Reichskommissariat Ostland

Map of the Reichskommissariat Ostland

Minsk was the destination of the first trains with which the Jews from Vienna were deported. Today's capital of Belarus was then located in the General Commissariat of White Ruthenia. The National Socialists occupied this area in 1941. The General Commissariat formed part of the Reichskommissariat Ostland, which covered what is now Belarus and the entire Baltic States and was entirely dominated by the Nazis. [1]

Shortly after the Nazis conquered Minsk in the summer of 1941, they set up a ghetto in the city. Local Jews lived there, separated from the rest of the population. The Nazis treated them brutally and arbitrarily. There were regular shootings. This also happened in November 1941. Because the Jews deported from Vienna were to live in the already overcrowded ghetto in the future, many of the local Jews who had been living there were murdered. [2]

Sources:

[1] Cf. Bernhard Chiari, Alltag hinter der Front: Besatzung, Kollaboration und Widerstand in Weißrußland 1941 – 1944, Düsseldorf 1998, p. 51–95.

[2] On the Minsk Ghetto cf. Rentrop, Tatorte, p. 99–184, on the events on November 1941 cf. ibid., pp. 139–141.