'Maly Trostenets' Extermination Camp

Maly Trostenets and the Blagowschtschina Forest

Maly Trostenets was a camp near Minsk that was put into operation in the spring of 1942. The camp was located on the grounds of the former kolkhoz "Karl Marx." Maly Trostenets does not easily fit within the Nazi camp system. The camp itself was designed for slave labor, but a few kilometers away in the Blagowschtschina Forest, Jews (primarily) were shot on a large scale. These victims came from Austria, Germany, and the Czech Republic, among other countries.

The Jewish and non-Jewish (such as resistance fighters) prisoners in Maly Trostenets were forced to produce food and tools for the Nazis and sort the belongings of the murdered victims. They were also deployed to empty the gas van when it was deployed near the camp to accelerate the killing process. The camp likely held a maximum of 500-1,000 prisoners at a time. Unlike other camps, families were kept together in Maly Trostenets.

The combined number of victims from Maly Trostenets and Blagowschtschina Forest is estimated at 60,000. Only a few survived. Some survivors were transferred to camps further west in the autumn of 1943, while others managed to escape in the days surrounding the camp's evacuation in June 1944. During the evacuation, the last prisoners were murdered and the camp burned down. After the arrival of the Soviets in 1944, 34 mass graves containing ashes and human remains were discovered near the Blagowschtschina Forest.

The camp today:
There are no traces left of the camp this day other than a row of poplars planted by the inmates as part of the border of the camp. A memorial is standing here to commemorate the victims of 'Maly Trosteners' There are plans to reconstruct the camp in the future.

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Source

• Text: Patrick Schellen
• Photos: Christian Nieuwenhuize
• - A.-L.C. Bobeldijk - Entangled narratives of terror:Maly Trostenets and Blagovshchina forest in history and memory, 1937-2022 (Introduction & Conclusion
• GERLACH, CHRISTIAN, Kalkulierte Morde, Hamburger Edition, Hamburg, 2000.
• RENTROP, PETRA, Tatorte der "Endlösung", Metropol Verlag, Berlin, 2011.
• STIFTUNG DENKMAL FüR DIE ERMORDETEN JUDEN EUROPAS, Vernichtungsort Malyj Trostenez, Stiftung Denkmal für die ermordeten Juden Europas, Berlin, 2016.