Maly Trastsianiets extermination camp (see alternate spellings), a small village on the outskirts of Minsk, Belarus, was the site of a Nazi extermination camp.
Originally built in the summer of 1941, on the site of a Soviet kolkhoz, as a concentration camp, to house Soviet prisoners of war who had been captured following the German attack on Soviet Union which commenced on June 22 of that year (known as Operation Barbarossa), the camp became a Ve...
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Maly Trastsianiets extermination camp (see alternate spellings), a small village on the outskirts of Minsk, Belarus, was the site of a Nazi extermination camp.
Originally built in the summer of 1941, on the site of a Soviet kolkhoz, as a concentration camp, to house Soviet prisoners of war who had been captured following the German attack on Soviet Union which commenced on June 22 of that year (known as Operation Barbarossa), the camp became a Vernichtungslager, or extermination camp, on May 10, 1942 when the first transport of Jews arrived there. While many Jews from Germany, Austria and the present-day Czech Republic met their deaths there (in most cases almost immediately upon their arrival, by being trucked to the nearby Blagovshchina (Благовщина) and Shashkovka (Шашковка) forests killing grounds and shot in the back of the neck), the primary purpose of the camp was the extermination of the substantial Jewish community of Minsk and the surrounding area. Mobile gas chambers...
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