camp. In addition, there were spades, chainsaws for the wood supply, combustible materials to light the pyre, tampers to shred the remaining bone fragments and a wire mesh screen to sort out valuables from the ashes29. Harder obviously also gave the instructions on how to erect the pyres: “The pyres were built as follows. First, two 6-8 metre long trunks were laid parallel on the ground 6 metres apart. Two further trunks were placed across these trunks, again at a distance of 6 m. One layer of dry pole wood was now placed on the trunks and two further trunks at a distance of 6 m on the pole wood. The space in between was now filled with corpses that were placed next to each other closely. A layer of dry pole wood followed. Two further trunks were placed on top of the wood. The space in between was again filled with corpses. This procedure continued until

However, this burned very slowly and incompletely. In order to accelerate the combustion process, we later poured oil on each layer of corpses so that the pyre was completely doused with combustibles. Harder had demonstrated and practised these details with us”30.

After a pyre had burned down, a group of workers had to crush the remaining bone fragments, sieve the ashes and sort out all dental gold and jewellery. Some workers succeeded in exchanging pieces of gold for food, cigarettes or alcohol31. Members of the command kept parts of the gold found by the workers for themselves, before they handed out the rest to their superiors. Goldapp and Drews used sulphuric acid to inspect the metal parts32. This was usually done in a caravan placed between the mass graves and the bunker some time after the work in the forest of Blagovshchina had begun. A Finnenzelt (Sami tent) was set up 100 metres away from the graves some time after the work in Blagovshchina had begun to make the work more comfortable for the guards. Furthermore, Harder gave orders to erect a watchtower with machine gun posts to secure the work site33. Because of the daily work of the special command 1005-Mitte, the forest of Blagovshchina could no longer be used as an execution site from the end of October 1943, as originally planned by the Germans. Therefore, a new permanent extermination site was established 400 metres away from the western border of the Trostenets camp: a small facility in the forest of Shashkovka called “crematorium” or “small execution site”34. Until around mid-November 1942, the SK 1005-Mitte was led by Arthur Harder. The majority of the command members remembered him as a tall, strong man who always behaved in a loud and brutal manner. Contrary to Adolf Rübe’s statement on how the detainees that worked for the command were treated, there is evidence that Harder used to climb up the pyres in the forest of Blagovshchina saying “I want to see figures!” and used whips and truncheons to make prisoners work faster 35.

the pyre reached 3-4 m in height. If the pyres were exceptionally large, a chimney was left open in the centre of the pyre. In the beginning, the pyre was doused with fuel or diesel oil after it had been erected.

At the beginning of November 1943, Harder left the special command 1005-Mitte and was replaced by Friedrich Seekel36, who led the command until

Jens Hoffmann, Berlin “Action 1005” – Covering the Tracks of Mass Crimes in Maly Trostenets by German Perpetrators

December 7th 1943. He was informed about the particularities of covering the tracks in the forest of Blagovshchina by Otto Goldapp. The latter did not have to explain much, as Seekel was already familiar with the details of Action 1005. He had been appointed as a coordinator of the command to cover tracks in Belarus and Central Russia by Blobel. By order of the BdS Belarus, Erich Ehrlinger37 - whose duty post passed on the “weather report” of the numbers of exhumed and burned corpses to the RSHA - Max Krahner took over the lead of the special command 1005-Mitte from December 1943 until October 194438.

When Krahner arrived in Trostenets, most of the dead bodies in the forest of Blagovshchina had already been burned. One of his first decisions as Chief of Command concerned the killing of the Russian detainees that were working for the special command. Apparently, at the time Krahner did not object to their murder. However, in July 1965 he shifted the responsibility for his decision to a former superior. This was not uncommon of German perpetrators: “Right from the beginning, it was clear that the detainees had to be killed. They carried secrets. It was a secret affair of the Reich. The entire undertaking of digging out the corpses would have been senseless,

if the workforce had not been killed afterwards. This had to be clear to everyone. I myself did not think anything of it after I was convinced that the workforce had been sentenced to death anyway. This was told to me by my highest superior, namely BdS Ehrlinger”

None of the workers of the command had been sentenced to death during judicial proceedings. All were either absolutely innocent or detained in a Minsk work camp for crimes trumped up by inventive German occupation officials and were handed over to the special command 1005-Mitte40. This was of no interest to a man like Krahner, who did not think further than that bearers of secrets had to be killed. It is remarkable that one thing was always clear to the type of Germans who liked to get rid of responsibility for their actions and decisions in obscure spheres of competences: that there had to be assassinations or “killings”. The covering of tracks in the forest of Blagovshchina was considered completed by Krahner and Goldapp on the 15th or, at the latest, on the morning of the 16th of December 1943. While the members of the command prepared the killing of the workers, the latter where in the bunker and received a warm meal41. On this day, the site was secured by two cordons of guards. Approximately 20 metres away from the bunker, at least one mobile gas wagon was parked with the back of the car facing the bunker. Members of the SD and policemen of the command formed a 4 metre cordon between the bunker and the mobile gas wagon. In the case of a break-out, the guards had been instructed to let the men flee and to then shoot them in the back. After the workers had finished their meal, they were led out of the bunker. They had to step up to Otto Goldapp, who gave a short speech supported by one of the interpreters. To avoid mistrust among the men, the guards stood in an emphatically casual way, while Goldapp spoke in a friendly manner and thanked the men for their work. He reminded them that they had to maintain silence about their experiences and explained that they would now be brought to Minsk to take a bath. Afterwards, they would be released. Following his speech, a couple of workers shook hands with the policemen and said goodbye. Somehow the Germans managed to dispel the disbelief among those who feared death. After Goldapp finished his speech, the

men had to sign a declaration of silence with Max Krahner, who was sitting at a desk. They walked up to the mobile gas wagon one by one and received a towel, soap and possibly also some tobacco before entering the wagon. It could not be clarified during the proceedings against Krahner and the others as to who closed the doors of the loading area behind them and started the motor of the mobile gas wagon42. Once all of the workers were dead from the exhaust fumes that had been transmitted into the cabin, one of the members of the command launched a flare. Upon this signal, at least four, and possibly up to eight, detainees who were held close by were brought to the crime scene in a vehicle of the BdS duty station Minsk. They had to unload the dead bodies from the mobile gas wagon and pile them up on a pyre that had been prepared earlier. Nothing is known about these men, except that they had been detained somewhere in Minsk and had not formed part of the group of workers of Blagovshchina. “All the corpses looked the same; typical of gassing victims. They were of blue-reddish colour, had swollen faces and showed traces of a horrible death struggle”43.

After a minimum of four men had piled up the corpses of the murdered detainees, they were forced to also lay down on the pyre and were killed with a shot to the neck by Otto Goldapp, Otto Drews, a couple of interpreters and possibly also Adolf Rübe and several members of the Minsk duty post of the SD whose names are unknown. Following these murders, members of the special command 1005-Mitte set fire to the last pyre, cleared the crime scene and celebrated one of their Kameradschaftsabende (social gatherings among comrades)44.

Around mid-June 1944, a number of German officials made arrangements to “dissolve” the camp in Maly Trostenets. Before the Germans withdrew from the Minsk area, they wanted to kill as many detainees and witnesses of their crimes as possible. Probably following an order by Heinrich Seetzen45, successor to Erich Ehrlinger as BdS of Minsk, several thousand prisoners of war and detainees were brought from prisons of the Security Service to Trostenets at the end of June 1944, in order to be killed together with the remaining detainees of the camp. “These killings took place from June 28-30th 1944. The barn (of Shashkovka J.H.) was secured by two cordons of guards. A Latvian commando dragged the victims out of the trucks and pushed them into the barn. As there were frequent attempts to escape, the following trucks drove backwards to the barn, the

Immediately after at least 40,000 corpses had been burned and all detainees who had worked in the forest of Blagovshchina had been killed, the special command 1005-Mitte continued with Action 1005 in the Minsk area under the command of Krahner. The garrison of the command in Trostenets was kept until the beginning of April 1944. Depending on the distance to the crime scenes, the men returned to Trostenets at the end of their working day or temporarily lived in confiscated properties of civilians and in caravans of the command at their respective work sites.

gate was closed and only then did the people leave the vehicle. The first victims had to stand on a layer of trunks in the barn and were shot with machine guns. More trunks were placed on the corpses and the newly arrived had to climb up the pyre and were also shot. This procedure was repeated until the last detainees stood just underneath the roof beams. A total of 6,500 corpses were piled up in the barn. Then they were set on fire, three days before the Red Army

Jens Hoffmann, Berlin “Action 1005” – Covering the Tracks of Mass Crimes in Maly Trostenets by German Perpetrators

liberated Minsk. All barracks and wooden buildings of the camp and the farmstead were also burned to the ground by the Germans before they fled”46.

Information on the biographies of the perpetrators mainly responsible for “Action 1005” in Maly Trostenets: Paul Blobel, in charge of Action 1005, was hanged on June 7th 1951 in the prison for war criminals in Landsberg. Arthur Harder, Blobel’s adjutant and temporary commander of the SK 1005-Mitte, died in February 1964 in Frankfurt on the Main. Friedrich Seekel, one of Blobel’s deputies and also temporary commander of the SK 1005-Mitte, hanged himself in June 1960 in his attic. Otto Goldapp, police leader of Maly Trostinets, was sentenced to 58 years in jail by the Regional Court of Hamburg in February 1968. Otto Drews, Goldapp’s deputy, was sentenced to 38 years in prison. Adolf Rübe, convicted of committing multiple murders, was given a reprieve in 1971 and released from prison following a psychiatric assessment. Max Krahner, in charge of the command, was also sentenced to a total of 48 years in prison in April 1968 by the Regional Court of Hamburg.

After the special command 1005-Mitte left Maly Trsostinets, Max Krahner and his men covered the tracks of mass killings by the Germans at further crime scenes. At the end of June 1944, they worked in the area of the Belarusian city of Slonim and from mid-July 1944 for some days in the Polish city of Łomża, before they were redeployed to Lodz in the second half of August 1944. In Lodz, they were involved in “dissolving” the ghetto and deporting the remaining inhabitants to Auschwitz-Birkenau47. In October 1944, Krahner and his men finally travelled to Salzburg and were incorporated into the “Iltis” task force under Paul Blobel, just like their colleagues from the special commands 1005 A and B. Until the end of the war, they fought against partisans in the borderland between Austria and Yugoslavia48.

Abbreviations: BdS

Commander in Chief of the Security Police and the SD EK Task Force Gestapo Secret State Police KdS Commander of the Security Police and the SD LG German Regional Court NSDAP National Socialist German Workers’ Party RSHA Reich Security Head Office SA Assault Division/Storm Detachment SD Security Service SK Special Command SS Protection Squadron/Defence Corps

Bibliography

Vernichtungslager bei Minsk (Trostenets – The Extermination Camp near Minsk) in: Projektgruppe Belarus; further s. Christian Gerlach: Kalkulierte Morde – Die deutsche Wirtschafts- und Vernichtungspolitik in Weißrußland 1941 bis 1944 (Calculated Murders – The German Economic and Extermination Policy in Belarus 1941 to 1944), Hamburg 200, pp. 768-770, including a discussion on some of the numbers and figures used by Kohl.

Christian Gerlach: Kalkulierte Morde. Die deutsche Wirtschaftsund Vernichtungspolitik in Weißrußland 1941 bis 1944. Hamburg 2000. Hoffmann, Jens: Das kann man nicht erzählen ‘Aktion 1005’ – Wie die Nazis die Spuren ihrer Massenmorde in Osteuropa beseitigten. Hamburg 2008. Ernst Klee: Das Personenlexikon zum Dritten Reich. Wer war was vor und nach 1945? Frankfurt on the Main. 2003.

Paul Kohl: Das Vernichtungslager Trostenez – Augenzeugenberichte und Dokumente. Dortmund 2003. Paul Kohl: Trostenez – das Vernichtungslager bei Minsk, in: Projektgruppe Belarus (Hg.) ‘Existiert das Ghetto noch?’ – Weißrußland: Jüdisches Überleben gegen nationalsozialistische Herrschaft. Berlin/Hamburg/Göttingen 2003. Petra Rentrop: Tatorte der ‘Endlösung’ – Das Ghetto Minsk und die Vernichtungsstätte von Maly Trostinez. Berlin 2011. Samuel Spector: ‘Aktion 1005’ – Effacing the Murder of Millions in: Holocaust and Genocide Studies 5 (1990). Dr. Friedrich Seekel – Ein NS-Täter als Schulleiter in Emden. Sonderdruck des Emder Jahrbuchs für historische Landeskunde Ostfrieslands. Emden 2011. 3

From summer 1942, the Germans seemingly also ran a school of the Gestapo at Trostenets, where undercover informants were trained with the aim of infiltrating partisan groups. S. Rentrop: p. 221.

Kohl (2003b): 241.

Gerlach: 768.

For information on the murders in Blagovshchina s. Kohl (2003b): 234-239.

On the history of the Minsk Ghetto, where the remaining 2,000 Jewish detainees were murdered on October 21st 1942, s. Rentrop and Daniel Romanowsky: Das Minsker Ghetto (The Minsk Ghetto), in: Projektgruppe Belarus: 211-232.

