Belarus was the first Soviet republic where the Nazis tested their mechanism of mass murder against Jews: between 1941 and 1944, approximately 800,000 lives were lost there—more than 80% of the local Jewish population. The fate of the Minsk Ghetto became a symbol of both the tragedy and the heroism of the Jewish people. In the USSR, this subject was suppressed, and Belarus was no exception. Literature on the history of the Holocaust only began to appear there after 1991, with the opening of archives, permission for academic conferences, symposia, and dissertation defenses. Yet despite the significant contributions made by Belarusian historians over the past 20 years, the print runs of scientific literature on these topics remain negligible. The old conceptualization of the genocide of the Belarusian people persists, failing to highlight the distinct plight of the local Jews. The history of the Holocaust in Belarus must be integrated into the broader context of World War II and the Great Patriotic War, but without state-level funding, this remains unattainable.

Editor's Commentary 

The commemorative events held in October 2018 to mark the 75th anniversary of the destruction of the Minsk Jewish Ghetto by Nazi occupation forces were a milestone for both the country's Jewish community and Jews worldwide. These state ceremonies and public events were attended by representatives of government bodies, Belarusian public organizations, and domestic and foreign academic circles. The official Israeli delegation was led by Sofa Landver, Israel's Minister of Aliyah and Integration.

At first glance, all of this suggests that the memory of the Holocaust of Belarusian Jewry, symbolized by the fate of the Minsk Ghetto, has secured a rightful place in the national consciousness and the official agenda. The scale of the tragedy and its consequences for the Jewish people and their countries of residence are no longer a secret. During World War II, Nazi forces destroyed approximately one-third of the 2.6 million Holocaust victims in Eastern Europe on Belarusian soil. Unlike the Soviet era, when the Holocaust in the Soviet Union was effectively a taboo subject, the situation today seems radically different. Nevertheless, numerous questions remain unresolved—both those first raised seventy years ago and new ones emerging today, as previously classified archival materials enter academic circulation and political constraints are reduced to a minimum.

This article by Dr. Leonid Smilovitsky, director of the "Jews of Belarus" project at the Diaspora Research Center of Tel Aviv University, examines these issues and analyzes the role Holocaust memory plays in Belarus's official policy and public discourse.

Zeev Khanin – Academic Chairman of the Institute for Euro-Asian Jewish Studies (IEAJS), Lecturer in Political Science and Sociology of Contemporary Jewish Communities at Ariel and Bar-Ilan Universities, Israel

Statement of the Problem

Belarus was the first Soviet republic to face the onslaught of the German war machine. It was here that the Nazis first tested their mechanism of mass murder, making Belarusian Jews the initial victims of the policy of total extermination. In the summer of 1941, the Jewish population of Belarus, including refugees from Poland who fled to Soviet territory after the outbreak of World War II on September 1, 1939, numbered 1 million people, or 10% of the republic's total population. Occupying the Belarusian SSR in the summer of 1941, the Germans established about 300 ghettos (both open and closed type) before systematically murdering their inhabitants. Consequently, by the time Soviet troops liberated Belarus in 1944, approximately 800,000 Jews had been tortured, shot, or burned alive.

Belarus was also the primary site for the clandestine deportation and liquidation of Jews from the Reich and occupied European nations (Austria, France, Hungary, the Netherlands, Poland, and Czechoslovakia); from November 1941 to October 1942, at least 42,000 foreign Jews perished in Minsk alone. Unlike in Latvia and Lithuania, ghetto prisoners in Belarus were not transported to extermination camps in Poland; they were executed in plain sight of the local population.

How could this happen? How did the mass murder of Jews affect the fates of other European nations? How did the neighbors of the Jews behave—who helped them survive, and who betrayed them? Were the Jews passive victims or active participants in the Resistance? Why was the history of the Holocaust in the Soviet Union not merely forgotten, but effectively banned for over half a century? Finally, how necessary is it to continue this conversation today, and are the nations and governments of the lands where this tragedy unfolded prepared to face it?

Distinctive Features of the Holocaust and Resistance in Belarus

On the territory of Belarus (within the borders of June 22, 1941, which includes areas transferred to Poland in 1945), the Nazis established over 300 ghettos across four occupation zones. The majority (over 150) were located in the western part of the republic. Within the territory annexed to Reichskommissariat Ukraine, there were 45 ghettos, the largest of which were in Brest (27,000 people) and Pinsk (25,000 people). In the zone under German military administration (Minsk, Mogilev, Vitebsk, most of Gomel, and certain districts of the Polesie region), there were 43 ghettos. Several ghettos in Belarus (Minsk, Brest, Pinsk, Glubokoye, among others) could be classified as typical Eastern European ghettos. Internal affairs were managed by Judenrats, a Jewish police force operated, and forced labor was heavily utilized. Some ghettos persisted for extended periods: Brest survived for 10 months, Minsk for 27, and Baranovichi for 29.

