Laying memorial stones
The year is 2023. It is the year that marks 80 years since the liquidation of the Minsk Ghetto, a ghetto so many people still have never heard of. How is that even possible? Between 1941 and 1943, over 100,000 Jews became prisoners in this terrifying, brutal, lawless ghetto. A ghetto without walls. A hell on earth.
Annually, May 9th in many former Soviet countries is a public holiday – for citizens to recognise the Soviet victory over Nazi Germany in 1945. This date in history was first inaugurated in the 16 republics of the Soviet Union following the signing of the German Instrument of Surrender late in the evening on 8 May 1945 (9 May Moscow Time). The Soviet government announced the victory early on 9 May after the signing ceremony in Berlin. Although the official inauguration occurred in 1945, the holiday became a non-labor day only in 1965, and only in certain Soviet republics.
In Belarus and in Russia – this day continues to be marked as an annual celebration and a public holiday. After the end of the Second World War, or Great Patriotic War as it was called in the Soviet Union, those Jews who survived, who had suffered unthinkable losses, found themselves silenced. The collected survivor letters and testimonies that formed the content of the ‘Black Book of Russian Jewry’ collated by Ilya Ehrenberg and Vasily Grossman were never published during the Soviet years, with the authorities preferring the narrative that all Soviet Citizens suffered together.
Between 2014 and 2018 we at The Together Plan worked to translate the book ‘We Remember Lest the World Forget – Memories of the Minsk Ghetto’. In 2018 that book was published finally bringing the memories of 27 of the 100,000 Minsk Ghetto prisoners into the light. By the time the book was published many of those who had penned their memories – had already passed away. Two of the survivors who knew we were working on the book, we lost along the way – Maya Krapina and Lev Kravetz, but we know that our efforts to work on the book to bring it to the English speaking world meant everything to them. Maya was forthright and brave in spite of the terrible memories that she had to live with all her life. Lev was a deeply traumatised man who was moved to tears by the slightest thing. Yet he made it known to us that our efforts were deeply meaningful for him. For the survivors who were at the book launch in Minsk – hosted by the British Embassy in November 2018 – it was a day they never thought they would see.
Maya Krapina was interviewed in Minsk by Israeli filmmaker Boris Maftsir. Click here to hear Maya telling her incredible story.
Maya Krapina and Frida Reizman (Minsk Ghetto survivors)
with Artur Livshyts Minsk, October 2017
Lev Kravetz at his home in Minsk
with Artur Livshyts, January 2018
Today there are only a handful of survivors still alive to tell the story. Miraculously these precious witnesses are still living in Minsk and walking the streets where they lost so much. It is our task to bring their stories into focus – both within Belarus and across the world.
When we launched our Making History Together Holocaust education programme with thanks to the support of UK Charity Jewish Child’s Day and the British Embassy in Minsk, the plan was for it to give teenagers in the UK a new way to learn about the Holocaust. We believed that by starting with an understanding of what happened in the Soviet Union – they would be able to glean a much more comprehensive and deeper understanding of the Second World War and the pathway to the Final Solution. To learn about the Holoacust we felt it was vital to know that 2.7 million of the six million were killed in the Soviet Union, and that there it was a very different story. Moreover – it was in the Soviet Union that Jews took up arms and fought back as brave partisans living in the forests.
The program is a real success and has seeded Holocaust learning in Belarus. In Minsk, thanks to our efforts, at the Kamensky College, students are now learning the story of what happened to the Belarusian Jews between 1941 and 1944. Using the materials that we created – they can now access this history. Moreover – the students are committed to taking action to help others to discover and learn.
Last year, the students along with our team in Minsk – planted an alley of trees and installed plaques that named survivors of the Minsk Ghetto. The trees are located on the site of the Old Jewish Cemetery – which is today a park. The park stands adjacent to the Kemnsky College and no-one would know that this was once a Jewish cemetery or indeed that the cemetery had been on the territory of the Minsk Ghetto. This year – the students returned to the park to plant more trees and lay another 40 plaques this time in memory of 40 of the 400 ghettos that the Germans created in Belarus.
The memorial “Yama” (the Pit) marks the site where 5000 Jews were shot in the Minsk Ghetto in one day in March 1942. For the Victory Day 2023 commemoriarion, the Kamesnky College students, Minsk Ghetto survivors, representatives of Government authorities, representatives of the Jewish Religious Union of Belarus, and other public organisations gathered at this site to lay flowers.