Archival Documents Bundesarchiv (Federal Archive) – Branch Ludwigsburg: Barch B 162 ARZ 3/61 – Strafsache 16 Js 130/62 gegen Erich Ehrlinger u.a. Staatsarchiv Hamburg (State Archive Hamburg): Strafsache 141 Js 204/60 gegen Max Krahner u.a. 1

On the history of the camp Trostenets, see Petra Rentrop: Tatorte der ‘Endlösung’, Das Ghetto Minsk und die Vernichtungsstätte von Maly Trostinez (Crime Scenes of the Final Solution, The Minsk Ghetto and the Extermination Site of Maly Trostenets), Berlin 2011, p. 185 ff., Paul Kohl: Das Vernichtungslager Trostenez – Augenzeugenberichte und Dokumente (The Extermination Camp Maly Trostenets – Reports of Contemporary Witnesses and Documents), Dortmund 2003, and by the same author Trostenez  –  das

Gerhard Maywald, born in 1913 in Karlsruhe/Upper Silesia, today Pokój/ Poland, was commandant of Trostenets from May to October 1942. As a former SS-Obersturmfrüher (first lieutenant of the SS) and Kriminalkommissar (detective superintendent), he went underground using forged papers at the end of the war and lived in Hamburg. In 1950 he resumed his former name and worked as a representative. From 1965, Maywald lived in Neunkirchen an der Saar, where he ran a cosmetics store. Criminal proceedings concerning his work as a commandant of the Trostenets camp were closed in 1970 by the Koblenz Public Prosecutor’s Office due to lack of evidence. S. Kohl (2003a): 104. In the years after, Maywald, Heinrich Eiche, Wilhelm Madeker, Willhelm Kalmeyer, Josef Faber, a man called Kujau and SS-Hauptscharführer (master sergeant of the SS) Rieder from Austria worked as commandants of the SS property Trostenets. S. 141 Js 204/60, Band 19, Anklageschrift p. 340, and Kohl (2003a): 11, and Rentrop: pp. 213, 220.

s. Gerlach 770, the author assumes that 40,000 victims, as well as an unknown number of detainees from the camp and the prison, were arrested and murdered

in Trostenets by the Germans during raids and fights against partisan groups. According to Gerlach, the figure of 60,000 in the mentioned passage is “a rough estimate”. 9

On the work of the special command 1005-Mitte s. in detail Jens Hoffmann Das kann man nicht erzählen (This cannot be told), Hamburg 2008: 171-220.

Arthur Harder, born 1909 in Frankfurt on the Main, was one of the deputies of Paul Blobel, the organiser of Action 1005. Blobel had requested Harder, a member of the SD, at the Umwandererzentrale (UWZ) in Lodz. Former SSHauptsturmführer (SS Capatain) Harder died on February 3rd 1964 in Frankfurt on the Main. S. Hoffmann: 92, FN 18.

Otto Goldapp was born in 1898 in Eichenrode/ East Prussia, today Bogatovo/Russia. From 1916 onwards, he participated in the First World War as a volunteer. After working at his parents’ farm, Goldapp was engaged as Polizeihilfswachtmeister (assistant police constable) in June 1920 and was transferred to Hamburg-Altona in 1924. He married in 1927 and worked at the police station from 1928 to 1937. On the 1st of May 1937, he joined the NSDAP (National Socialist German Workers’ Party) and participated in the German invasion of the Sudetenland as a member of a motorised police company. On November 9th 1939, Goldapp was promoted to police constable. After the beginning of the Second World War, he was part of the police battalions 101, 111 and 305 and was deployed in Poland, at that time occupied by Germany, until the beginning of November 1940. From mid-February 1942, Goldapp worked as deputy platoon leader of a motorised Verkehrskompanie (traffic company) in Hannover; in April 1942 he was promoted to Revierleutnant der Schutzpolizei (lieutenant of protection police). After participating in a training course on tanks in Vienna, Goldapp was deployed to Smolevichi as a member of the 4. platoon of the Pol.Pz.Kp. in October 1942 and was assigned to the special command 1005-Mitte at the end of the month. In October 1944, he was promoted to Revieroberleutnant (senior lieutenant) and became part of the “Iltis” task force under the command of Blobel in October 1944. Until the end of the war, Goldapp fought against partisans in the border area between Austria and Yugoslavia and reported back to the commando of the Ordnungspolizei in Hamburg at the end of June 1945. He worked as an official at the Hamburg police until March 1958.

Jens Hoffmann, Berlin “Action 1005” – Covering the Tracks of Mass Crimes in Maly Trostenets by German Perpetrators

the German administration of the Minsk Ghetto, i. a. as head of the KdS guards until the end of September 1943. After all the detainees in the Ghetto had been killed, Rübe was made available to the special command 1005-Mitte by GestapoReferatsleiter (head of Gestapo unit) Müller. Rübe was arrested in April 1947. He was sentenced to life imprisonment (plus 15 years) by the Karlsruhe district court for murder committed in the Minsk Ghetto and homicide in 26 cases. Two psychiatric assessments of Rübe were made in the course of the proceedings, which diagnosed a sexual pathological-sadistic or schizoid personality disorder. Rübe was given a reprieve in 1971 and discharged from prison. S. ibid., Band 35, Urteil p. 41 ff., sand Band 19, Anklageschrift p. 342 f.; Kohl (2003a): 105, and Gerlach: 665.

When Goldapp retired, he held the rank of a commissioner of police. In February 1968, the Regional Court of Hamburg sentenced the father of three children to 58 years in prison for joint murder, as well as assistance to a joint murder and homicide committed in one act. S. 141 Js 204/60, Band 35, Urteil p. 2, 273, and Band 19, Anklageschrift pp. 55-57. 12

Otto Drews, born 1910 in Groß-Potauen/ East Prussia, today Perevalovo/Russia, initially worked at his parents’ farm as a truck driver. After a failed attempt to work as an engineer, he started an apprenticeship as a police recruit at the police school in Sensburg in April 1929. In the time between August 1935 and March 1937, Drews was employed by the Wehrmeldeamt (army record section) Braunsberg, after this at the police administration in Dresden and Kiel. In April 1942, Drews was seconded to do military service at the police training battalion in Bergzabern. He pretended to be unfit for war; the proceedings against him were closed. As a member of the 4. platoon of the Pol.Pz.Kp. he came to Smolevichi and was transferred to the special command 1005-Mitte in Trostenets, together with Goldapp. Drews formed part of the SK 1005-Mitte and the “Iltis” task force, until the end of the Second World War. His transition to the post-war period went smoothly. At the end of September 1945, he was employed as an administration official at the police headquarters in Kiel. Afterwards, Drews worked for different police stations in Schleswig-Holstein and was promoted to police sergeant in 1951. Otto Drews was neither a member of the NSDAP, nor one of the party’s subgroups. He adhered to the republican organisation Reichsbanner (Banner of the Reich) from May 1930 until it dissolved in 1933. When the charges against him were raised, Drews was married for the third time and had two children. He lived in Flensburg as a police officer in the economic administrative service. In February 1968, he was sentenced to a total of 38 years in prison by the Regional Court of Hamburg for joint murder and assisting joint murder. S. ibid., and Band 19, Anklageschrift pp. 57–61. Adolf Rübe was born in Karlsruhe in 1896. He was a Kriminalsekretär (detective sergeant) and held the rank of a SS-Hauptscharführer (master sergeant of the SS). Starting in autumn 1942, Rübe worked as an official at the KdS Minsk. At first he was employed in department V (criminal investigation department) and was involved in the liquidation of the Ghetto in Sluzk. After that, he was part of department IVb (Gestapo) and worked in

For Information on the staffing of the special command 1005-Mitte s. 141 Js 204/60, Band 19, Anklageschrift p. 341–349. For further information on the Action 1005 in Trostenets s. Kohl (2003a): 16–18, and Kohl (2003b): 242–247. On the covering of tracks of the SK 1005-Mitte in Belarus and Eastern Poland s. Spector: 166 f. 141 Js 204/60, Band 35, Urteil p. 48. The Public Prosecutor had also investigated Friedrich Seekel, Arthur Harder and Erich Ehrlinger. Seekel died in June 1960, Harder in February 1964, Ehrlinger was classed as unfit for prison and to face trial after his 12-year prison sentence had been rescinded by the German Federal Court of Justice of May 28 1963. Ibid., Band 19, Anklageschrift p. 342, 408 f.; Spector: 166 uses the minimum number of 40,000 dead people, Kohl (2003b): 242, refers to a figure of 150,000 dead people in 34 pits determined by the Soviet commission of inquiry from summer 1944.

S. 141 Js 204/60, Band 19, Anklageschrift p. 351. Adolf Rübe claimed that he had picked up the Jewish men together with Harder and a couple of police men. However, he was not at the crime scene when the murders were committed in the two mobile gas wagons. He testified that Harder had said afterwards that there had been a revolt by the Jewish men. S. Barch B 162 ARZ 3/61, Band 12, Bl. 1863, questioning of Adolf Rübe on June 10, 1961.

141 Js 204/60 Band 35, Urteil p. 49 and Band 19, Anklageschrift p. 353.

Barch B 162 ARZ 3/61, Band 12, Bl. 1848, questioning of Arthur Harder on June 15, 1961. Harder mentions proudly that he was “sure” that he suggested the special construction of the bunker.

141 Js 204/60, Band 35, Urteil p. 60.

ibid., Band 19, Anklageschrift p. 353.

ibid., p. 393.

ibid., p. 397 f.

Barch B 162 ARZ 3/61, Band 12, Bl. 1867 f., questioning of Adolf Rübe on June 10 1961.

s. Gerlach: 665.

141 Js 204/60, Band 35, Urteil p. 41 ff.

ibid., Band 19, Anklageschrift p. 350.

ebd., s. 412.

ibid., Band 35, Urteil p. 50 f., and Band 19, Anklageschrift p. 356.

Statement by Adolf Rübe, cited in ibid., p. 365 f.

ibid., p. 52 f.

ibid., Band 19, Anklageschrift p. 358.

ibid., Band 19, Anklageschrift p. 410 f.

ibid., p. 413 f.

141 Js 204/60, Band 35, Urteil p. 40 f.

Friedrich Seekel was born on May 20 1910 in Berlin as the son of the Kriminalbezirksekretär Friedich Seekel and his wife Ida. After finishing public school and secondary school (with a special focus on the classics), he took up his studies in history, protestant theology and German philology in Berlin between 1929 and 1935, according to his own statement. In 1933, he completed his PhD and became a member of the SA until 1935. At the beginning of July 1935, he joined the police forces as a Kriminalkommissaranwärter (candidate for chief inspector). At the beginning of January 1940, Seekel joined the NSDAP and published numerous propaganda articles against Great Britain, France and the Soviet Union in the following years. A member of the SD at the Reich Security Head Office, Seekel was teaching at the Führerschule der Sicherheitspolizei und des SD (School for leaders of the

Security Police and the SD) in Berlin. In 1941, Seekel was promoted to chief inspector; within the SS he ascended to the position of Sturmbannführer (SS Major). In the course of Action 1005, Seekel worked as a regional deputy of Paul Blobel in occupied Belarus. Seekel was a member of the RSHA until July 1, 1944. After being released from US war captivity in 1947, he worked as a home teacher, before working as an aspiring teacher at secondary schools in Oldenburg and Bad Seegeberg from January 1949. In August 1950, Seekel tranferred to the municipal secondary school in Gessthacht and simultaneously completed his postgraduate studies in Latin and German. In February 1958, he became head teacher at the grammar school for girls in Emden. Seekel committed suicide on June 2 1960 by hanging himself in the attic of his flat in Emden, after the Public Prosecutor’s Office in Hamburg had issued an arrest warrant in February 1960 and he was temporarily remanded in custody because of his involvement in Action 1005. S. Lothar Zieske Dr. Friedrich Seekel – ein NS-Täter als Schulleiter in Emden, Emden 2011, p. 166ff., 184ff. 37

Erich Ehrlinger was born in 1910 in Giengen an der Brenz near Heidenheim. He became a member of the SA in 1931 and took his first state law exam in 1933. From September 1935, the 25-year old worked as Stabsführer (staff leader) at the SD main office. He formed part of the SD special command in Prague in the spring of 1939, worked as a member of task force IV when Nazi Germany invaded Poland in September 1939 and became head of the SD in occupied Warsaw. Between end of June and the beginning of December 1941, Ehrlinger was commander of the death squad of EK 1b in Lithuania, before becoming KdS in Kiev in January 1942. In August 1942, Ehrlinger took over the lead of task force B and was appointed BdS for Belarus-Centre and Belarus in Minsk two months later. He kept this post until the end of March 1944 and transferred to the RSHA in Berlin as Head of Department with the rank of SS-Oberführer. After the end of the war, Ehrlinger worked under the name of Erich Fröscher at an airfield of the US-army near Nuremberg, then as a receptionist at a casino in Konstanz. In 1954, he managed a Volkswagen branch in Karlsruhe. Ehrlinger was sentenced to 12 years in prison by the Regional Court of Karlsruhe in December 1961. The Federal Court of Justice agreed to a revision of the ruling. In December 1969, the proceedings were stopped because Ehrlinger was classed as unfit to stand trial. S. Klee.

Max Krahner was born in 1904 in Neustadt/Orla. Until 1932, he worked in his parents‘ leather factory; after that he was employed in the company of his uncle until 1936. Krahner was a member of the NSDAP from December 1930. On May 1, 1933 he also joined the SS. From November 1936, Krahner worked fulltime for the SD-Oberabschnitt (Higher Section of SD) Leipzig and transferred to the SD-Unterabschnitt (Lower Section of SD) Magdeburg-Anhalt in Dessau in August 1937. At the end of 1937, he led the branch of the Security Service in Jena. Krahner was promoted several times; from September 1940 he was Hauptsturmführer der SS (SS Captain). In May 1943, Krahner joined the task force 4a, which he was part of until late summer of 1943. Afterwards, he worked for the duty station of the Commander of the Security Police and the SD, Ehrich Ehrlinger, in Minsk. Krahner was in charge of the special command 1005-Mitte until October 1944, when its members were transferred to the “Iltis” task force. He was then in command of task force 13 in the area of Klagenfurt. In June 1948, Krahner was released from British war captivity. He initially worked as a labourer; later he became a commission agent. Due to his involvement with the Security Service and the SS, he was sentenced to two years in prison by the denazification court of Bielefeld in January 1949. He did not have to serve his sentence because of his war captivity. From May 1950, Krahner worked as a commercial employee in a trading company in Cologne. Until the beginning of the Hamburg proceedings, Krahner lived in Cologne-Longerich, where he married for a second time and had six children. Max Krahner was sentenced to 48 years in prison by the Regional Court of Hamburg in February 1968 for joint murder, assisting joint murder and assisting joint murder and homicide committed in one act – he committed all crimes as head of the command SK 1005-Mitte. S. 141 Js 204/60, Band 35, Urteil p. 3, 273, and Band 19, Anklageschrift p. 50-54.

