Blahaǔščyna

Blahaǔščyna refers to a forest clearing south-east of the village of Maly Trascjanec, in which the occupiers from 1941 murdered opponents of National Socialist ideology, members of the Soviet intelligentsia and Jews. Until the autumn of 1943, it was the central execution site in the Maly Trascjanec area.

Crossroads leading to Blahaǔščyna

People who were not detained for forced labor in the Maly Trascjanec camp were taken to a forest clearing called Blahaǔščyna several kilometers away. They had to line up along a pit that had already been dug and the occupiers murdered them with a shot in the neck. Their lifeless bodies should fall straight into the pit to avoid extra work steps.

Other prisoners were then tasked with searching the corpses for valuables and gold. This procedure was repeated until the pit was filled with corpses; then forced laborers had to cover the pit and dig a new one. Some of the mass graves were up to 50 meters long.

Sketch by the Extraordinary State Commission of the Soviet Union of the forest clearing near Blahaǔščyna from July 1944

As part of the "Aktion 1005" Soviet prisoners of war were forced to exhume the mass graves at Blahaǔščyna. As thanks, they were promised freedom; however, they were later murdered along with the other prisoners.

The ČKG identified 34 mass graves during its investigation of the Blahaǔščyna forest area, which according to projections contained up to 5,000 bodies each.¹ From June 1942, parallel to the shootings, gas vans were also used: Hundreds of people were murdered in their airtight spaces by the introduction of exhaust gases. In the local population, these wagons were referred to as "soul killers".²

Partly due to "Aktion 1005", the number of people murdered in Blahaǔščyna cannot be precisely quantified. The size of the mass graves was distorted by the exhumations, so the information provided by the Extraordinary State Commission of the Soviet Union (ČGK) – which stated a number of fatalities of 150,000 people³ for Blahaǔščyna alone – must be critically examined. With the start of the "Aktion 1005" campaign to remove traces, the murder site of the Nazi occupiers was relocated: in the Šaškoǔka forest, south of the camp, a temporary crematorium was set up at the end of 1943.