All present were given a sticker in the shape of a yellow patch to wear on their lapels in memory of the Jews in the Minsk ghetto who were forced to wear sewn on yellow patches.
From Communiqué №31 of the Security Police and the SD on the creation of the Jewish Council (Judenrat) Minsk 23rd July 1941
As the German soldier cannot always unfailingly distinguish Jewish people from non-Jewish local population, in some cases misunderstandings have occurred. A regulation has therefore been issued requiring that with immediate effect, Jewish men and women aged 10 and older wear yellow sewn-on patches on their breasts and backs at all times.
Survivors Frida Reizman and Leonid Tsyrinsky addressed the crowd, Rabbi Berzhaner read prayers and commemorative stones were laid at the memorial.
The group then walked to the Memorial Jewish Park for a ceremony to enlarge the Memorial Alley of the trees and lay the plaques in memory of the largest ghetto in Belarus.Finally, the group convened at the Kamensky College for a moving memorial concert. Over 80 people attended the events.
Memorial concert at Kamensky College
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- Survivors of the Minsk Ghetto at Memorial Ceremony
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- Memorial stone at the alley of the trees
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- Laying memorial stones
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- College students in Minsk at the Memorial Alley of the trees – plaque laying ceremony
We Remember Lest the World Forget – Memories of the Minsk Ghetto – can be accessed for free by clicking this link. Lev Kravetz’s story ‘How I Took People Out of the Ghetto’ – can be found on page 70 and Maya Krapina’s story ‘The Whole Village Deserves the Award of ‘Righteous Among the Nations’ can be found on page 82.
Here is the list of the 40 ghettos honoured in the new section of the Memorial Park’s Alley of the Trees, with acknowledgement and thanks to our Minsk historian Vladmir Melnitsky for his meticulous research:
- Minsk Ghetto
150,000 Jews were murdered
- Bobruisk Ghetto
25,000 Jews were murdered
- Slonim Ghetto
25,000 Jews were murdered
- Grodno Ghetto
20,000 Jews were murdered
- Brest Ghetto
20,000 Jews were murdered
- Vitebsk Ghetto
20,000 Jews were murdered
- Ghetto in the village of Domachevo (Brest District)
20,000 Jews were murdered
- Koldychevo concentration camp (Baranovichy District)
20,000 Jews were murdered
- Pinsk Ghetto
17,000 Jews were murdered
- Baranovichy Ghetto
12,000 Jews were murdered
- Gomel Ghetto
10,500 Jews were murdered
- Volkovysk Ghetto
10,000 Jews were murdered
- Novogrudok Ghetto
10,000 Jews were murdered
- Glubokoye Ghetto
10,000 Jews were murdered
- Pruzhany Ghetto
10,000 Jews were murdered
- Slutsk Ghetto
10,000 Jews were murdered
- Borisov Ghetto
9,000 Jews were murdered
- Polotsk Ghetto
8,000 Jews were murdered
- Ghetto in the village of Dvorets (Dyatlov District)
8,000 Jews were murdered
- Bereza Ghetto
8,000 Jews were murdered
- Stolin Ghetto
8,000 Jews were murdered
- Lida Ghetto
8,000 Jews were murdered
- Kletsk Ghetto
7,500 Jews were murdered
- Vileyka Ghetto
7,000 Jews were murdered
- Orsha Ghetto
6,000 Jews were murdered
- Gantsevichy Ghetto
6,000 Jews were murdered
- Bykhov Ghetto
5,000 Jews were murdered
- Kamenets Ghetto
5,000 Jews were murdered
- Kobrin Ghetto
5,000 Jews were murdered
- Lyakhovichy Ghetto
5,000 Jews were murdered
- Ghetto in the village of Krasnoe (Molodechno District)
5,000 Jews were murdered
- Nesvizh Ghetto
4,500 Jews were murdered
- Ghetto in the town of Kossovo (Ivatsevichy District)
4,500 Jews were murdered
- Ghetto in the town of David-Gorodok (Stolin District)
4,300 Jews were murdered
- Dokshytsy Ghetto
4,200 Jews were murdered
- Ghetto in the village of Derechin (Zelva District)
4,100 Jews were murdered
- Antopol Ghetto (Drogichin District)
4,000 Jews were murdered
- Ruzhany Ghetto (Pruzhany District)
4,000 Jews were murdered
- Postavy Ghetto
4,000 Jews were murdered
- Mozyr Ghetto
4,000 Jews were murdered
May their memory be for a blessing