Statement by Max Krahner, July 28, 1965, cited in ibid. p. 370 f.

s. ibid., Band 35, Urteil p. 55.

The judges of the proceedings against Max Krahner et al. estimated the number of workers that were murdered midDecember of 1943 at “at least 45”. S. ibid., p. 71 f. The bill of indictment of the public prosecutors mentions “approximately 100 Russian Arbeitshäftlinge”; this equals the original strength of the

command. S. ibid., Band 19, Anklage p. 415 f. 42

According to former security policeman Konrad Mütze, who observed the scene as a guardsman, his colleagues of the special command beat up the workers who had been tricked, in order to close the doors of the mobile gas wagon. S. Kohl (2003a): 79.

141 Js 204/60, Band 35, Urteil p. 73.

Information on the murders of the workers in the forest of Blagovshchina, s. ibid. p. 71-74, and Band 19, Anklageschrift p. 415-422. Further, s. Spector: 166, and Kohl (2003b): 245-247.

Heinrich Seetzen was born in 1906 in Rüstringen. In 1933, he joined the NSDAP and the SA as a probationary judge. Seetzen was Arbeitseinsatzleiter (labour detachment leader) at the Eutin concentration camp before he became head of the State Police Office in Eutin in March 1934. In 1935, he transferred from the SA to the SS and worked as a Gestapo official in Aachen, Vienna, Stettin and Hamburg. From summer 1941 until July 1942 he was in command of Einsatzkommando (task force) 10a of the Einsatzgruppe (task group) D in South Russia. He used a mobile gas wagon for mass murders from spring 1942. Afterwards, he worked as Inspekteur (Chief of Staff) of the Security Police and the SD in Kassel and Breslau. He held the rank of SS-Standartenführer (SS Colonel). From April to the end of June 1944, he worked as BdS for RussiaCentre and Belarus in Minsk. Heinrich Seetzen committed suicide after being arrested by British military policemen in September 1945. S. Klee and Kohl (2003a): 105.

Kohl (2003a): 19. For further information see the statements of Stepanida Ivanovna Savinskaya and Nikolay Ivanovich Volochanovich, who survived the execution in the barn, in: ibid.: 92-94.

The locations where the actions of the command took place are i.a. documented in armed forces letters by command member Karl Fischer. On this matter, s. Hoffmann: 207-220.

s. Hoffmann: 204-207.

Manfred Zabel Societal Debate on the Topic of Trostenets in Germany The memory of the Holocaust in Germany has a name: Auschwitz. “Before and after Auschwitz” is what marks the breach of civilization. Other extermination sites of Nazi criminals are not so well known: Treblinka, Majdanek,

Stuthof,

Bergen-Belsen,

Buchenwald,

Dachau, Sachsenhausen. However, until a few years ago, the site of Trostenets was even less well known.

The name is not mentioned in the standard work by Raul Hilberg. The same goes for the literature on the Holocaust up to the 1990s. This is astonishing, as Trostenets is mentioned in the Schwarzbuch (Black Book) by Ilja Ehrenburg and in Opfer des Hasses (Victims of Hate) by Ilja Altmann. The question arises: why were the books from Moscow hardly taken notice of in the West? The Cold War had also shaped the minds of historians. “We dropped a different kind of Iron Curtain in our perception,” writes Paul Kohl. Not a historian but the German journalist Paul Kohl, at an early stage drew attention to the extermination of Jews in Belarus. The historian Christian Gerlach conducted research on the German economic and extermination policy in Belarus from 1941-1944 in his comprehensive work Kalkulierte Morde (Calculated Murders) (Hamburg 1999). On page 768 he writes: “Paul Kohl is without doubt the best expert on the site of the camp in and around Minsk,” when writing about the Trostenets death camp. Kohl writes to fight oblivion at different levels. A report on his journey to Minsk in 1985 which included many conversations with contemporary witnesses marks the beginning: Ich wundere mich, dass ich noch lebe (I am surprised that I am still alive), Gütersloh 1990. The new edition, Der Krieg der deutschen Wehrmacht und der Polizei (The War of the German Wehrmacht and the Police) 1998 and

his novel Schöne Grüße aus Minsk (Regards from Minsk), Munich 2001, followed. The novel sensitively establishes a link between the fate of the deportees from his home town of Cologne and the city of Minsk. It is thanks to Paul Kohl that the Minsk Ghetto and the Trostenets extermination site are portrayed as the “Auschwitz of Belarus” in essays on the German policy of extermination in Belarus. The dissertation by Petra Rentrop, Tatorte der Endlösung, Das Ghetto Minsk und die Vernichtungsstätte von Maly Trostinez (Crime Scenes of the ‘Final Solution’, The Ghetto of Minsk and the Extermination Site of Maly Trostenets), Berlin 2011, is the first monograph on this topic. Petra Rentrop worked as an officer with the IBB Dortmund for two years. Her dissertation project originated from a working group of the IBB that included Paul Kohl. In May 2002, the IBB compiled the documentation for the conference “Sites of Extermination in Belarus – The History of the Trostenets Extermination Camp and the Ghetto of Minsk”, which took place in the Iserlohn Protestant Academy. The documentation includes an interview in which Leonid Levin expresses his hope that the memory of Trostenets will be pushed

forward by the history workshop in Minsk. This was ten years ago. In November 2011, Petra Rentrop was invited as a guest speaker to the conference “Commemorating Maly Trostenets” in Vienna. It is thanks to Waltraud Barton and her initiative “IMMER” that the Austrian victims of the Shoa are not forgotten in Belarus. In summary: there is no denial of the Holocaust any more today, and also no denial of the “waiting room” that was the Minsk Ghetto and the crime-scene of Maly Trostenets. German civil society has contributed to this. A peace group in Bremen made a start by installing a copperplate at the train station in Bremen and a copperplate at a house in the former Minsk Ghetto to commemorate the deportees from Bremen. It is now installed at the entrance of the history workshop. In Hamburg, Stolpersteine (stumbling blocks) commemorate the victims of the Nazi regime murdered in Minsk. In Düsseldorf, the deportation train to Minsk was thoroughly examined. The macabre report of a police officer who had accompanied the train was found. Günter Katzenstein, today a very old man in Stockholm and one of the few survivors, accompanied us to Minsk twice, told us about his memories and mourned with us here. We commemorated the couple Dr. Hermann Ferse and Mrs. Minna and Dr. Hedwig Danielewicz, who continued to work as a doctor for some months in the Ghetto and received support from the guard Max Luchner, who secretly brought her medicines and transmitted messages to her family in Düsseldorf. In Cologne, Dieter Corbach documented the deportations meticulously in his comprehensive work 6.00 Uhr ab Messe Köln-Deutz (6 O’Clock from Messe Köln-Deutz). The book mentions the names of the 1,174 deportees. Similar initiatives existed in Frankfurt and Berlin. The memorial stones at the former Jewish cemetery in Minsk now form the shape of a pantheon. It was erected thanks to the citizens of the affected cities. Leonid Levin designed the memorial stones on behalf of the IBB “Johannes Rau” and handed them over to the public in the presence of delegations from the cities and the rabbi of Minsk. In addition to the Jama, there is now another place of remembrance in

Minsk that is a symbol of the culture of remembrance that overcomes borders. One final comment: The visits of Himmler, Heydrich and Eichmann to Minsk in March 1942 show how important this city was to the Nazi leaders. The construction of mobile gas wagons in which people were suffocated on the way from the Minsk train station to Maly Trostenets can be seen as a model for the gas chambers in certain concentration camps. The region of Minsk has a long history and the victims of the German policy of extermination and racial delusion are part of it. In my opinion, the controversy regarding the number of victims is almost macabre: Were there 60,000 (Gerlach/Rentrop) or more than 500,000? Who wants to know exactly? Masses of people were murdered here. We owe these people our commemoration and the promise: Never again! A suitable memorial worthy of the victims would be a sign of this.

Waltraud Barton, IM-MER The Maly Trostenets Extermination Site and its Meaning for Austria

People from different states and from many parts of Europe were murdered by the National Socialists in Maly Trostenets. But there is hardly another country for which Maly Trostenets is as important as for Austria.

My text is divided into two parts: a historic part that – since I am no historian – refers to the results of the research conducted by Sibylle Steinbacher; and a personal part, with which I would like to begin. It was June 11th 2011 and it was in Belarus. I was driving to Maly Trostenets for the second time. A small bus brought me and 15 more people to the small forest called Blagovshchina. I had feared this moment for one year. For it was one year earlier that I had put up name plates without official permission. Yellow plates with the names of my relatives: Viktor, Herta and Rosa Ranzenhofer. I had also put up a plate for Malvine Barton. I had attached the plates to trees at the site where they were murdered in 1942 because they were “no Aryans”. In 2010, during the first memorial journey I organised, I decided that they at least deserved something similar to a gravestone. But since there 32

was nothing that brought them and the 13,500 other Austrians to mind, we put up the name plates. On the same evening, we established an association and elected board members among the group of fellow travellers. For the association IMMER: Initiative Malvine – Maly Trsotinec erinnern (AL-WAYS: Initiative Malvine – commemorating Maly Trostenets) with the aim of commemorating the Austrian victims of the Shoa in Belarus, in Maly Trostenets. All were victims of the inhuman racial laws of the National Socialists, irrespective of whether they avowed themselves as Jews or not, or whether they belonged to a different religion. I put up these name plates in May 2010 and was afraid for months afterwards that they might have disappeared, been taken down or destroyed. But one year later, on June 11th 2011, when the small bus came closer to the small forest, I saw the yellow name plates glowing from afar. They were all still there, each and every one of them. When I think of this moment, I cannot describe the feeling adequately of how all of the yellow name plates slowly appeared in the green of the forest: it was as if I would finally feel WHOLE. Even though nobody had ever talked about it at home in my all-Protestant family, I had already sensed as a child that “someone” was missing in my family. Therefore, I started to research my family history and I found the last certificate of registration of Malvine Barton. It reads: “Last address: Vienna 2, Hollandstraße 8”. This certificate of registration was a wound I had not known before. Somebody had disappeared here and not returned. Somebody who was missing and whose absence was not spoken of. I had already felt this loss as a child, in a way that was shrouded in silence. I further discovered that in my mother’s family there were also people “missing”. I found out that Malvine

Barton was murdered in Maly Trostenets. And also the relatives of my mother – the then 12-year old Herta and her parents Rosa and Viktor Ranzenhofer. Herta’s brother Alfons managed to escape to England on a Kindertransport (transportation of children) but the three of them were deported to Maly Trostenets - just like Malvine, who was already 64 years old when she was deported. At first, I deemed this a strange coincidence. It seemed strange to me that my mother’s relatives of all people and also Malvine Barton had been murdered in Maly Trostenets – a place I had never heard of before. At first, I concluded that only very few people – maybe a hand full of people – had died there. But exactly the opposite is the case. Although this place was hardly known to the wider public, at least until the association IM-MER was founded in Austria, it is of utmost importance with respect to the number of people murdered by the National Socialists. Nowhere else were so many Austrians murdered by the National Socialists as victims of the Shoa as in Maly Trostenets: around 13,500. A quarter of all the people killed by the National Socialists due to their Jewish origins were murdered in Minsk or Maly Trostenets. But it is impossible to speak of Maly Trostenets without looking at the situation of all the Jews living in Austria before. When speaking of Jews hereafter I refer to all persons considered Jews according to the Nuremberg Racial Laws – irrespective of their religious beliefs. To provide a scientific underpinning to this and not only make assertions, I will now give a short summary of an essay by Sybille Steinbacher, Professor at the Institute for Contemporary History at the University of Vienna. The text was presented during the conference Maly Trostinec erinnern (Remembering Maly Trostenets) in November 2011 at the Vienna Museum and published with all details in the book Ermordet in Maly Trostinec. Die österreichischen Opfer der Shoa in Weißrussland (Murdered in Maly Trostenets. The Austrian Victims of the Shoa in Belarus) (Ed. Waltraud Barton, Vienna 2012). The book also contains the lecture Logik und Logistik von 1300 Eisenbahnkilometern (Logics and logistics of 1,300 kilometres of railway) by Dr. Alfred Gottwaldt, Head of Rail Transport Department at the German Museum of Technology Berlin. All details regarding transport logistics are the results of his research.