The majority of Jews during the occupation were in Western Belarus, which was overrun within the first 10 days of the war—so rapidly that evacuation was impossible. Military enlistment offices managed to draft only 10% of the Jewish population into the Red Army there, compared to 33% in Eastern Belarus. The eastern part of the republic fell under the military administration of the frontline zone. Ghettos here held no economic value to the occupiers and were liquidated first. In Western Belarus, ghettos lasted longer because they were integrated into the Reich's economic plans: their labor resources were actively exploited for the German military. The Germans even permitted medical care and took measures against epidemics there, unlike in the eastern ghettos.

In Eastern Belarus, Jewish communal life had been dismantled between 1921 and 1941, making it far more difficult for prisoners to organize survival efforts independently than in Western Belarus. Conversely, the eastern regions were considered more susceptible to Soviet influence and more capable of partisan warfare. Resistance to the Nazis in Eastern Belarus was strictly communist, whereas in Western Belarus, it was also Zionist. No fewer than 10,000 Jews actively participated in the Belarusian partisan movement.

The Minsk Ghetto

The Minsk Ghetto was the largest (housing approximately 100,000 prisoners, including refugees) and the longest-lasting. Minsk was captured on June 28, 1941, and the order to establish the ghetto was issued as early as July 19. Relocation was completed by early August 1941. The ghetto covered an area of 2 square kilometers, spanning 40 streets and Yubileynaya Square, where the Judenrat was located in the former building of the Soviet District Police Department. The structures in the ghetto were single-story wooden buildings. Water was drawn from public pumps, and snow was used during winter. The ghetto was enclosed by multiple rows of barbed wire. Two gates were guarded by both Belarusian and Jewish police. By early autumn 1941, the Minsk Ghetto held roughly 80,000 prisoners (55,000 from Minsk and 30,000 from surrounding towns). The living space was restricted to 1.5 square meters per person. Over its 28-month existence, the Minsk Ghetto endured five major pogroms, with its territory shrinking after each wave of violence.

The Nazis categorized Jews as either "useful" or "useless." During selections, they separated specialists and those "fit for labor," executing the rest immediately. There were no factories or plants within the Minsk Ghetto, so labor columns were marched outside the perimeter daily. Jews worked at railway hubs, in construction, and in tailoring, shoemaking, chemical, and weapon repair shops serving the Wehrmacht. Once the prisoners realized that the Nazis executed non-working individuals first, mothers began bringing small children to their workplaces, hiding them nearby. The children understood the danger and remained silent. Other prisoners attempted to hide their children in Russian orphanages outside the ghetto. If discovered, the children were either returned to the ghetto or killed on the spot.

In the autumn of 1941, the first transports arrived in Minsk from Germany, Austria, the Netherlands, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, France, and Poland (7,000 Jews). By May 1942, estimates of deported European Jews from seven countries ranged from 26,500 to 55,000. These deported Jews were the most vulnerable because they:

• Did not speak Russian, making communication and receiving aid from the local population impossible;

• Were unaccustomed to physical labor;

• Possessed no belongings to barter for food;

• Suffered from local diseases and the harsh climate;

• Had tense relations with local Belarusian Jews, whom they accused of collaborating with the Soviet regime. (Nevertheless, there were instances of successful cooperation, such as when Ilse Stein and Liza Gutkovich, with the assistance of Wehrmacht Captain Willy Schulz, organized the armed escape of 25 prisoners to join the partisans).

Mass executions of Jews were carried out by Einsatzgruppen, Sonderkommandos, SS police units, the Wehrmacht, and local collaborators starting in the summer of 1941. By early 1942, 250,000 Jews had perished in Belarus: 120,000 in the military administration zone, 60,000 in regions annexed to Reichskommissariat Ostland, and 70,000 in Western Belarus, the Bialystok District, and Reichskommissariat Ukraine. Punitive squads frequently ignored the German civil administration's requests to halt executions on the grounds of "economic inefficiency." From autumn 1943 until the liberation of the republic in July 1944, the Nazis liquidated the remaining Jews who had survived the pogroms in the ghettos and labor camps (the last prisoners in Koldichevo near Baranovichi were shot in March 1944). An additional 10,000 Jews hiding in forest family camps and partisan units fell victim to these punitive operations.

