Introduction to the exhibition

The following digital exhibition traces the transformation process of Maly Trascjanec and its surroundings. It starts in 1941 and follows the changes up to the present. During the German occupation in the early 1940s, members of the Schutzstaffel (SS), the Wehrmacht and the Sicherheitsdienst of the Reichsführer SS (SD) committed serious crimes against humanity in the area around the village of the same name as part of the Nazi extermination policy.

The exhibition was developed in cooperation with the Minsk History Workshop by Peter Kamp, Tatjana Rykov, Rukia Soubbotina and Charlotte Vöhl, students of the Department of History and Social Sciences at the University of Osnabrück. The work was done as part of the seminar "Extermination site Maly Trascjanec. From the exploration to the presentation of violent sites of the Shoah and the war of extermination " under the guidance of Prof. Dr. Christopher Rass.

The seminar was based on a transnational exchange between students from the universities of Minsk, Vienna and Osnabrück with different perspectives. Various exhibitions have been created on the history of the village of Maly Trascjanec. This exhibition about the transformation process aims to provide information about the Nazi crimes in Maly Tracjanec and to draw attention to them, since in Germany (and beyond) there is still a social ignorance about this site and the murders and other crimes that took place there. This silence and forgetting should be counteracted in this way.

For reasons of overview, the footnotes on the exhibition pages have only been documented in an abbreviated form. The full bibliography can be found under the respective keyword or author on the Literature & Sources page.

Trigger warning: Some exhibition pages deal explicitly with the murder of Jewish people and could be disturbing to visitors. The warning relates primarily to the pages "Blahaǔščyna, "Aktion 1005", "Saškouka" and "The 'final' destruction of evidence". Accessing the exhibition pages is at your own risk.

Responsible for content: Tatjana Rykov, Rukia Soubbotina and Charlotte Vöhl