Essentially, the time between the annexation in March 1938 and the end of the Second World War in 1945 can be divided into three phases with regards to the Jewish population of Austria: I. March 1938 – September 1939: exclusion and terrorisation with the aim of “voluntary” emigration or escape II. Autumn 1939 – Summer 1941: territorial cleansing – deportation III. From Autumn 1941: planned extermination From March 1938 (the so-called Anschluss or annexation) Austria was part of National Socialist Germany. Almost the entire Jewish population of Austria lived in Vienna at that time. Smaller communities also existed in Lower Austria, Burgenland and Styria. However, of the 213,000 Jews living in Austria, more than 200,000 were registered in the capital, Vienna. Hence, Vienna1 was the largest German-speaking community, far larger than Berlin, with 160,000 members. Vienna had around 1,936,000 inhabitants at the time2. Ten percent of the Viennese were part of the Jewish community. Phase I: The anti-Semitic climate in Vienna and the whole of the Eastern March – as Austria was called after the annexation – was far more radical and life-threatening than in the Old Reich. A Vienna “without Jews” was a declared objective of the National Socialists from the beginning3. 33

Waltraud Barton The Maly Trostenets Extermination Site and its Meaning for Austria

As early as 1938, Hermann Göring promised to make the city “free of Jews” within four years4. However, in Vienna people were at first also “only” thinking of “emigration” or “displacement” – as in many other cities of the German Reich. Already in 1938, Jews in Vienna were far more vulnerable, as in all other German cities. Among the political opponents immediately deported to the Dachau concentration camp after the annexation in March 1938 were also many Zionist local politicians and in particular all prominent members of the Israelitische Kultusgemeinde (Jewish religious community). In summer 1938, more than 7,000 Viennese Jews were brought to and detained at the Dachau concentration camp. Sybille Steinbacher describes the atmosphere in Vienna: “Raids and arrests of Jews were daily fare since the annexation; as well as pogroms, extreme acts of violence, pilfering, wild Aryanisation, assaults, raids, bribes, humiliation, damage to synagogues and publicly celebrated Jew-baiting and orgies of beating. The non-Jewish population did not have to be encouraged to use violence but took the initiative itself. It did not take long and the open robbery was legalised without hesitation. Often friends and relatives in the Old Reich could hardly believe how the situation for Jews in Austria had taken on dramatic dimensions within such a short time, as they did not have similar experiences at that time. Expropriations and uncontrolled riots in Vienna were such that the NS authorities called upon the population to show restraint and took action to bring the events under control”5. Further, special prosecution measures such as the obligation for Jews to carry out forced labour in “work employment in segregated groups” (geschlossener Arbeitseinsatz) was also “invented” in Vienna. In order to get rid of the Jews and at the same time to exploit them as a workforce, a large camp was established near Vienna in 1939. This had no equal in the whole of the German Reich. Here, Jewish men were subjected to forced labour in “work employment in segregated groups” in brick factories, at the city waste disposal and also at construction sites of the Reichsautobahn (motorway of the Reich). They were strictly separated from non-Jewish “volunteer” workers and had to bear an identification mark (even before the Star of David was introduced in September 1941)6. For this reason, young men also fled Vienna because they were

particularly persecuted, arrested and used for forced labour. Also “invented” in Vienna was the Vermögensverkehrsstelle (Property Transactions Office) and the Zentralstelle für jüdische Auswanderung (Central Office for Jewish Emigration) that was later also “established” in Prague. Formally it was subordinate to Franz Stahlecker; de facto it was under the control of Adolf Eichmann. With his help, two-thirds of the Jewish population of Vienna, more than 130,000 Jews from Vienna and the Eastern Mark, had already “disappeared” by the beginning of the war in 1939. That is, they were forced to emigrate, leaving behind most of their wealth as so-called Reichsfluchtsteuer (Reich Flight Tax). Eighteen months after the annexation, only about 66,000 Jews lived in the Eastern Mark. Of these, about 13,000 were no longer members of the Jewish religious community; many had already left the religious community long before the invasion by the National Socialists. Malvine Barton, as well as Herta, Rosa and Viktor Ranzenhofer, had become Protestants, for example. However, only race counted for the National Socialists: in order to be Aryan, one had to have four Aryan grandparents. Many who were not able to escape were forced into suicide already in 1938 after the November Pogrom that was euphemistically called Kristallnacht (Crystal Night). Ten thousand Jewish men were arrested and thousands of them brought to the Dachau concentration camp7. To sum up, here is an overview of the numbers. Of the approximately 200,000 Jews in Vienna that made up 10% of the population of Vienna at the time, two-thirds had already “disappeared” to foreign countries between March 1938 and September 1939 (outbreak of Second World War) – almost 130,000 people. Unfortunately, about 16,000 of them fled to countries that were one after the other occupied by German troops. Hence, they were more than ever at the mercy of the National Socialists. In particular, women, children and the elderly were left in Vienna, most of them in poor circumstances.

This marks the beginning of phase II: The remaining Jews were systematically deported. Again, Vienna served as a model. Deportations began sooner than in other German cities. Originally, a reservation for 300,000 German and Austrian Jews in Nisko (in the occupied territory of Poland near Lublin) was planned8. The Jewish religious community had to compile lists with names and above all choose the Jewish men fit for work who were living in Vienna for the transport to Nisko, particularly handymen. They were promised that they would be able to establish independent lives there. Trains with a total of over 1,600 Jews left Aspang Station in Vienna on October 20th and 26th 19399. However, the plan was dropped after they had erected camp barracks and many Viennese Jews were forcibly sent to the territory occupied by the Soviets by the SS men. Only about 200 were allowed to return to Vienna in spring of 1940. The remaining Jewish population in Vienna had to move to shared apartments in Judenhäusern (Jewish houses) and Jews from the countryside were relocated to Vienna. In December 1940, Hitler acceded to a request by the new Gauleiter and Reich Governor of Vienna, Baldur von Schirach, who wanted to gain housing space in Vienna. He ordered that the “60,000 Jews still living in the Reich District Vienna were to be deported to the General Government sooner, while the war was still ongoing, due to the prevailing housing shortage”10. Therefore, for five weeks trains with approximately 1,000 people each left for Opole, Kielce and the district of Lublin every Wednesday from the beginning of February 1941 to mid March11. The Jewish communities in the General Government had to deal with the deported Viennese. However, the former hardly had enough money to take care of their own people. The sick and elderly died quickly. The strong were subjected to forced labour by private German companies. In March 1941, the deportations stopped temporarily because of the upcoming attack on the Soviet Union. The Deutsche Reichsbahn (German State Railways) was used for the preparations. To be able to continue with the deportations, Eichmann gave orders that Jews were only allowed to live in three adjacent

districts in Vienna from May 1941 (in the second, ninth and twentieth municipal districts). There they were gathered and the logistics for the deportations were prepared12. Phase III: In the summer of 1941 phase III the policy of extermination began. At first – after the invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941 – the Soviet Jews were exterminated in August 1941. Then, the Jewish population in Lithuania and parts of Latvia in October 1941 – also in Eastern Poland13. The around 54,000 Jews who still lived in Vienna were systematically deported to the East with mass transportations that quickly followed one another and then murdered from autumn 1941. The destinations of the transportations kept shifting to the East – to Riga, Kaunas and Minsk or Maly Trostenets, to the Reichskommissariat Ostland. Hence, the deportation of Jews was shifted to the area of action of the SS task forces and Sicherheitsdienst (Security Service). In autumn 1941, practically no Jews were left in Vienna; most of the nearly 8,000 remaining Jews lived in a so-called privileged mixed marriage with an Aryan partner. The death squadrons of the SS and the police together with the Latvian and Lithuanian auxiliary troops they had engaged14 always proceeded in the same way in the Reichskommissariat Ostland (Reich Commission Ostland). Before the transports arrived, thousands of local Ghetto inmates were murdered in Riga, Kaunas and Minsk to make space for the new arrivals from the Greater German Reich in October and November 1941. The Central Office for Jewish Emigration decided who was deported. At first, the Jewish religious community was able to protect their employees (around 1,500) from being transported15. Their family members were also protected (at least for some time). In October 1941, the religious community succeeded in saving blind people, sick people, war cripples, distinguished front-line soldiers of the First World War, doctors, as well as those living in old people’s homes and men who were subjected to forced labour in work camps from being deported. People with departure documents

Waltraud Barton The Maly Trostenets Extermination Site and its Meaning for Austria

apartments, bring them to the collection camps and stop all attempts to escape. While the transports from the collection camp to the Aspang goods depot took place in broad daylight, usually early in the afternoon, the Aushebungen (conscriptions) that began in November 1941 happened during the night18.

were also exempted from deportation at that time. In order to fulfil the predefined quota, the religious community had to provide a replacement in each and every case. All of those who received a “citation to be deported” from the religious community had to stand ready to be deported at a collection camp with a maximum of 50 kilos of luggage. However, when the first transport for Minsk 1,300 km away with around 1,000 Austrians left from Aspang Station in Vienna on November 28th 1941, all the people on the list were deported, including old and sick people. Nobody was allowed to stay behind. In the meantime, the Reich Security Head Office had also generally forbidden Jews to emigrate. From the beginning of November, the border of the German Reich was closed to Jewish refugees. The collection camp for these transports was a school on the road Kleine Sperlgasse 2a.16 (there were four collection camps in Vienna in total that the religious community had to sustain). Money was confiscated in the collection camp – except for 100 Reichsmark that could be changed into (worthless) Zloty. They had to give precise information on their financial situation, valuables and their food ration cards. Often up to 2,000 people were crammed into these collection camps and many committed suicide to escape deportation17. Rumours about mass killings in the east were already circulating in Vienna at that time. Therefore, the SS instructed the Jewish religious community to appoint persons (so-called Ausheber) who were supervised by an SS member and had the task of helping Jews pack, get them out of their 36

As mentioned above, the first deportation train to Belarus (to Minsk) left Vienna on November 28th 1941. The Wehrmacht had occupied Minsk at the end of June 1941. The SS and police units, among others the gendarmerie and regular police with the support of local SS auxiliary troops, had murdered thousands of Jews in the Ghetto in November 1941 to make space for the planned large transports of Jews from Central Europe19. The Jews from the German Reich were accommodated in the now empty barracks. There were now two separated areas in the Minsk Ghetto: the Russian part and the Sonderghetto (special ghetto) for Western European Jews. All Jews on the first transport from Vienna entered the Ghetto in November 1941. It was the only transport that arrived in the winter of 1941/1942, as shortly before the battle of Moscow the German State Railways was needed to supply the Wehrmacht. For half a year, Minsk was not the destination for deportations from Vienna and other cities of Central Europe. The officials of the civil administration in Minsk responsible for the Ghetto did not want the transports of Jews to resume “because the overpopulated and - during fights with the Red Army largely destroyed city had massive problems providing housing space and food and was therefore not capable of accommodating tens of thousands of Reichsjuden (Jews from the Reich)20. The Reich Security Head Office ignored these arguments and eliminated the civil administration in the spring of 1942: Reinhard Heydrich, Head of the Reich Security Head Office, withdrew the responsibility for the transport from local officials and gave orders that the Jews should no longer be brought to the Ghetto but be killed immediately upon arrival. Eduard Strauch, Commander of the Security Police and the Security Service in Minsk, was instructed to find a suitable site for the mass murders. He chose the village of Maly Trostenets (he turned the local

Kolkhoz into an SS farmstead) a couple of kilometres away, with the small forest Blagovshchina as an execution site. Latvian “volunteers” from Riga arrived to support the SS and police forces. Maly Trostenets became a site of systematic mass murder in spring of 1942. From now on, the Minsk Ghetto was no longer the destination for the deportation trains from Vienna that resumed in May 1942 but Maly Trostenets. At the Minsk train station, people were “transferred” from trains to trucks and brought to Maly Trostenets. From August 1942, the deportation trains headed there directly; virtually all Jews were murdered immediately upon arrival in Maly Trostenets. In other words, they were shot or suffocated in mobile gas wagons. Only a few reached the SS farmstead and were subjected to forced labour. The first train that arrived in Maly Trostenets with approximately 1,000 Jews after deportations had stopped in winter 1941/1942 came from Vienna and left on May 6th 194221. After two days, passengers were transferred from passenger wagons to cattle trucks at the border – as with all other transports that followed: The following transports from Vienna (again with 1,000 people each) arrived at Minsk or Maly Trostenets on May 20th and 27th and on June 2nd and 9th of 1942. Presumably the procedure was always the same. The Jews were brought from the station to Maly Trostentes and a few that were fit to work were selected. The majority, however, were directly brought to the forest, where large pits had already been dug. They were either shot at the edge of the pit or murdered in mobile gas wagons. In the summer and autumn of 1942, Maly Trostenets became THE destination for deportations of Jews from Central Europe, especially from Vienna and Terezín. Up to July 1942, a total of 38,000 Jews from the Old Reich, the “Eastern March” and the “Protectorate” were deported to this site. Four transports to Minsk left Vienna with a total of 4,000 people between mid August and the beginning of October of 1942 (on August 17th and 31st, on

September 14th and October 5th)22. In total, there were ten death trains from Vienna to Belarus from November 1941 and October 1942, nine of them directly to the extermination site of Maly Trostenets. Only the first of the ten trains headed for the Minsk Ghetto. Nine thousand Jews were murdered, among them 3,000 men, women and children that were unfit to work from the special ghetto. Among them were Jews who had arrived at the ghetto on the first transport from Vienna. After that, the German part of the ghetto was liquidated, while the Russian part still existed for another year. According to statistics, 49,000 Jews were deported from Vienna, among them 10,000 to Minsk or Maly Trostenets. In addition, there were 3,500 Jews brought to Maly Trostenets from Terezín, which had been a destination for 15,000 deportees from Vienna between June and October of 1942. For most of them, Terezín was only a place of transit on the way to one of the execution sites in the east. Presumably, five transports with around 3,500 Austrian Jews left from Theresienstadt to find death in Maly Trostenets between August and September 194223. The most important facts by Dr. Alfred Gottwaldt, who provided all information on the transports and the logistics of the deportations: In autumn 1942, only just about 8,000 of the once 200,000 Jews were left in Vienna. Most of them – almost 5,400 – were protected in so far as they lived in a mixed marriage with an Aryan. And at the end of December 1944, there were 5,800 Jews in Vienna, 37

Waltraud Barton The Maly Trostenets Extermination Site and its Meaning for Austria

of which around 4,700 had an Aryan partner, according to statistics of the Council of Elders of Jews in Vienna. After the end of the mass deportations, the Gestapo organised smaller transports from Vienna in October 1942 to bring the remaining Jews to Terezín in 1942 and 1944. The corpses of the tens of thousands of people that were murdered by the National Socialists in Maly Trostenets – among them 13,500 from Austria – were exhumed and burned between October and December 1942 by the SK 1005 (Enterdungsaktion). The dead bodies filled 34 huge pits in the forest of Blagovshchina. Only about 1,700 of the Jews deported from Vienna survived the Third Reich, most of them in Terezín. The chances of survival were lowest for those deported to Minsk and Maly Trostenets. The number of survivors from Austria is at 11, 13 or 17, depending on the source. Like no other site, Maly Trostenets has thus become an extermination site for Austrian victims of the Shoa. More were murdered here than in Riga or Auschwitz. Maly Trostenets is by far the most important memorial in the context of commemorating Austrian victims of the Shoa. The pits in Blagovshchina that are today filled up and covered with mixed woodland are an enormous grave that lacks gravestones with the names of 13,500 Austrians. Finally, some further very personal comments

It took me years to understand how many people from Austria were murdered in Maly Trostenets – and that we do not not talk about them in Vienna, not because they were so few, but because they were so many. And then it was impossible for me to suppress the topic. I started to talk about it: I have Jewish relatives and they were murdered in Maly Trostenets. We have still not erected a grave stone for them. When my 50th birthday came four years ago, I decided to give my own “getting older” a deeper meaning and visit Maly Trostenets – to the memorial that would surely be there. Or to visit the memorial. I was stunned when I found out that there was nothing of the kind. NOTHING, absolutely nothing reminded visitors of the many Austrians Jews that were murdered by the National Socialists in Maly Trostenets. Nothing remembered the 13,500 people that had disappeared from Austria between 1941 and 1942, almost all of them from Vienna. Among them were Malvine Barton and Viktor, Rosa and Herta Ranzenhofer. Nothing remembered them, nothing told their story. Nothing either in Vienna, the city from which they had disappeared. To be fair, Vienna is the city of Sigmund Freud and of psychoanalysis; probably also because because the city was, and is, a place of looking away and of taboos. But the dead are there, even though we do not bury them. We finally have to stop looking away and commemorate the murdered. We know their names, they are written down on many long deportation lists. How can they stay anonymous? We need to give them back their names, they need grave stones in Maly Trostenets and in Blagovshchina. People keep asking me: don’t you think that the Republic of Austria has other worries than a grave stone for these DEAD PEOPLE? I then answer: “yes, Austria surely has other worries but THIS is also one of the country’s worries. That there are thousands of fellow citizens that do not have a grave stone. We owe this to the dead. And in my view, this is the only obligation of my generation. We owe them to not look away from their misery. We owe them commemoration. We owe them a grave stone. For each grave stone is proof that those who are missing today have lived, when they lived, where they lived.

