The Holocaust in Belarus The Holocaust in Belarus refers to the Nazi crime s during the occupation of Belarus by Nazi Germany on the territory of contemporary Belarus , and against the ethnic Belarusians outside it . Belarus lost a quarter of its pre - war population , including most of its intellectual elite and 90 % of the country ’ s Jewish population . Following encirclement battles , all of the present - day Belarus territory was occupied by the Nazi Germany by the end of August 1941 . The Nazis imposed a brutal regime , deporting to Germany some 380 , 000 young people for slave labour , and killing hundreds of thousands of civilians more . At least 5 , 295 Belarusian settlements were destroyed and their inhabitants killed ( out of 9200 settlements that were burned or otherwise destroyed in Belarus during World War II ) . 243 Belarusian villages were burned down twice , 83 villages three times , and 22 villages were burned down four or more times in the Witebsk region . 92 villages were burned down twice , 40 villages three times , nine villages four times , and six villages five or more times in the Mińsk region . More than 600 villages like Chatyń were burned with their entire population . More than 209 cities and towns ( out of 270 total ) were destroyed . Himmler had pronounced a plan according to which 3 / 4 of Belarusian population was designated for " eradication " and 1 / 4 of racially cleaner population ( blue eyes , light hair ) would be allowed to serve Germans as slaves . German invasion . After the German invasion of the Soviet Union on June 22 , 1941 in the Operation Barbarossa Minsk was immediately under attack . The city was bombed on the first day of the war and taken over by Germans four days later . Many entire factories , museums and thousands of civilians had been evacuated East . The Nazis made Minsk the administrative centre of " Reichskomissariat Ostland " and repressed the local population . Communists and their sympathisers were killed or imprisoned ; thousands were forced into slave labour , both locally and in Germany . Homes were expropriated to house German occupying forces . Thousands starved as rations were expropriated and paid work was scarce . At the same time , some residents supported the Germans , especially in the earlier years . Some Belarusian nationalists hoped for formation of a Belarusian national state under the German protectorate . As a result , the city was divided . By 1942 Minsk became a major centre of Soviet partisan resistance movement against the Occupation of Belarus by Nazi Germany during World War II . Minsk was the site of one of the largest Nazi - run ghettos in World War II , the Minsk Ghetto , which held over 100 , 000 Jews . A living space of 1 . 5 square meters was allotted for each person , with none for children . On the morning of 7 November the Germans rounded up thousands of Jews from the Minsk ghetto , forcing them to wear their best clothes in mockery of the anniversary day of the Bolshevik Revolution . They formed the captives into columns , gave them Soviet flags and ordered them to march and sing revolutionary songs . People were forced to smile for the cameras that were filming the scene . Once beyond Minsk , these 6 , 624 Jews were taken in trucks to the nearby village of Tuchinka and shot . Southern part of the Homel Voblast ( currently Petryków , Żytkowicze , Rzeczyca , Szacilkawicze , Turów , Mozyrz , and several others ) was annexed to the Reichskommissariat Ukraine , and was subordinate to the Żytomierz general district . After occupying a territory ( small town , city , or village ) , the Germans attempted to determine , precisely , who exactly was Jewish . Usually , for this purpose , they arranged a registration of the remaining Jewish population . In other cases , they issued special decrees . The District Kommissar in Mozyrz explained to the regional Kommissar in Kalinkowicze , that it was necessary to consider anyone who was born to a Jewish parent a Jew . It was more precisely determined that a Christian baptism did not change matters , and baptizing Jews or half - Jews was categorically forbidden . The next stage was separating the Jews and establishing a ghetto . Twenty ghettos were established in the Homel Voblast , in which no less than 21 , 000 people were imprisoned . There were four ghettos in the city of Homel , two in Żłobin , two in Korma , and one in Rohaczew , Brahiń , Chojniki , Rzeczyca , and several other places . In Homel , the main ghetto was located in the Monastyrek district , to which the Nazis drove the residents ( 800 Jews ) in the central part of town . The second ghetto was on Nowo - Ljubenskaja Street and housed 500 Jews , including 97 