Blahauščyna extermination site
On the "resettlement area", a name for a clearing in the forest, members of the Waffen-SS had dug a large pit before the arrival of the first of 16 transports that were to reach Maly Trascjanec between 11 May and 9 October 1942. The Jewish victims had to line up around the pit before they were shot in the neck. It is unclear whether a gas van was used in this killing operation. It is also not entirely clear which units were involved in these extermination actions. The only certainty is that the 2nd Waffen-SS Platoon of the 1st Company / Battalion of the Waffen-SS for special use was deployed. The killing was led by the "Judenreferent" (Jewish Advisor) of the KdS Kurt Burkhardt.
Gerhard Arlt's activity report reflects this first killing operation:
"On 11 May, a transport of Jews (1,000 pieces) arrived in Minsk from Vienna and they were immediately taken from the railway station to the above-mentioned pit. For this purpose the train was used directly at the pit. On 13 May, 8 men supervised the excavation of another pit, as another transport of Jews from the Reich was due to arrive here in the near future."[1].
The execution squads of these killing actions usually consisted of 10 to 20 men. It was also important to Commander Eduard Strauch that all staff members took part in the executions. The SS leaders in particular should set a “good example” for their subordinates. The killing actions were mostly carried out as shootings. The pits with the corpses were covered with chlorinated lime and filled up. Finally, the mass graves were leveled with caterpillars and camouflaged with branches.
Activity report by Gerhard Arlt
It is unclear at what point gas vans were used and how many people died as a result. According to Georg Albert Wilhelm Heuser's indictment, they were used by mid-June 1942 at the latest. Heuser describes the killing method as follows:
"The vans had a large box body that could be closed airtight with wing doors. There was room for about fifty to sixty people in the van. The gassing of the persons in the wagon was only initiated at the pit with the vehicle stationary. The engine gases were fed into the interior of the car through a hose which the driver connected at the execution site. The gassing process lasted about 15 minutes, with the engine running at low manual gas. After the gassing process was completed, the corpses were unloaded from the wagon by a detachment of Jews or Russian prisoners and placed in the pit. After completion of such a gassing operation, the unloading commando was shot." [2]
Another report, from the perpetrator's perspective, about the mechanisms of killing by means of gas vans is provided by Josef Wendl's transcript:
"After all the gas vans had been loaded, there were about 70 victims in my van, and we drove on with the gas van in a southerly direction about 5 km away from this railway site. There was a large pit dug in a forest and meadow area. I remember that the pit was secured by machine gun nests. [...] Now the usual gassing followed. Finally, the doors were opened, the Russians dragged [sic!] the corpses out, stripped them and piled the corpses in the pit. [...] I had to fetch a second load from the goods train with my gas van. I know that some of the other gas vans even ran three times that day. According to the capacity, I estimate that about 700-1000 Jews were gassed that day." [3]
After these killings by gas, Jewish forced labourers had to clean the gas vans. It is assumed that this also took place at the lake of the Maly Trascjanec estate.
The executions in the Blahauščyna forest did not go unnoticed by the local population, as a report by the then 14-year-old Anna Borisova shows:
"When I was in the forest to collect berries, I could often see people being shot. There were a lot of pits. People were brought there in the “dušegubkas” (gas vans) and simply dropped into the pits because they had already died on the way in the “dušegubkas”. And when they brought in the living, they shot them first and then threw them into these pits. Some tried to flee, but these attempts never succeeded, all was in vain”. [4]
Until the autumn of 1943, the Blahauščyna forest remained the central execution site of the Minsk security police. Even after the camp was dissolved, people were still shot there in the forest, including prisoners of war and partisan fighters. The last killings took place between 1 September and 23 October 1943. Other killings took place in the Šaškouka "crematoria", where the victims were shot directly into the pits and then cremated.
According to Adolf Rübe, head of the Minsk ghetto guard, between 40,000 and 55,000 people were murdered in the Blahauščyna forest.
Sources:
[1]/[2] Dokumentationsarchiv des österreichischen Widerstandes (DÖW): Vernichtungsort Maly Trostinec
[3] Rentrop, Petra: Tatorte der „Endlösung“. Das Ghetto Minsk und die Vernichtungsstätte Maly Trostinez. Berlin: Metropol. 2011. p. 209
[4] Rentrop, Petra: Tatorte der „Endlösung“. Das Ghetto Minsk und die Vernichtungsstätte Maly Trostinez. Berlin: Metropol. 2011. p. 207.
[5] Rentrop, Petra: Tatorte der “Endlösung”. Das Ghetto Minsk und die Vernichtungsstätte Maly Trostinez. Berlin: Metropol. 2011. p. 211.