18 November 1941 The first transport leaves Vienna with 1,001 people, arrival on December 5 1941 in Minsk (Minsk Ghetto) 6 May 1942 Second transport from Vienna with 994/1,000 people, arrival on May 11 in Minsk/Maly Trostenets 20 May 1942 Third transport from Vienna with 986/1,000 persons, arrival on May 23/26 1942 in Minsk/Maly Trostenets 27 May 1942 Fourth transport form Vienna with 981 people, arrival on June 1 1942 in Minsk/Maly Trostenets 2 June 1942 Fifth transport from Vienna with 999 people, arrival on June 5/9 1942 in Minsk/Maly Trostenets

And each of us is worth a grave stone. Why not our dead neighbours in Maly Trostenets? I feel “whole” since I put up these name plates. And I know that all relatives that have accompanied me during the past four memorial journeys and also put up name plates feel the same. But when there are still so many “dead people without names”, Vienna – and Austria – will continue to have this wound. We have to try to heal it. In the past years, we have put up about 100 name plates in Maly Trostenets. How many years do we need to go there until there are 13,500? No, there has to be another way to give the dead a place again, an official, appropriate place that gives them back their names. In Blagovshchina. I want to live in a city, in a Republic that asks itself: “Where exactly have my neighbours been deported to?” Each and every one. “Where are my citizens? I want the dead to be honoured. Therefore, I organised the conference Maly Trostinets erinnern (Remembering Maly Trostenets) in Vienna in November 2011 and published the book Ermordet in Maly Trostinec. Die österreichischen Opfer der Shoa in Weißrussland (Murdered in Maly Trostenets. The Austrian Victims of the Shoa in Belarus). And therefore I am standing here in Minsk in March 2013. The Federal President of the Republic of Austria has commissioned IM-MER to erect an appropriate memorial to the Austrians that died in Maly Trostenets and to give all 13,500 back their names. I seek your support.

9 June 1942 Sixth transport from Vienna with 1,006 people, arrival on June 13/15 1942 in Minsk/Maly Trostenets 14 July 1942 First transfer from Terezín with 1,000 people, arrival on July 17 1942 in Minsk/Maly Trostenets 28–30 July 1942 Aktion in the Minsk Ghetto; 9,000 inhabitants are brought to Maly Trostenets and killed, 3,000 of them from the Great German Reich 4 August 1942 Second transfer from Terezín with 993/995 people, arrival on August 10 1942 in Maly Trostenets 17 August 1942 Seventh transport from Vienna, with 1,003 people, arrival on August 21 1942 in Maly Trostenets 25 August 1942 Third transfer from Terezín with 1,000 people, arrival on august 28 1942 in Maly Trostenets 31 August 1942 Eighth transport from Vienna with 967 people, arrival on September 2/4 1942 in Maly Trostinets 8 September 1942 Fourth transfer from Terezín with 1,000 people, arrival on September 11/12 1942 in Maly Trostenets 14 September 1942 Ninth transport from Vienna with 992 people, arrival on September 16/18 1942 in Maly Trostenets 22 September 1942 Fifth transfer from Terezín with 1,000 people, arrival on September 25 1942 in Maly Trostenets

Waltraud Barton The Maly Trostenets Extermination Site and its Meaning for Austria

On the situation of the Jews s. Hans Safrian; Hans Witek: Und keiner war dabei. Dokumente des alltäglichen Antisemitismus in Wien 1938, Vienna 2008. Florian Freund; Hans Safrian: Die Verfolgung der österreichischen Juden 1938–1945. In: Emmerich Tálos; Ernst Hanisch; Wolfgang Neugebauer; Reinhard Sieder (Ed.): NS-Herrschaft in Österreich. Ein Handbuch, Vienna 2002, p. 767–794. Hans Witek: ‘Arisierungen’ in Wien. Aspekte nationalsozialistischer Enteignungspolitik 1938–1940. In: ibid., p.795–816. Doron Rabinovici: Instanzen der Ohnmacht. Wien 1938–1945. Der Weg zum Judenrat, Frankfurt on the Main 2000. Evan Burr Bukey: Hitlers Österreich. ‘Eine Bewegung und ein Volk’. Hamburg: 2011 (amerikanische Erstveröffentlichung 2000, insbesondere p.189–217). Jonny Moser: Österreich. In: Wolfgang Benz (Ed.): Dimension des Völkermords. Die Zahl der jüdischen Opfer des Nationalsozialismus, Munich 1996. Moser: Demographie der jüdischen Bevölkerung Österreichs 1938–1945, Vienna 1999. Moser: Die Judenverfolgung in Österreich 1938–1945, Vienna i.a. 1966. Gerhard Botz: Nationalsozialismus in Wien. Machtübernahme, Herrschaftssicherung, Radikalisierung 1938/39, Vienna 2008. Almost 182,000 Jews were part of the Jewish religious community in 1938. In addition, there were another 25,000 people that were not religious but were considered Jews according to the Nuremberg Laws. S. Freund, Safrian, Verfolgung, p.766.

s. Burr Bukey, Hitlers Österreich, p.194.

s. Freund; Safrian, Verfolgung, p.766 f. Rabinovici: Instanzen der Ohnmacht, p. 77 f. and Passim.

s. Wolf Gruner: Zwangsarbeit und Verfolgung. Österreichische Juden im NS-Staat 1939–1945, Innsbruck i.a. 2000.

s. Gerhard Botz: Wohnungspolitik und Judendeportation in Wien 1939 bis 1945. Zur Funktion des Antisemitismus als Ersatz nationalsozialistischer Sozialpolitik, Vienna i.a. 1975.

On the links between politics on Jews and settlement s. Götz Aly, ‘Endlösung’. Völkerverschiebung und der Mord an den europäischen Juden, Frankfurt on the Main 1995.

For information on figures, s. Moser: Österreich, p. 76. For information on procedures s. Rabinovici: Instanzen der Ohnmacht, p.194–211.

Cited in Saul Friedländer: Die Jahre der Vernichtung. Das Dritte Reich und die Juden 1939–1945, München 2006. p. 164 f.; Also, s. Freund, Safrian, Verfolgung, p. 772 f.; Rabinovici, Instanzen der Ohnmacht, p. 223 ff.

s. Rosenkranz, Verfolgung und Selbstbehauptung, p. 255–262. Widerstand und Verfolgung in Wien 1934 –1945. Eine Dokumentation. Band 3, Wien 1984, p.292, Dokument 169. For information on figures s. Moser, Österreich, p. 76.; Rabinovici, Instanzen der Ohnmacht, p.230 ff.

s. Rabinovici, Instanzen der Ohnmacht, p. 253 f., 308.

s. Christopher Browning: Die Entfesselung der Endlösung: nationalsozialistische Judenpolitik 1939–1942, Berlin 2006. Further, s. Ulrich Herbert (Ed.): Nationalsozialistische Vernichtungspolitik 1939–1945. Neue Forschungen und Kontroversen, Frankfurt on the Main 1998, provides a summary of some of the regions of the mass murder; on Lithuania s. Christoph Dieckmann: Deutsche Besatzungspolitik in Litauen 1941–1944, Göttingen 2011.

On the function of auxiliary troops s. Martin Dean: Collaboration in the Holocaust: Crimes of the Local Police in Belorussia and the Ukraine, 1941–1944, New York 2000.

s. Rabinovici, Instanzen der Ohnmacht, p. 260–277; For information on the development of the number of employees p.171, 174, 345.

Widerstand und Verfolgung in Wien 1934–1945. Eine Dokumentation, Band 3, Wien 1984, p. 295, Dokument 174. S. Rosenkranz, Verfolgung und Selbstbehauptung, p. 282 f. Only a couple of ‘categories’ of so-called mixed marriages continued to be exempted from deportations.

ibid., p. 294, Dokument 173. For comprehensive information on the judicial and societal treatment of ‘Ausheber’ after the end of the War s. Rabinovici, Instanzen der Ohnmacht, p. 14–26; On the procedure of the ‘Aushebungen’ p. 278–291.; Hans Günther Adler, Der verwaltete Mensch. Studie zur Deportation der Juden aus Deutschland, Tübingen 1974, p. 380 f.

s. ibid., p. 291–297.

On the decision of the NS leaders to transport Jews from Germany, Austria and Moravia to Belarus s. Gerlach, Kalkulierte Morde, p. 747–761.

s. Safrian, Eichmann und seine Gehilfen, p. 143–152.; Gerlach, Kalkulierte Morde, p.754f.

s. ibid. Gerlach, Kalkulierte Morde, p. 764–773.

For information on figures s. Moser, Österreich, p. 78, 80 ff. Further, s. Freund; Safrian, Verfolgung, p. 766.

s. Moser, Österreich, p. 85. On the transports from Vienna to Terezín s. Rabinovici, Instanzen der Ohnmacht, p. 240 f.

Tomáš Fedorovič (Memorial Terezín) The Extermination Site Maly Trostenets and the Jews from the Terezín Ghetto In the hitherto historiography of Terzín, Maly Trostenets in Belarus is without doubt among the least known of the sites to which Jews from Terezín were deported and then exterminated. From July 14th to September 22nd 1944, five transports with a total of 5,000 Jews left Terezín destined for this camp.

These transports were part of the fourth series of deportations from the Reich and the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia to the east. Unlike the deportations to Belarus (Minsk) in the winter of 1941, the Jews who arrived at Maly Trostenets from May 11th 1942 onwards were almost without exception immediately liquidated in mobile gas wagons or shot1. As the title of this essay suggests, I will not elaborate on the transport to the Minsk Ghetto in November 19412. The summer and autumn of 1942 was a critical time in the existence and survival of Terezín. Although the civilian population was resettled from the city and many houses of civilians were thus cleared for the needs of the ghetto, the continuous flow of Jews from the Protectorate, as well as German and Austrian Jews, was still an alarming problem for the Jewish self-administration in Terezín. While the garrison town had been home to approximately 7,000 citizens and soldiers before the War, the number of interned Jews kept rising continuously from mid-1942. A total of 21,000 Jews were accommodated in the Ghetto in June, 43,000 in July, 50,000 in August and 58,000 in September. Furthermore, the situation became more complicated because of instructions indicating which groups of detainees were to be deported from the ghetto3. This was another reason why the ghetto lacked people that were fit to work. In contrast to this, the number of elderly people from Germany and Austria increased. The self-administration was authorised to put together the transports to the east. People who had arrived recently at the Terezín Ghetto were usually put on transports towards the east.

Therefore, mainly Jews from the Protectorate from the regions of Kolín, Olomouc and Prague were transported to Belarus; only 64 of those deported were from Germany or Austria4. In September 1942, the crisis which had emerged due to the lack of a workforce culminated. A report by the management of the transports in its annual review provides evidence of this fact. This report includes the following information: “On the day transport Bk (8 September 1942) was prepared to leave for Maly Trostenets, only 57 men were available to check through the 2,995 arriving and departing detainees. Hence, each of them had to check through 52 people, including their luggage”5. Before the departure of the last ‘normal’ transport to Maly Trostenets, the garrison headquarters deported two transports with 2,000 elderly people each to the Treblinka extermination camp because the situation had become unbearable. The Czech historian Miroslav Kárný is convinced that it was due to the insufficient extermination capacities at Maly Trostenets that the extinction of detainees from Terezín was primarily shifted to Treblinka6.

Tomáš Fedorovič (Memorial Terezín) The Extermination Site Maly Trostenets and the Jews from the Terezín Ghetto

east. Hence, this special group shared the tragic fate of the majority of the other detainees. Various rumours about the fate of the Jews who were deported to the east circulated in the Protectorate. The Security Service in the Olomouc region mentions in its report of July 1942 that rumours concerning the liquidation method of the Jewish transports were spreading. These rumours depict the events that were about to take place in Baranovichi and in Maly Trostenets very well. “In most cases, the resettled Jews would not arrive at their destination ‘somewhere in Poland’ but died on the way. There are horror stories about shootings at graves that people had to dig themselves”8.