Jews brought to Homel from Łojów . The third ghetto was on Bychowskaja Street . Jews who lived in Nowo - Belica , on the left bank of the Soż River , were placed in a different ghetto . In September 1941 , 200 ghetto residents were transferred to Monastyrek . Ghetto prisoners were doomed , but a temporary exception was made for the Jewish specialist workers . An order of a SS cavalry brigade from September 28 , 1941 stated , “ It is obvious that craftsmen may be temporarily preserved . ” However , ghettos were not organized in each place of the Homel Voblast . In some places the Jewish population was almost completely gone , and in others , the Jewish population was resettled to larger villages . Ghettos were not created in Brahiń , Vetka , Zhuravichi , Komarin , Kopatkevichi , Łojów , Narovlia , Svetilovichi , Uvarovichi , Terehov , Turów , Chojniki , and some other places . Regardless of this , men in these places were sent to perform compulsory labor and were subject to daily punishments and religious Jews were forced to have their beards shaved . Wehrmacht soldiers sometimes informed Jews about plans of the mass shootings . In Turów , the Wainblat sisters , Czasja ( 15 years old ) and Bronja ( 13 years old ) peeled potatoes at a German kitchen in exchange for food . Ilya Goberman remembers that an Austrian soldier warned him that Germans were annihilating all Jews . “ Run , the faster , the better , ” he used to say . Methods of carrying out actions . The destruction of a ghetto was planned in advance and carried out as a carefully prepared operation . Usually it was done in two stages . First , young and strong men were selected and led out of the ghetto under the pretense that they were completing some kind of a job . Then they were forced to dig a ditch and were killed . That is how the ghettos were rid of people who were ready and able to resist . This included former Communist Party of Belarus , Soviet and Komsomol workers , or simply healthy men , and sometimes women . The active part of the ghetto was not large - young men of military age mostly were already in the Soviet Army . The Germans carried out the first killings by exerting force , using experienced guards and all necessary precautions ( in Homel , Mozyrz , Kalinkowicze , Korma ) . The Belarusian police took on a secondary role in the first stage of the killings . The rest of the Jews were crushed and deprived of the will to live - women , children , and the elderly - was killed with the Nazis ’ bare hands ( in Dobrush , Chechersk , Żytkowicze ) . After a while , police , composed of locals , and a minimal convoy , led these remaining Jews out of the ghetto to their place of death . Such a tactic was successful ( without much exertion of force ) in places where the liquidation of Jews was carried out early September , October – November 1941 . In winter 1942 , a different tactic of killing was used - raids ( in Zhlobin , Petryków , Streshin , Chechersk ) . The role of Belarusian Auxiliary Police in killing Jews became particularly noticeable during the second wave of destruction , starting in February – March 1942 . By that time , it had been converted into a more organized force , while the Germans , experienced a greater need for a personal cadre of executioners , as more people were needed at the Eastern Front . During the process of an action , local police forced Jews out of their homes , convoyed them to a specific place , surrounded them with guns , and pulled the triggers . After the mass shooting , the police actively searched for the hiding Jews and were distinctive in their cruelty , compared to the Germans . 30 , 000 Jews were murdered over the three days in Minsk ghetto in July , 1942 , and tens of thousands more were killed at other times , even as more Jews were forced into the ghetto . Only a handful survived . Minsk was re - taken by the Soviet troops on July 3 , 1944 during the " Operation Bagration " . Altogether , 2 , 230 , 000 people were killed in Belarus during the three years of German occupation . Some recent estimates raise the number of Belarusians who perished in War to " 3 million 650 thousand people , unlike the former 2 . 