75 years ago saw a large-scale elimination of the Minsk Ghetto, killing over 5,000 people in one day. Jews from Germany, Austria, Poland and Czechoslovakia, brought to the Belarusian capital during the war years, are buried on the site of the Yama memorial
Prior to the March massacre, two acts of the mass destruction of the Jewish population took place in Minsk. 20,000 people were murdered during Nazi operations in November. In addition to local Jews, those brought to Minsk from Western Europe were also annihilated.
The third massacre in 1942 was thoroughly planned. It took place after the Wannsee Conference, which was held in Berlin and resulted in a detailed plan on solving the Jewish issue. According to the plan, none of the 11 million European Jews was not to stay alive. 600,000 to 800,000 people were killed in Belarus’ territory alone. The actual number of victims is not known to this day.
The first Soviet monument to the murdered Jews was unveiled on the site of the Yama memorial in 1947. The black obelisk with a poem by Yiddish poet Chaim Maltinsky engraved on it was erected due to donations from ghetto prisoners and witnesses of the tragedy. The obelisk is still there, although a bronze memorial to Holocaust victims was installed there in 2000.