In July 1942, a large group of mentally ill Jewish patients from Kroměříž and Prague was deported to Maly Trostenets (and Baranovichi). They were sent to the Terezín Ghetto in the course of the Entjudung (de-Jewification) of the me-ntal institutions in the Protectorate to make space for Aryan patients. However, only one part of the building at the Terezín Ghetto was available for the internment of these mentally ill persons (the so-called Kavalierskaserne). The German administration of the camp therefore decided to get rid of them as quickly as possible. They were sent further east with the next transports. Notes in the diaries of the detainees prove this fact. Egon Redlich writes in July 1942: “A man I was acquainted with escaped from the Germans to an institution for the mentally ill. Now he has arrived here with the fools, who are all in great danger”7. The majority of these patients from the Protectorate were on the three AA-transports to Belarus (including Baranovichi). They made up 11% of the total number of deported persons on transport AAx of July 14th 1942. In total, 239 Jewish patients from mental institutions in the Protectorate were deported to Belarus from July to September of 1942 – almost 53% of the mentally ill that were deported further to the 42

A unique letter dated from August 19th 1942 is available at the Terezín memorial. In this letter, Otto Vogl informs his sister Zdena Suchánková about the fate of their sister and the nephew who were brought to Maly Trostenets in August 1942. The letter mentions that the journey took eight days and that they reached Minsk. In his letter, Otto Vogl also describes the conditions during the journey, in particular the lack of water – allegedly due to the risk of poisoning – and also that men and women were separated and accommodated in barracks. In addition, he mentions that they were doing better than the other people at the camp and that they were certainly better off than in Poland. Otto Vogl wrote that he was convinced that his sister and nephew were healthy and strong and that they would certainly live through the difficulties better than the old and the sick. The author did not know the real truth. His optimistic prediction that his nephew Tomáš together with the others “would join the other relatives on Saturday (25 km),” would actually mean their imminent and tragic liquidation. An anonymous author wrote on this letter “4.8.1942 deceased”. It might have been his sister9. The commandants of the Terezín camp only informed the detainees two days before departure on which transport they would be. Thus, they only had limited time to be “reclaimed” from the transport. Only the detainees of the first two transports from Terezín in January 1942 were informed about the destination of the transport. Otherwise, the detainees never knew the destination. Afterwards they were only vaguely told “to the east”.

On July 28th 1942, another transport to the east left in the direction of Minsk. However, this transport from Terezín labelled AAy was stopped 145 kilometres from Minsk and completely liquidated in Baranovitchi. This was due to the heavy burden for SS members during the large action of liquidation in the Minsk Ghetto9. Only the following transport from Terezín to Belarus labelled AAz arrived near the camp in Maly Trostenets. According to Hanuš Münz, one of the survivors deported to Maly Trostenets, the detainees were brought to Volkovysk in passenger cars and only then transferred to the uncomfortable freight wagons11. Further transports from Terezín underwent the same procedure12. Those detainees from Terezín who were deported to the area of Lublin in summer 1942 escaped immediate liquidation for some time after their arrival in the ghettos in Piaski, Izbica and Zamočč. However, the deportees to Belarus were immediately liquidated in 1942, except for a small group. Part of this small group that was initially spared was a selected number of men who were fit to work, along with their relatives. The others were either suffocated in mobile gas wagons (S-wagons) or killed in mass executions. According to the latest research, a minimum of eight mobile gas wagons were used in the summer of 194213. A couple of dozen detainees were selected from each transport. A decisive factor for their survival was the qualifications they indicated upon arrival. Hanuš Münz (born in 1910) speaks about two of his friends. They had truthfully indicated “miner” as their last occupation because they had in fact worked in a mine before they were forced onto the transports. In contrast, he and his friend Leo Kraus had invented a job – “locksmith”. They had saved their own lives, at least for a certain time. According to statements Münz made after the War, they only met other people who had been selected from this transport every once in a while. The other detainees from Terezín are only mentioned briefly. Two of the victims from the Torfkommando (work command of detainees) were Czech: Böhm from Moravia and 17-year-old Levý from the region of Mělník [Melnik]. He also writes about the position of Jews from the Protectorate within the self-administration of the camp. One of the Czech detainees, called Polák, had the post of leader of

the barracks. The medical student Müller, the lover of the leader of the detainees’ self-administration, called Nora, held the post of chief physician of the camp. Hanuš Münz also mentions Heda Sternová (who also survived) and the support of Lidka (Didy) Lederer, the daughter of engineer Leo Lederer. He only had limited contact with other camp detainees because he did not work in the camp but drove to Minsk every day to work as a locksmith with his friend14. The second statement by Karel Schlessinger (born in 1921), one of the nine survivors of the deportation to Maly Trostenets, also describes the journey of the first transport AAx to Maly Trostenets. After stopovers in Wroclaw and Warsaw, they arrived at Brest-Litovsk, where they had to change to freight wagons. Approximately 20-30 of the 1,000 detainees who arrived at the camp were chosen during the selection. At this moment, he and his friend were in danger of being liquidated. Therefore, they fled to the partisans in the forest. After the liberation, they joined the Czechoslovak Army and with the army they reached their homes15. Although the majority of the detainees from Terezín had only a vague idea of the situation of the deportees – as seen in the letter of Otto Vogl – one of the detainees was very well informed. He was one of the most famous men of the German transports

Tomáš Fedorovič (Memorial Terezín) The Extermination Site Maly Trostenets and the Jews from the Terezín Ghetto

in the Minsk Ghetto, Dr. Karl Löwenstein. He was miraculously released from the Minsk Ghetto in May 1942 and came to the Terezín Ghetto, where he was kept in solitary confinement until September 1942. After he was released, some of the detainees came to know about the situation of the deportees in Belarus (Minsk). “He indeed mentioned that many Jews had been executed and that every day one or another was shot by a member of the SS for either trivial reasons or no reason at all.” Löwenstein did not say anything about what had happened in Maly Trostenets16. For the detainees from Terezín who had escaped liquidation after their arrival at Maly Trostenets, the only rescue was to flee from the camp. The number of victims of the National Socialist terror in Maly Trostenets ranges between 546,000 (in the report on the acts of violence in the region of the village Trostenets of July 25th 1944), 206,500 (Baranova/Pavlova/Romanovski), 150,000 (commission of inquiry of 1944) and 60,000 (Gerlach). (17) According to current research, the five transports from Terezín to Maly Trostenets make up 8.3% of all victims. Overview of the transports from the Terzín Ghetto to Belarus (1942)

Trans- Date port

Destination

Total

Survivors

AAx

14.7.1942

Maly Trostenets

1.000

AAy

28.7.1942

Baranovichi

1.000

AAz

4.8.1942

Maly Trostenets

1.000

25.8.1942

Maly Trostenets

1.000

8.9.1942

Maly Trostenets

1.000

22.9.1942

Maly Trostenets

1.000

Overview of the detainees from Terezín who survived deportation to Maly Trostenets: Klein Karel, * 1920, AAx - 898 (14 July 1942) Schlessinger Karel, * 1921, AAx - 687 (14 July 1942) Pollak Evžen, * 1898, AAz - 991 (4 August 1942) Pollak Josef, * 1924, AAz - 992 (4 August 1942) Münz Hanuš, * 1910, Bc - 14 (25 August 1942) Prinz Erich, * 1905, Bk - 246 (8 September 1942) Prinzová Markéta, * 1897, Bk - 247 (8 September 1942) Sternová Hedvika, * 1915, Bk - 225 (8 September 1942) Lederer Emil, * 1924, Bn - 21 (22 September 1942)

Peter Longerich, Heinrich Himmler, Biographie. Munich 2008, p. 585.

Apart from this transport, another transport was scheduled to leave for Minsk on 30.11.1942. However, it stopped in Terezín because of transportation problems. S. Zdenek Lederer, Ghetto Theresienstadt, London 1953, p. 13.

The reasons cited by Petra Rentrop are vague with respect to this matter. The deportation was not carried out to make space for the German and Austrian Jews but because the self-administration in Terezín had to stick to the still valid order regarding deportation of detainees to the east. Petra Rentrop: Malyj Trostinez. in: Wolfgang Benz, Barbara Distel (Hrsg.): Der Ort des Terrors. Bd. 9, Munich 2009, p. 573–587, here p.575. Transport Bc (28.8.1942) – 52 Jews who had arrived at Terezín together with German and Austrian transports.

Jewish Museum in Prague (further only JMP), t, k. 26, Head of Transport, Annual Report 1941–1942.

Miroslav Kárný, Osud terezínských východních transportů v létě a na podzim 1942. In: Vlastivědný sborník Litoměřicko XXIV, Litoměřice 1988, p.157– 172.

Kryl Miroslav, Egon Redlich: Zítra jedeme, synu, pojedeme transportem. Brno 1995, p. 89. Note of 13. and 14. July 1942.

National Archive Prague, 114–308-4, k. 307, Denní hlášení sD [tagesbericht sD] 81/1942, 9.7.1942.

Memorial Terezín, a 11815-2, letter by Otto Vogl to his sister Zdena Suchánková, 19.8.1942. Jakov Tsur: Der verhängnisvolle Weg des Transportes AAy. In: Theresienstädter Studien und Dokumente 1995, Prague 1995, p. 107–120

JMP, Erinnerungssammlung No. 90, Statement by Hanuš M., 12.2.1992.

Karel Lagus, Josef Polák:, Město za mřížemi, Prague 2006², p. 237–238.

Christian Gerlach, Die deutsche Wirtschafts- und Vernichtungspolitik in Weißrußland 1941 bis 1944, Hamburg 2000, p. 766.

Hanuš Münz, Hanuš Münz, edited by Verlag Petr Münz, Prague 1999.

JMP, Erinnerungssammlung No. 662, Statement Karel Schl., 18.1.1994.

JMP, Theresienstadt, Inv.No. 343, Dokumentaraktion, Klaber Josef – Dr. Löwenstein, 10.12.1945.

Christian Gerlach, Die deutsche Wirtschafts- und Vernichtungspolitik in Weißrußland 1941 bis 1944, p. 770.

Kuzma Kozak Territory of Death â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Territory of History

The first step towards commemorating the victims of Trostenets was taken on September 3rd 1944, when the mortal remains of those who were burned to death were finally buried.

More than 10,000 people from Minsk and surrounding villages took part in the laying to rest. In 1956, during the political thaw under Khrushchev, the Council of Ministers of the Belarusian Soviet Republic commissioned the plan for a memorial in the village of Maly Trostenets. In 1959, a branch of the Belarusian State Museum of the Great Patriotic War History opened in Maly Trostenets. On this occasion, memorials typical of the culture of war remembrance at that time were erected in Trostenets: obelisks with the eternal flame in Bolshoi Trostenets (1963); at the site of the barn in Maly Trostenets (1965) and in the forest near Shashkovka (1966); as well as a memorial stone in commemoration of murdered European Jews in Blagovshchina (2002). An impetus for civil society and the government to come to terms with the history of the site was given by an initiative of the Austrian delegation headed by Waltraud Barton (IM-MER: Initiative Malvine â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Remembering Maly Trostenets). The members of the delegation nailed simple pieces of paper to trees, with the names of dozens of murdered Jews from Austria written upon them.

From top to bottom: The Obelisk in Bolshoi Trostenets At the site of the barn in Maly Trostenets In the forest of Shashkovka The memorial stone in Blagovshchina The name plates of IM-MER in Blagovshchina

Anna Aksyonova, Scientific Project Manager, Chief Architect of the Project Memorial Trostenets Plan of the Memorial

1. Object Description The Trostenets extermination site is located southeast of Minsk on both sides of Mogilev Avenue, one of the main streets of the city. The total area of the site is 124 hectares. According to the general land-use plan of the City of Minsk, which came into force with decree no. 165 of the President of the Republic of Belarus of 23.03.2003, the area of the former extermination site is part of the so-called scenic-recreational zone LR-2 (zones with average and lower recreational capacities). Further, according to the act on the regulation of setting boundaries of water protection areas and littoral areas of objects that fall under water protection, part of the site is located within the water protection area of Trostjanka. The project order determines that the boundaries of the site for the first construction phase of the Trostenets memorial extend over a total area of 59.9 hectares. The landscape and micro-climate of the site are bounded on the west and north by Selizkij Street, on the north-east by Mobiljov Avenue and on the southeast by an area used for agriculture. In the east, the boundary runs along the river bed of the Trostjanka, the location of the building area for single-family houses in Maly Trostenets. 2. Historical Background The area of the former Trostenets extermination site is considered an object under historicocultural protection of the 3. category and is listed on the State list of historico-cultural objects of the Republic of Belarus. Decree no. 43 of 23.10.2007 by

the Ministry of Cultural Affairs of the Republic of Belarus indicates that the “the area of the former Trostenets extermination site”, which is made up of four zones (the total area covers 124 hectares), marks the boundaries of the object under historico-cultural protection. In order to retain the urban character of the site, the construction of buildings in the area of Trostenets has been regulated. During Nazi occupation, from 1942 to 1944 Trostenets was an extermination site for civilians and prisoners of war. Today, the objects of the Trostenets extermination site and the sites of mass shootings located in Minsk and in the area surrounding Minsk have been rediscovered. The total area comprises 4 zones: 1. Place of arrival (former road construction section No. 2). 2. The “Path of Death” that led detainees to the shooting site.