Belarus was one of the primary sites for "Aktion 1005"—a highly classified, large-scale Nazi operation aimed at erasing evidence of mass atrocities committed against civilians and prisoners of war. The goal was to destroy physical proof to evade accountability for crimes against humanity. In Belarus, thousands of burial sites were reopened. The bodies of the executed were exhumed, stacked, and burned on pyres, and their ashes were buried or scattered. However, keeping the destruction of hundreds of thousands of corpses a secret proved impossible. Witnesses survived among the active participants forced to carry out the operation. The evidence gathered in Belarus regarding the activities of the "1005" squads was widely used at the Nuremberg Trials and during subsequent trials of Nazi war criminals and collaborators within the republic.

Resistance to the Policy of Genocide

Less known is the heroic chapter of this national tragedy. Jews actively participated in the Belarusian partisan movement, which the Nazis, not without reason, perceived as heavily Jewish. With the establishment of the Belarusian Staff of the Partisan Movement near Moscow in September 1942, partisan warfare became highly organized. Jews escaping from the ghettos reinforced Belarusian partisan units, which received supplies and support from the Soviet rear. Jews participated in combat operations, the "rail war," ambushes, intelligence gathering, and propaganda work. They also served as physicians, gunsmiths, radio operators, supply officers, and worked in partisan laundries, shoemaking, and tailoring workshops, caring for the wounded. Unique to Eastern Europe, Jewish family camps and combat units emerged. The most famous were Unit 106, led by Sholom Zorin, and the Kalinin Unit, led by the Bielski brothers.

The truth about Jewish participation in the wartime partisan movement was long suppressed. Soviet historiography ignored the phenomenon entirely. It was only brought to light by former Jewish partisans and historians in Israel, the United States, and Europe, who published diaries, memoirs, and monographs. Moshe Kaganovich published his work in Yiddish in Italy in 1946, and in English in Argentina in 1952. Hersh Smolar and Yakov Grinstein wrote about the Minsk partisans. The Bielski brothers (Tuvia, Asael, Zus, and Aron) operated in the Naliboki Forest; Tuvia and Zus left Yiddish memoirs of those days, while American author Peter Duffy and Israeli historian Ze'ev Barmatz also documented their struggle. Israeli historian Sholom Cholawsky, a leader of the Nesvizh Ghetto uprising, wrote extensively on Jewish resistance, while Kopel Kolpanitsky and Ben-Zion Dagan documented the Lachva Ghetto uprising. (In Belarus, the only available Russian-language publications on this topic are the book "Shoulder to Shoulder" and a translation of Jack Kagan's work on the Novogrudok partisans).

Underground organizations existed in several ghettos, where prisoners stockpiled cold weapons and firearms. A ghetto uprising represents the pinnacle of resistance—its most vivid and poignant moment. It is equally important to understand what preceded these events: who were the people who rose up, fully aware that their chances of survival were slim to none; what drove them—the will to survive or the desire to sell their lives dearly; who assisted them, and who betrayed them. Uprisings were almost always timed to coincide with mass liquidation actions or deportations to death camps. Dozens of such uprisings occurred in the occupied USSR, with at least nine documented in Belarus. These occurred in places such as Slonim (June 29, 1942), Kletsk (July 21, 1942), Nesvizh (July 22, 1942), Kopyal (July 24, 1942), Mir (August 9, 1942), Lachva (September 3, 1942), Bialystok (August 16, 1943), and Glubokoye (August 29, 1943). These events became known to the wider public primarily through books published in Israel and the United States.

State Attitudes Toward the History of the Holocaust

As previously noted, the history of the Holocaust and Soviet Jewish heroism was suppressed in the USSR, and Belarus was no exception, despite the fact that fewer than 150,000 of the pre-war population of one million Belarusian Jews survived. The immense demographic and intellectual loss is even more striking considering that prior to the war, Jews constituted at least 60% of the republic's urban population and up to 80% of its doctors, engineers, agronomists, designers, financial specialists, artists, musicians, writers, and administrators.

World War II caused irreversible demographic shifts in Belarus: traditional areas of concentrated Jewish population changed, migration accelerated, interest in the Yiddish language declined, and intermarriage increased. Conversely, the trauma of the Holocaust intensified Jewish national consciousness.