2 million . That is to say not every fourth inhabitant but almost 40 % of the pre - war Belarusian population perished ( considering the present - day borders of Belarus ) . " Almost the whole , previously very numerous , Jewish population of Belarus which did not evacuate was killed . One of the first uprisings of a Jewish ghetto against the Nazis occurred in 1942 in Belarus , in the small town of Łachwa ( see Lakhva Ghetto ) . In July 1941 , in the wake of the German occupation of the western parts of the Soviet Union , Wilhelm Kube was appointed General - Commissar for Generalbezirk Weißruthenien ( Belarus ) , with his headquarters in Minsk . In this role he oversaw the extermination of the large Jewish population of this area . The historian Martin Gilbert records that Kube participated in an atrocity on March 2 , 1942 in the Minsk ghetto . During a search of the ghetto by German and Russian policemen a group of children were seized and thrown into pits of deep sand to die . " At that moment , several SS officers , among them Wilhelm Kube , arrived , whereupon Kube , immaculate in his uniform , threw handfuls of sweets to the shrieking children . All the children perished in the sand . " On 22 September 1943 , Kube was assassinated in his Minsk apartment . His death was caused by a bomb hidden in a hot water bottle , which was placed in his bed by a maid , Jelena Mazanik . In retaliation , the SS killed more than 1 , 000 male citizens of Minsk , though SS leader Heinrich Himmler reportedly said the assassination was a " blessing " since Kube did not support some of the harsh measures mandated by the SS . Mazanik escaped the reprisals and joined the partisans . SS and Police Leader Curt von Gottberg was successively promoted as the head of SS and police for Belarus between October 1942 and June 1944 due to Himmler ' s sponsorship . He was delegated with the duties of the " Generalkommissar " for Belarus on October 27 , 1943 after Wilhelm Kube was killed by a bomb in Minsk on October 23 . Von Gottberg developed a new ' strategy ' in the fight against partisans on the occupied territory of the Soviet Union , mounting aggressive operations against suspected ' partisan bases ' ( generally ordinary villages ; Gottberg ' s strategy seems to have largely involved terrorising the civilian population ) . Whole regions were classified as " bandit territory " ( ) : residents were expelled or murdered and dwellings destroyed . Gottberg said in an order " In the evacuated areas all people are in future fair game " . Another order of Gottberg ' s of December 7 , 1942 , stated : " Each bandit , Jew , gypsy , is to be regarded as an enemy " . After his first operation , " Nürnberg " , Gottberg reported on December 5 , 1942 : " Enemy dead : 799 bandits , over 300 suspected gangsters and over 1800 Jews [ . . . ] Our losses : 2 dead and 10 wounded . One must have luck " . Belorussian collaborators participated in various massacres of Belarusian villagers . Many of these collaborators retreated with German forces in the wake of the Red Army advance , and in January 1945 , formed the 30th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS ( 1st Belarusian ) . Mass murders in Navagrudak . On June 22 , 1941 , Nazi Germany invaded Belarusian SSR and Navagrudak was occupied on July 4 . The Red Army was surrounded , what is known as the Navagrudak Cauldron . Prior to the war , the population was 20 , 000 , of which about half were Jewish . During a series of actions , the Germans killed all but 550 of the approximately 10 , 000 Jews . Those not killed were sent into slave labor . During the German occupation the city became part of the Reichskommissariat Ostland . Partisan resistance immediately began , with most famous Bielski partisans formed of Jewish volunteers operated in the region . On July 31 , 1943 , without warning or provocation , 11 of the Sisters of the Holy Family of Nazareth were imprisoned , loaded into a van and driven beyond the town limits . The 11 nuns were killed on August 1 , 1943 , in the woods beyond Navagrudak , and buried in a mass grave . After the execution , Sister M . Malgorzata Banas , the community ' s sole surviving member , located the place of the martyrdom , and remained the guardian of their common grave until her own death in 1966 . The Church of the Transfiguration , known as " Biała Fara " , or " White Church " , now contains the relics of the eleven martyrs . The Red Army liberated the city almost exactly 3 years after its occupation on July 8 , 1944 . During the war more than 45 , 000 people were killed in the city and in the surrounding area , and over 60 % of buildings was destroyed . Anti - partisan operations . The cruelty during anti - partisan operations especially in Belarus has been correctly pointed out in the past . It indicates a high degree of identification with their deeds rather than an unwilling execution . The meanness of their actions is already shown by the means of killing massively employed by the Germans in their fight against partisans . Most of the victims were women and children , as the male population of the villages had been evacuated or drafted into the Red Army or was with the partisans . Or then they were useful as a labor force . Similar aspects also apply to the murder of Jews , prisoners of war , political opponents and the ill . The Battalion Dirlewanger on July 21 , 1943 , during Operation Hermann , chased the inhabitants of the village of Dory together with the priest into a church and burned them alive there . Only men able to work were let out of the church , women only if they left their children behind . At another place hundreds of selected children , two to ten years old , were locked in freight cars and left to their fate until half of them had died . While von Schenkendorff in 1942 called for measures against the soldiers , the generally organized sequence of the destruction of villages shows how little was left to chance . Photo albums prepared after anti - partisan actions for higher SS commanders . Thus Erich von dem Bach - Zelewski readily admitted to have possessed thousands of color photographs of the fight against partisans that were confiscated after the war . After Operation Hermann in the summer of 1943 Curt von Gottberg required appropriate pictures for an album about partisan fighting to be handed to Himmler . Some months later he was sent an album about that murderous operation Heinrich , which Bach - Zelewski had dedicated to Himmler by naming it after him . The rank and file behaved in a similar manner . Many German participants had a camera in their backpack during the operations . The respective pictures mostly show rather uncompromising scenes , but often also the burning villages . Another aspect was the fact that inhabitants of the countryside were used for de - mining the accesses to the partisan camps and massively forced to walk the ways leading there . Several thousand Belarusians were killed due to this . Such cases there were at first in the Wehrmacht area already in 1942 , at the remote village of Uchwała , raion Krupki , where a total of 360 people perished . In the area of the 286th Security Division the civilian population had to walk , plough and harrow the roads at the orders of Major General Richert since the autumn of 1942 . At Artiszewo near Orsza 28 people , thereof 18 children , were killed in this . The LIX Army Corps had issued a corresponding order already on March 2 , 1942 Later they also used herds of sheep . But in most cases people were used , on an ever larger scale . During Operation Cottbus between 2 , 000 and 3 , 000 Belarusians whom the Germans drove before them into the swamps were torn apart by mines , according to Bach - Zelewski . After preparation by artillery and flak entering the swamp area was only possible by chasing inhabitants of the region across the heavily mined paths in the swamp . Oskar Dirlewanger ' s corresponding order of May 25 , 1943 had read : " Roadblocks and artificial obstacles are almost always mined . So far we have suffered 1 dead and 4 wounded during removal . Thus the order is : Never remove obstacles yourselves , but always let natives do it . The blood thus saved justifies the loss of time . " For Operation Hermann this directive applied right from the beginning : The commanders of the operation carried out these instructions . The same happened during Operation Frühlingsfest ( April 16 till May 10 , 1944 ) , which was carried out in equal parts by Wehrmacht and SS units . A corresponding suggestion is said to have come from the already mentioned Richert . But in the meantime this method had become routine also outside the scope of major actions . It was also applied by Wehrmacht frontline troops in their direct rear area . All Belarusians had become hostages of the Germans . The 78th Infantry division ordered the whole civilian population in its area to de - mine the roads in its area every morning until 6 hours : " I thus order that all roads that must be driven on by German troops are to be walked first by all inhabitants of the location ( including women and children ) with cows , horses and vehicles up to the next command post , or that marching columns must be preceded at a distance of at least 150 meters by such inhabitants . The civilians must close up tightly and walk the whole width of the road . " Rear area command 532 proceeded in a similar manner , and an officer in the high command of Army Group Center wanted to recommend this procedure as exemplary to other units . As of February 18 , 1944 , General Commissar v . Gottberg issued a Directive for the " Securing of Traffic Roads in White Ruthenia against Bandits and Mines " . Therein the whole population of villages in White Ruthenia was obliged to de - mine streets and roads every day at the regional police commanders instructions . Whoever refused the de - mining and road supervision service was to be punished by death .