Anna Aksyonova Project Memorial Trostenets

3. Infrastructure objects of the Maly Trostenets camp. 4. Sites of execution Blagovshchina forest.

and

shootings

the

The following objects recall the tragic events in Trostenets today: — the memorial and memorial obelisk in commemoration of the victims of the Trostenets extermination site 1941-1944, erected in 1963 in the village of Bolshoi Trostenets. — the memorial at the site where 6,500 detainees were burned, erected in 1965. — the memorial at the site of the former crematorium, where 50,000 lives were extinguished. — the memorial stone in Blagovshchina. 3. The Importance of the Object

— At an international level, it forms part of the joint European culture of remembrance and recalls the National Socialist policy of genocide vis à vis European civil society. With respect to the number of victims, Trostenets is the fourth largest Nazi extermination site, following Auschwitz, Majdanek and Treblinka. — At a national level, Trostenets forms part of national history, epitomising the struggle and challenges of the Second World War. — At an individual level, Trostenets is a site of societal and personal commemoration for contemporary witnesses, numerous descendants of detainees and all people who follow humanist values and good will. 4. Project Aim The memorial aims to maintain the commemoration of Nazi victims and the historic authenticity of a site where an estimated 206,500 people from eight European countries were murdered.

The Trostenets extermination site is of great importance at different levels:

A commemorative stone at the entrance provides information about the memorial for visitors

5. Plan and Design of the Memorial The architectural and artistic plan places an emphasis on the area where the camp’s infrastructure, the crematorium, the sites of mass shootings and the graves were located. The compositional and visual axis of the memorial is the “Path of Death”, which leads to the “Gate of Memory” memorial as the principle attraction of the ensemble. The memorial has the shape of a triangle. The triangle and its connecting lines stand for tension, taciturnity, lack of liberty in space and time, as well as eternity and remembrance. “The composition represents a gate that locks up nothing and no one and stands without a fence or barbed wire. It is a gate with no practical sense, which symbolises the senselessness of murder and oppression.” On the front side is an old, black-and-white photograph of the detainees, whose figures wind around the fence panels of the gate. The back side is designed as a psalter, with prayers for the dead and for the souls of those murdered – like an ancient wisdom that has been crossed out with National Socialist slogans. It is children that have lost their parents, their hopes and their dreams at this place. The Grabfeld (field of graves), where the ashes of the murdered were scattered, is located behind the sculpture “Gate of Memory”. This field will be a lawn and closed off from Selitskij Street by a line of trees. Three paved streets in the formation of rays traverse the relief and mark the boundary of this sacred zone, which is intended to be a place of reflection. The main axis of the composition – the “Path of Death” – runs along the ruins of the camp. The footpath connects the objects of the memorial. The ruins will be laid open and restored; access to the ruins will be paved. A board with information on the history of the site will be placed next to each building. The area where the detainees were assembled will be marked by architectonic elements.

Shashkovka. At this site a provisional incineration pit was erected at the end of 1943. The paths in ray formation lead to the memorial “Gate of Memory”.

The starting point of the guided tour is marked by an information board with the plan of the memorial. The route follows the “Path of Death”. This part of the road between the ruins of the camp is still preserved and can be seen through two rows of poplars that were planted by detainees. The path leads to a memorial stone, with information on the history of the extermination site. From there visitors follow the path to the memorial “Gate of Memory”. Two monuments that were erected in the 1960s are situated on the site of the memorial. The project plans to restore and build a fence around these monuments.

Anna Aksyonova Project Memorial Trostenets

The area of the German cemetery will be a lawn enclosed by a hedge. A memorial stone will be placed at the entrance. 6. First Phase of Construction According to the project order and the allocation of zones, the premises of the project with a total area of 59.9 hectares is a memorial with individually designed objects. The principal aim of the first phase of construction is to design the exterior of the premises of the Trostenets extermination site. The entire design of the memorial in architectonic and planning terms is based on a scientificmethodological rationale. The design of the exterior aims to restore its historic character. Therefore, the project plans to implement the following measures: 1. Design of the exterior along Selitskij Street, bordering the right bank of the river Trostjanka. The plan of the memorial takes account of the already existing network of roads and paths. 2. Restoring the historic landscape. 3. The plan determines an axis in terms of composition and planning, as well as the exact place of the memorial “Gate of Memory”. The memorial will be accessed through the gate on Selitskij Street along three converging rays. The site of the memorial has a triangular shape, which symbolises tension. A footpath starts from one of the corners of the triangle. Like an X-ray, it traverses the entire site of the memorial and reveals the historic events of the site. 4. A footpath will be built along the right bank of the river. 5. The area of the extermination site is marked by architectonic elements whose composition has been adapted to the architecture of the camp ruins. 6. Restoring ruins and remains of the foundation and putting up information boards. 7. Reconstruction of the existing monuments that were erected in the 1960s:

– the monument at the site where 6,500 detainees were burned, erected in 1965 – the monument at the site of the former crematorium where 50,000 people were exterminated. The project plans to restore the memorial stones and build fences around them. 8. Designing smaller, individually designed constructions that follow a consistent design in terms of architecture and planning. 9. Erecting smaller elements of constructions made out of natural materials (wood and granite). 10. Functional lighting of the memorial. 11. Modern lanterns were chosen for the lighting that emphasise the serious character of the object. 12. Historic planting of the memorial and deforestation. The existing planting will generally be kept, as it matches the original planting. Evergreen trees will be planted along Selitskij Street that function as a visual boundary of the memorial and a protection against noise. 13. Replanting the fallen-over trees along the historic “Path of Death”. 14. Planting of lawns in the entire area of the memorial. 15. Implementing a drainage system for rainwater on wet areas by constructing ditches in the form of natural streams. 16. There is a swamp in the southern part of the memorial due to unprofessional treatment of the landscape. The historic branch of the Trostjanka was separated from the river by a dam. This has led to a damming up of water. The historic German cemetery borders the side of the pond. According to the decree of the Ministry of the Republic of Belarus on the regulation of economic activity, cemeteries are not allowed in water-protection areas. The project intends to implement hydrological measures to restore the river branch, in order to divert the dammed-up water to the Trostjanka. This serves to restore the historic landscape and to meet the regulations. 17. The exterior of the historic German cemetery will be a lawn. Its boundaries are marked by a hedge. 18. Construction of a parking area, including parking spaces for disabled people, as well as parking bays for coaches corresponding to the expected number of visitors.

19. Establishing a route for visitors with signs and information boards. The project design for the historico-cultural object complies with the reconstruction and project orders, as well as with scientific research, and takes into account all requirements of the law on the “Protection of the historico-cultural heritage of the Republic of Belarus”. 7. Further Remarks 1. Further research is necessary (prospecting work to locate all historic buildings, measurements, photographs). 2. It is necessary to tear down the wooden house with all its adjoining buildings that are located in close proximity to the planned memorial “Gate of Memory” in order to maintain visual integrity and architectonic consistency. Furthermore, electrical grids need to be diverted for the implementation of the overall plan of the memorial. 3. The Trostjanka river bed is located outside the boundary of the premises. However, it is indispensable to implement a number of measures, including cleaning, clearing of trees, exterior design and planting in this area which borders the memorial. Furthermore, the pond is to be reconstructed with the help of the dam and the water-drainage system. Authors: Architects V. Pochechuyev, E. Postnikova, with the collaboration of E. Glagoleva, sculptor K. Kostyuchenko, chief engineer of the project V. Miroshenko

Leonid Levin Architect, Team Leader Trostenets (Blagovshchina)

The design of the Bolshoi Trostenets memorial, located several kilometres from Minsk on Mogilev Avenue, has been completed. Unfortunately, the area of Maly Trostenets (Blagovshchina) was not taken under consideration. Blagovshchina was also ignored during a number of calls for projects to erect a memorial at the former Trostenets concentration camp. Therefore, no joint plan for this part of the extermination site at Trostenets, where more than 100,000 people from seven European countries were murdered, has so far been developed.

At this site, victims of the period of National Socialism from Germany, Hungary, Austria, the Czech Republic and other countries lie in 34 mass graves. Almost 70 years have passed since this crime. It is high time to establish an appropriate site of remembrance for the victims of Blagovshchina.

architect M. Gauchweld. Anna Aksyonova has taken the scientific lead of the project. The team is open and would like to encourage other architects and sculptors from different countries to join the project.

Only recently was the institute Minskprojekt (Minsk project) instructed to enlarge the memorial stone at Maly Trostenets and to pave the access path to the planned parking area. Today, the memorial stone that remembers over 100,000 victims is only 70 cm in height.

A number of NGOs from Belarus, Austria and Germany have already expressed an interest in the project. We hope that further organisations from countries from which people were deported to Minsk and then murdered during World War II will follow in the future.

Minskprojekt was instructed to propose a plan for the right side of the site at Bolshoi Trostenets. My workshop was commissioned by the International Education Exchange Dortmund, which represents the German side and has decided to support Minskprojekt. With this decision, our team of seven people followed the recommendation of the executive committee of the City of Minsk. As well as team leader Leonid Levin, the sculptors M. Petrul, K. Selikhanov, A. Shappo and the architects G. Levina and A. Kopylov are also part of the team. The project is being realised in collaboration with the

We consider these events a paradox of the 20th century â&#x20AC;&#x201C; a time during which everything was turned on its head in the lives of millions of innocent people. Men killed women, children and old people, following the request of a fanatic. The victims were almost incessantly transported to Minsk and Trostenets. We must never forget these events. The memorial is funded by the above mentioned institutions. The central question is the design of the part between Mogilev Avenue and the burial site. Two parking areas are planned at the entrance of the

avenue – for private and public vehicles. The path from the parking area to the burial site is symbolic because the detainees had to walk along it to their deaths. Listing the names of the victims is a central condition of the team. The task is not easy because, from Austria alone, more than 10,000 people were deported to and exterminated in Trostenets. By now, almost all of the lists are available. Just after the parking area, visitors will walk along the “Path of Death”. The design of the path will be dominated by red paint. The architects are still discussing the question of which material to use. Visitors to the memorial will pass stylised train wagons with commemorative plaques featuring the names of victims attached to their walls. The entire composition is dominated by two round squares. The detainees entered the first white square upon arrival at the camp, when they were still hopeful that they would survive. Their lives were tragically terminated at the second, black square.

Visitors will walk along the “Path of Death” through stylised train wagons with commemorative plaques featuring names of the victims attached to their walls. The path leads to the black circle – to nowhere.

Leonid Levin Architect, Team Leader Trostenets (Blagovshchina)

Expressing the paradox is at the centre of his project according to Leonid Levin.

A number of smaller sculptures are planned along the path that aim to illustrate the paradox of the War: – destroyed houses – a fallen-over and broken menorah – trees turned upside down with their roots facing upwards The symbolic “Path of Death” ends at the black square – around which life continues. Visitors can stay and pause at this place. The mass graves, today covered by the forest, are behind the black square.

There is a plan to mark the individual graves. Also part of the composition are several trees, to which, on their own initiative, Austrian relatives have attached plates with the names of their dead relatives. In our opinion, these name plates should be included in the future memorial. The topic of war and the tragic events in Blagovshchina will be presented with sparse resources. Essential materials are concrete, granite and bronze.

Astrid Sahm

On July 25th 1936, Levin fled Minsk from the German occupiers as a child, together with his mother and other family members to the distant country of Kirgizia, thus escaping the Holocaust. However, his mother did not survive the austere life in exile. After the War, Levin returned to Minsk, where he studied architecture and experienced the anti-Semitism of the late Stalin era. In the period that followed, he devoted his life to keeping alive the memories of the human suffering caused by the crimes committed during the Second World War. In doing so, he broke with the Soviet traditions of heroism and monumentalism. This became obvious

Obituary for Leonid Levin The IBB mourns Leonid Levin. The wellknown architect and long-time Chairperson of the Association of Jewish Communities and Organisations in Belarus died during the night of 28th February and 1st March from the consequences of a stroke. He lived to the age of 77. With the death of Leonid Levin, the IBB loses a dedicated supporter of a common culture of remembrance characterised by reconciliation and understanding.

Astrid Sahm

in the memorial for the Belarusian villages in Khatyn that were destroyed during German occupation. The memorial was opened in 1969 and was exclusively dedicated to the civilian victims of war - unique in the Soviet Union at that time. Remembering the Holocaust and the War as a Lifetime’s Work After the fall of the Soviet Union, Leonid Levin had the opportunity to freely develop his artistic creativity without ideological constraints. In particular, he was able for the first time to create memorials that directly commemorate the victims of the Holocaust in Belarus. In his new position as Chairperson of the Belarusian Association of Jewish Communities and Organisations, which he held from 1991 until his death, he also made efforts to raise awareness of the Jewish victims within the official Belarusian culture of remembrance. Through his memorials, Leonid Levin hoped to evoke empathy among visitors for the victims of the crimes committed at these sites and to make people think about how similar events can be prevented in the future. In an interview given in 2008, Lewin explained his concept: “I want the visitor to live the tragedy of the place they have come to see.” At the Jama – an execution pit in the former Minsk Ghetto, which is now a memorial – a descending group of figures that resemble shadows symbolises the last journey of those who were shot at this site. And in Gorodeja, 1,137 large and small stones mark the path of the Jewish adults and children to their execution site. The still visible traces of the crimes in the landscape that are to be commemorated, as well as the testimonies of contemporary witnesses, were key sources of inspiration for Leonid Levin. Bridges to Reconciliation and Understanding On the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the destruction of the Minsk Ghetto in October 1993, a silent march from the former Jewish cemetery to the Jama took place. Next to representatives of the Jewish Community, government officials, representatives of other denominations and civil society organisations, as well as foreign guests, also participated in the march. The foundations for cooperation between

the IBB and Leonid Levin were laid in this repeated common public commemoration that led to the opening of the first History Workshop in Belarus on the site of the former Minsk Ghetto in 2003. The History Workshop is jointly sustained by the IBB Minsk, the IBB Dortmund and the Association of Jewish Communities and Organisations. An authentic learning centre, where young people approach historic events through individual stories with the help of contemporary witnesses and hence learn from history for the future, the History Workshop also reflects Levin’s didactic credo. The IBB considers itself very lucky to have found an active supporter of a common culture of remembrance in Leonid Levin, in order to build sustainable bridges to reconciliation and understanding that overcome national and denominational borders. A deep friendship resulted from this cooperation that also included Levin’s family, as well as the families of his

partners at the IBB. It was an exceptional experience for Leonid Levin to be given a second life through heart surgery in 2003, thanks to his friends from the country that was responsible for the death of so many of his fellow countrymen and fellow-believers. This friendly solidarity also forms the basis for reconciliation. The Memorial in Trostenets as a Duty The establishment of an appropriate memorial in Trostenets counts among Leonid Levin’s major uncompleted projects. It was the largest extermination site in Belarus established by the Germans during the Second World War, where tens of thousands of Belarusian Jews, prisoners of war and other Belarusian citizens, as well as Jews deported from the German Reich, were murdered. For more than ten years, Levin supported the project with plans and initiatives. Over the past two years, its realisation finally took shape. The municipality of Minsk for the first time presented a memorial plan of its own and responded positively to the joint initiative of Leonid Levin and the IBB to include the forest of Blagovshchina – the extermination site of many Belarusian and deported Jews – in this plan. Leonid Levin did not live to see the finalisation of the merged plan, which was scheduled for the end of March. The work of Leonid Levin would be unthinkable without his family – his wife Natasha and his daughter Galina and her husband Alexander, who are all also architects and always actively supported his work. The IBB is mourning with them and will support the family in preserving the heritage of Leonid Levin and in developing it further in accordance with his vision. The first central step in this direction is the rapid realisation of the memorial in Trostenets, where the laying of the first stone is scheduled for Whitsun 2014.

