Metadata: General Commissariat of Belorussia
Collection
- Country:
- Belarus
- Holding institution:
- National Archives of the Republic of Belarus
- Holding institution (official language):
- Национальный архив Республики Беларусь
- Postal address:
- 220114, Nezavisimosti Ave. 116, Minsk, Belarus
- Phone number:
- +375 (17) 351-05-12
- Web address:
- https://narb.by/be
- Email:
- narb@narb.by
- Reference number:
- F. 370
- Title:
- General Commissariat of Belorussia
- Title (official language):
- ГЕНЕРАЛЬНЫЙ КОМИССАРИАТ БЕЛОРУССИИ
- Creator/accumulator:
- General Commissariat of Belorussia
- Date(s):
- 1941/1945
- Language:
- German
- Belarusian
- Russian
- Extent:
- 3,421 storage units
- Type of material:
- Textual material
- Scope and content:
- Materials pertaining to Jewish history are found mainly in ops. 1 and 4-7, and may be provisionally divided into the following thematic groups: 1) Decrees, reports, and information on the dismissal of Jewish doctors and their replacement by doctors of a different “race,” in particular, monthly reports for 1941 of the Baranovichi Area Commissariat on the state of medical care and the prevalence of infectious disease in the area include data on the number of Jewish doctors who had been dismissed and imprisoned in the ghetto (1941); there is a Reichskommissariat Ostland decree on medical workers and correspondence on the dismissal of Jewish doctors (1941); etc. 2) Materials on the confiscation and distribution of Jews’ money and property; these include financial reports by the area cash departments of the General Commissariat of Belorussia, and reports on the distribution of money confiscated from the Jewish population among general commissariat employees (1941); documents on the allocation of property confiscated from Jews (1941-44); circulars of the Reichskommissariat Ostland and the General Commissariat of Belorussia on procedures for dividing and managing property confiscated from Jews (1942-44); reports and correspondence of the Minsk Municipal Commissariat with the General Commissariat of Belorussia and the Todt Organization on allocating property confiscated from Jews deported to the ghetto (1942-43); on issuing clothing confiscated from Jews to workers of Minsk enterprises (1942); etc. 3) Orders, directives, circulars, and other documents on the involvement of Jewish craftsmen and industrial workers in forced labor at enterprises of the General District of Belorussia, including correspondence with the Minsk Municipal Commissariat on the regulation of Jews’ wages and procedures for employing them (1941-43); lists of Jewish craftsmen, in particular, of Jews working in shoe workshops in Minsk (1942); payroll records for Jewish craftsmen (1942); directives on operational procedures for Jewish craft workshops, including an order of the Novogrudok area commissar on organizing the operations of Jewish shoemaking, tailoring, and carpentry workshops (1942-43); circulars prohibiting Jews from working as drivers (1942-44), and prohibiting the employment of Jews in civilian institutions (1943); information from the Glubokoe area commissar on the number of shoe workshops and shoemakers, and a list of Jews employed in shoe workshops, in the city of Glubokoe (1944); etc. 4) Materials on antisemitic propaganda carried out by the propaganda department of the General Commissariat of Belorussia, including information on pamphlets and other publications to be used to train Russian Liberation Army (ROA) propagandists (1944). The fond also contains official bulletins of various German organizations: the National Socialist Union, Reich commissariats, general commissars of the occupied territories, German ministries, etc., as well as magazines printed by the “Day of the German Community” publishing house, that contain materials of an antisemitic nature (1941-44). 5) Documents on the genocide of the Jewish population of Belorussia by the Nazis and their accomplices, in particular, a General Commissariat of Belorussia report on the progress and results of punitive actions to destroy the Jewish population (1942); a message (5 August 1942) from the Slutsk branch of the commercial firm “Vostok” to the Minsk main commissar to the effect that the Jews of the town of Kopyl’ had been exterminated by a special unit of the SS and their collaborators; information on the number of Jews killed in the Minsk ghetto (1942); a report by Lt. General Curt von Gottberg on the need for the total destruction of the Jewish population of Belorussia (1943); minutes of a meeting of area commissars (German: Gebietskommissars) and heads of the main departments of the General Commissariat of Belorussia that contain information on mass shootings of Jews in the cities of Vileika and Lida (1943); documents on the liquidation of the Jewish ghettos of Dokshitsy, Luzhka, Pliss, Braslav, Druia, Disna, Sharkovshchina, and Opory (1942-43); etc.
- Administrative/biographical history:
- In its capacity as a newly organized Nazi general district, Belorussia, along with Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia, became part of the Reichskommissariat Ostland, the administrative center of which was in Riga. In April 1944, Hitler ordered that the General District of Belorussia (German: General Bezirk Weißruthenien) be separated from the Reichskommissariat Ostland into an independent district subordinate to the Reich Ministry for the Occupied Eastern Territories (German: Reichsministerium für die besetzten Ostgebiete). The General Commissariat of Belorussia (German: Generalkommissariat Weißruthenien) was organized in August 1941; on 1 September 1941, all administrative and economic power was transferred to the commissariat’s civil administration, its supreme civilian authority. This body was headed by General Commissar Wilhelm Kube, who was assassinated on 22 September 1943 by a bomb placed in his bed by Lev Lieberman, a Minsk ghetto prisoner employed as a laborer in Kube’s apartment. SS-Gruppenführer and Police Lt. General Curt von Gottberg was subsequently appointed general commissar. The General Commissariat of Belorussia dealt with the following issues: “pacifying” the district, including combatting the partisan movement and sabotage; organizing the exploitation of the district’s economic potential and local labor force; seeing to the ideological indoctrination of the population; etc. The general commissariat’s apparatus included five main departments: the policy, administrative, economic, technology, and labor departments, all headed by Germans. By 1944, the general commissariat had ten departments: those of policy and propaganda; the press; industry; agriculture and food; forestry and timber; road construction; labor; law; culture; and healthcare and veterinary medicine. The General Commissariat of Belorussia ceased operations in June 1944 in connection with the liberation of Belorussian territory from Nazi occupation.
- Access points: locations:
- Baranovichi
- Belorussiya
- Braslav
- Disna
- Dokshitsy
- Druia
- Glubokoe
- Kopyl’
- Minsk
- Novogrudok
- Opory
- Pliss
- Sharkovshchina
- Vileika
- Subject terms:
- Antisemitism
- Antisemitism--Antisemitic legislation
- Antisemitism--Antisemitic propaganda
- Clothing
- Correspondence
- Financial records
- Forced labour (of Jews)
- Health and medical matters
- Health and medical matters--Diseases
- Health and medical matters--Physicians and nurses
- Holocaust
- Holocaust--Collaboration
- Holocaust--Ghettos
- Mass murder
- Nazism
- Nazism--Nazi parties and organisations
- Plunder
- Professions
- Professions--Crafts
- Real estate
- System of arrangement:
- The fond includes seven inventories systematized according to the structural-chronological principle, and chronologically.
- Finding aids:
- Inventories are available.
- Yerusha Network member:
- Jewish Theological Seminary