In the former Soviet Union, literature on the history of the Holocaust only began to appear after 1991. Articles, surveys, memoirs, document collections, and monographs published after 2000 exhibit high professional standards, analytical depth, and historical reliability. Some represent rigorous scholarly research, while others are more journalistic and emotional. Much of the published data relies on oral testimonies that lack archival corroboration. Significant attention is paid to relations between Jews and non-Jews in the occupied territories. Documents on Holocaust history, lists of ghetto victims, accounts of Jewish participation in partisan warfare, and memorials at mass burial sites have finally begun to appear.

Among the contributions of Belarusian historians over the past 20 years, the works of Emmanuel Ioffe, David Meltser, Evgeny Rozenblat, Gennady Vinnitsa, and Kuzma Kozak stand out. Important collections of documents and historical materials were published with the participation of Raisa Chernoglazova, Marat Botvinnik, Vyacheslav Selemenev, Inna Gerasimova, and others. All of these publications (articles, books, document collections, and dissertations) were made possible solely through the personal initiative of the researchers themselves; they would undoubtedly have been far more extensive with state support, grants, and scholarships, rather than relying almost exclusively on foreign donors.

Following the declaration of independence of the Republic of Belarus in 1991, the official approach to the Holocaust shifted. On one hand, the genocide of the Jews (rather than generic "Soviet citizens" or "civilians") was acknowledged, as was their active participation in the resistance; prohibitions on academic publications were lifted, archives were opened, and conferences, symposia, and dissertation defenses were permitted. On the other hand, the old framework regarding the genocide of the Belarusian people (Generalplan Ost) persists, conflating "genocide" with "terror." This remains conceptually flawed, as Belarusians, unlike Jews, were not targeted by the Nazis for systematic extermination based solely on ethnicity. Instead of conceptual scholarly research on Holocaust history, publications have largely remained descriptive, failing to explain the core dynamics of the event.

The print runs of scholarly literature, document collections, and monographs dedicated to the wartime tragedy of the Jews remain negligible. Belarusian history textbooks devote anywhere from a few lines to a single paragraph to the topic, offering a mere mention while avoiding analysis or explanation of its causes. There are no specialized courses on the "History of the Holocaust in Belarus," and no academic conferences are organized under the auspices of state ministries. This contrasts sharply with the situation in Russia, Ukraine, Moldova, and the Baltic states, let alone Germany, Poland, Bulgaria, Romania, the Czech Republic, and Slovakia, where Holocaust research receives state funding. Unquestionably, the lessons of the past shape the future of Belarus and its people; ignoring them is both unwise and short-sighted.

Required Measures

Above all, it must be recognized that the Holocaust is an integral part of the national tragedy of Belarus during the war. The history of the Holocaust in Belarus must be incorporated into the broader curriculum of the Great Patriotic War, which is impossible without state-level funding. Belarus needs specialized academic journals, a dedicated "History of the Holocaust" book series, and textbooks on the history of Belarusian Jewry, the Holocaust, and Jewish resistance, mirroring developments in Russia. University courses and departments dedicated to the history of Belarusian Jews must be established. Holocaust exhibits should be introduced in regional and local museums, alongside a dedicated Holocaust Hall in the Belarusian State Museum of the History of the Great Patriotic War. Furthermore, distinct museums dedicated to Jewish History, the Holocaust in Belarus, and the Minsk Ghetto should be created. Academic conferences and roundtables must be organized, attracting the country's leading scholars, to compile and publish an Encyclopedia of Belarusian Jews, the Holocaust, and the Righteous Among the Nations, supported by research grants and fellowships.

The current situation is far from ideal. Presently, only three institutions in Belarus study Holocaust history: the Belarusian State Museum of the History of the Great Patriotic War, the Museum of History and Culture of the Jews of Belarus (housed in the Union of Belarusian Jewish Public Organizations and Communities), and the Historical Workshop in Minsk. These organizations hold thousands of artifacts, documents, materials, photographs, and testimonies regarding the tragic fate of Belarusian Jews and their active service in the Red Army and partisan units.

The Diaspora Research Center at Tel Aviv University has proposed the establishment of an International Center for the Study of the History of the Jews of Belarus to coordinate the efforts of researchers in this field. The "Jews of Belarus" project has operated at the Diaspora Center since 1995, building a substantial archive and library. Between 2014 and 2017, the center hosted three international conferences on "Jewish Soldiers" and established an archive of letters and diaries of Jewish Red Army soldiers and their families. While much has been achieved in Belarus regarding Holocaust research, it remains insufficient. This work must be elevated to the state level to properly honor the memory of the 800,000 Jewish citizens who contributed so much to the country. The moral, political, and historical returns will undoubtedly justify the investment.