The Trostenets Extermination Site within European Commemoration – In the Beginning is the Memory

These tragedies are inherent parts of the commemoration of the people in Belarus. Several memorials remind us of these actions of murder: Chatyn, Dalwa, the Jama in Minsk, Krasnyj Bereg and the memorial in Gorodeja. Information on the war of extermination in Eastern Europe was suppressed for a long time in Germany. Only from 1985 onwards, and increasingly from 1990, did societal debates on this matter arise. Important steps included:

The Belarusian people experienced the brutality and cruelty of the German war of extermination like no other society within Europe:

– Every third citizen of Belarus became a victim of the Second World War and the German occupation policy. – Every second prisoner of war, out of more than one million, did not survive imprisonment in the camps. – Over 700,000 Jews were crammed into ghettos in Belarus and brutally exterminated. Among them were 20,000 Jews from Germany, Austria and the Czech Republic deported to Minsk from 1941-1942 and murdered in the Minsk Ghetto and the Trostenets extermination site. Only a few survived. – 400,000 Belarusians were deported and subjected to forced labour. One third did not return. – 628 villages and all their inhabitants were destroyed.

– Federal President Richard von Weizsäcker emphasised that Germany’s defeat was at the same time a liberation in his speech of May 1985. – Intensive public debates surrounding the participation and involvement of the Wehrmacht in the actions of murder. These debates were facilitated by the exhibition on the Wehrmacht from 1995. – The founding of the foundation Erinnerung, Verantwortung und Zukunft (Remembrance, Responsibility and Future). At first, the foundation was predominantly engaged in disbursing compensation to former forced workers, detainees of concentration camps and survivors of the ghettos. – The intensive debate on the “Memorial to the murdered Jews of Europe” that was erected in the centre of Berlin upon a decision by the German Bundestag. The establishment of the International Education and Exchange in Minsk in 1994 and the work of the History Workshop Minsk that started in 2003 go hand in hand with this tradition of preserving memories and seeking reconciliation.

It is thanks to the Austrian association IM-MER in particular that more than 13,000 Jews from Austria who were deported and murdered in Minsk in 19411942 are remembered. Thanks to the memorial in Terezín in the Czech Republic, historic evidence of the deportation transports from Terezín to Minsk is preserved today. Despite numerous publications and initiatives, the Minsk Ghetto and the Trostenets extermination site are still hardly known today and play a subordinate role in the European culture of remembrance. We are grateful that the City of Minsk plans to erect the Trostenets memorial on an area of over 100 ha and is open to an initiative from Germany and Austria to erect a memorial in the forest of Blagovshchina to commemorate the deportation and murder of people with Jewish backgrounds from Germany and Austria. This memorial is considered part of the future Trostenets memorial. The participants in the conference have intensively studied the history of Trostenets and the deportation and murder of Jewish people from Germany and Austria. They have seen the plans of the team of architects under the auspices of Ms. Anna Aksjonowa and Mr. Leonid Levin. Against this backdrop, we would like to make the following statements: – We gratefully acknowledge the hitherto plans of the City of Minsk regarding the design of the Trostenets memorial, as well as the plans of the team of Minsk Project under the auspices of Anna Aksjonowa and Leonid Levin for the memorial in Blagovshchina that are considered parts of the overall design of the Trostenets memorial. These plans serve as a sound basis for an appropriate European memorial. – We would like to encourage the politicians in charge of the City of Minsk to include the forest of Blagovshchina in the plans for the memorial, to review and to approve the plan by Mr. Levin. – We would like to encourage politicians in Germany and Austria to discuss the idea of a memorial in the forest of Blagovshchina and provide funds.

– We call on politicians from Belarus, Germany and Austria to support the establishment of inventory lists and the publication of a volume listing all sources and documents on the Minsk Ghetto and the Trostenets extermination site that are stored in different archives. These sources and documents should be made available to everyone who would like to conduct research and publish on this chapter of joint history. – We ask the participants of the conference to increasingly promote the discussion of National Socialist actions of murder in Belarus, and particularly in the Minsk Ghetto and the Trostenets extermination site, within their circles through research, education and training measures and in the public media. Education is the essential condition for making the Minsk Ghetto and the Trostenets extermination site parts of European remembrance. Mr. Metropolit Filaret, Orthodox Church in Belarus, Mr. Archbishop Kondrusiewicz, Catholic Church in Belarus and Dr. Henning Scherf, Mayor (ret.), have already agreed to act as patrons and push for prompt implementation of the memorial. We hope that in 2014, 70 years after the liberation of Belarus, we can lay the foundation for the Trostenets memorial.

March 2013

IBB Dortmund IBB “Johannes Rau” Minsk

Statements on the Erection of the Trostenets Memorial

I welcome the project to erect a memorial in Trostenets in commemoration of the Jews who were murdered at this site. It is not possible for the German Public Alliance to take care of this group of victims because the war graves agreement with Belarus is not yet legally valid. However, I would like to support your request to the Federal Government to provide financial support for the erection of a memorial in Trostenets. Reinhard Führer 19 February, 2013 President Volksbund Deutsche Kriegsgräberfürsorge e.V. (German Public Alliance War Grave Care)

At Martin-Buber-House, office of the ICCJ (Internal Council of Christians and Jews), we heard about the plans to erect a memorial at the site of one of the largest German extermination sites in Eastern Europe. In the name of the ICCJ, I welcome this project. Giving the future a memory means commemorating the victims of anti-Semitic persecutions. We would be happy to be part of those supporting and promoting the plans to erect such a memorial in Trostenets. International Council of Christians and Jews 13 March, 2013 Father Dirk Pruiksma (ICCJ General Secretary)

For a long time, I have been following the work of the International Education and Exchange (IBB) with great interest, as for many years I was responsible for similar projects in Ukraine with survivors of the Shoah and the war of extermination against the former Soviet Union as the Director of the Martin-Niemöller-Foundation. These projects involved inviting former forced workers to Germany, encounters with contemporary witnesses at schools and within communities, aid programmes for a hospital, a school and home for old people in Peremoha (near Kiev), as well as German-Ukrainian work camps for young people. When I heard about the IBB’s plans, I decided to express my strong support for this project to the IBB because of my much shorter experience. It is not only a “Denk Mal!” (Think!) against oblivion in Belarus and in Germany, but also a signal for a different, better future for people in Belarus and Germany. Despite the difficult circumstances, the IBB has started, and so far succeeded in, building bridges that cross the borders between countries and generations. I see an urgent need to erect a memorial to the victims of the former Trostenets extermination camp – not only because contemporary witnesses are passing away, but also to give the victims a memory. The fantastic preparations by Mr. Kohl were taken up and pursued by the comprehensive work of the IBB: in history workshops and publications. We have now reached a point where the German public and politicians have the obligation to support a project for a memorial – just as with other memorials. Prof. Dr. Martin Stöhr 3 March, 2013 Martin-Niemöller-Foundation e. V.

We support the work of the â&#x20AC;&#x153;Johannes-Rauâ&#x20AC;?-House, which organises encounters and history workshops and continues to preserves memories. At the same time, we support the idea of erecting a memorial at the Trostenets extermination site. Learning how to commemorate and how to shape a true culture of remembrance is one of the major challenges of our time. Such a memorial can successfully evoke empathy for the victims of history among visitors. Through learning about the past, people realise the necessity to assume responsibility today. Against this backdrop, there is an urgent need to erect a memorial at the site of extermination in Trostenets. Rudolf W. Sirsch 13 March, 2013 General Secretary of the Society for Christian-Jewish Cooperation German Coordination Committee e. V.

Members of our Society for Christian-Jewish Cooperation have visited Minsk several times and also visited the site of the former Trostenets extermination camp. We strongly support the plan to erect an appropriate memorial at this site. So far, Maly Trostenets was almost unknown in the German culture of remembrance. Since two Jewish citizens from Siegerland (Ilse Haimann and Dr. Hedwig Danielewicz) died in this extermination camp, we consider the memorial very important to the commemoration of the murdered Jews. In the name of the Board 11 March, 2013 Werner Stettner Director of the Society Cooperation Siegerland e.V.

for

Christian-Jewish

Self-Presentation

International Education and Exchange Dortmund The International Education and Exchange Dortmund (IBB) seeks to encourage mutual understanding and reconciliation between peoples. It aims to overcome national borders and historic, social, cultural, religious and ideological boundaries through inter-cultural encounters in joint cooperation with others. The IBB organises around 80 events and projects for civic education and inter-cultural encounters each year, with partners in Eastern Europe, the Baltic States, Poland, the Czech Republic, the Netherlands, Italy, Turkey and others. The IBB Dortmund aims to promote learning processes from history and facilitates over 1,000 study trips for students to Auschwitz every year.

International Education and Exchange “Johannes Rau” Minsk The International Education and Exchange “Johannes Rau” Minsk (IBB Minsk) was established in 1994 and follows the example of German education academies. It is a German-Russian project that was jointly established and funded by the International Education and Exchange Dortmund and three partners (City of Minsk, Belarus Bank and the travel agency Sputnik). IBB Minsk focuses on historic understanding and reconciliation, dialogue and cooperation between Belarus and Europe, as well as developing concepts for the future (local agendas, ecology, renewable energies).

History Workshop Minsk The History Workshop is a meeting point for survivors of the Minsk Ghetto, of forced labour in Germany and for survivors of concentration camps. They also meet at the History Workshop to talk about their personal history with young people from Belarus and other European countries. The History Workshop also views itself as a centre for education and research that jointly shed light on the “blank spots” of German-Belarusian history. The History Workshop is one of the last remaining houses from the period of the Minsk Ghetto and is maintained by the IBB Dortmund, the IBB Minsk and the Association of Jewish Organisations and Communities in Belarus.

History Workshop Chernobyl in Kharkiv With the inauguration of the first worldwide History Workshop Chernobyl in 2012, the IBB initiated a project against oblivion and suppression of the catastrophe. Over 30,000 out of a total of 850,000 liquidators that worked at the reactor between 1986 and 1989 still live in Kharkiv today. The History Workshop is a meeting point for the liquidators and a centre for encounters where young people learn about the catastrophe. Since 2011, the IBB has been organising the Europe-wide “European Action Weeks for a Future after Chernobyl and Fukushima”, during which liquidators talk about their experiences during the Chernobyl catastrophe. The IBB seeks to contribute to a broad European movement that keeps the memory of Chernobyl alive and promotes sustainable energy policy in Europe.

The Authors

Peter Junge-Wentrup

Waltraud Barton

Leonid Levin

Sociologist, Executive Director of the International Education and Exchange (IBB) Dortmund.

Mediator, founder of the Austrian association IM-MER (Initiative Malvine – Maly Trostinec erinnern). Editor of the book Ermordet in Maly Trostinec. Die österreichischen Opfer der Shoa in Weißrussland (Vienna, 2012).

Architect, award winner of several Belarusian and international prizes. One of the architects of the Chatyn Memorial (1968, Lenin Prize 1970), Chairperson of the Jewish communities in the Republic of Belarus.

Prof. Manfred Zabel

Protestant theologian, social ethicist and theological anthropologist. Board member of the International Education and Exchange (IBB) Dortmund.

Tomáš Fedorovič

Jens Hoffman

Dr. Kuzma Kosak

Author and freelance journalist, Berlin. Author of the book Das kann man nicht erzählen – ‘Aktion 1005’ – Wie die Nazis die Spuren ihrer Massenmorde in Osteuropa beseitigten (Hamburg, 2008). His new book Diese außerordentliche deutsche Bestialität – Wie die Nazis die Spuren ihrer Massenmorde beseitigten – Augenzeugenberichte und Gespräche (Hamburg, 2013) will be published shortly.

Historian, lecturer at the Belarusian State University, Director of the History Workshop Minsk. Main areas of work: Second World War, Belarusian archival science.

Anna Aksyonova Historian, scientific assistant at the Terezín memorial in the Czech Republic.

Architect, Director of the Institute Minskprojekt, architect of numerous landscape design projects and reconstructions in Minsk.

Dr. Astrid Sahm Political scientist, Head of the Berlin office of the International Center for Education and Exchange. 2006 – 2011 German director of the Johannes Rau International Center for Education and Exchange in Minsk (Belarus).

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Imprint

Editor Peter Junge-Wentrup International Education and Exchange Dortmund Editorial Team Peter Junge-Wentrup Dr. Astrid Sahm Anton Markschteder Translation Christina Saulich Addressofthe Editorial Team International Education and Exchange Dortmund Bornstr. 66 44145 Dortmund Tel.: 0231 952096-0 info@ibb-d.de www.ibb-d.de Layout Fortmann. Rohleder Grafik. Design Printing