Metadata: Minsk Regional Commission to Investigate and Ascertain the Crimes of the German-Fascist Invaders and Assess the Damages Caused by Them
Collection
- Country:
- Belarus
- Holding institution:
- State Archives of Minsk Region
- Holding institution (official language):
- Государственный архив Минской област
- Postal address:
- Address: ul. Kozlova, 26, Minsk, 220037, Belarus
- Phone number:
- +375 (17) 358 55 64
- Web address:
- www.gamn.by
- Email:
- minoblarhiv@gmail.com
- Reference number:
- F. 7021
- Title:
- Minsk Regional Commission to Investigate and Ascertain the Crimes of the German-Fascist Invaders and Assess the Damages Caused by Them
- Title (official language):
- КОМИССИЯ ПО РАССЛЕДОВАНИЮ И УСТАНОВЛЕНИЮ ЗЛОДЕЯНИЙ НЕМЕЦКО-ФАШИСТСКИХ ЗАХВАТЧИКОВ И УЧЕТУ ПРИЧИНЕННОГО ИМИ УЩЕРБА ПО МИНСКОЙ ОБЛАСТИ
- Creator/accumulator:
- Minsk Regional Commission to Investigate and Ascertain the Crimes of the German-Fascist Invaders and Assess the Damages Caused by Them
- Date(s):
- 1944/1946
- Language:
- Russian
- Extent:
- 2,500 storage units (microfilm; approx. 92,500 frames)
- Type of material:
- Textual material
- Microfilm reels
- Scope and content:
-
The fond contains materials on crimes committed by the Nazi occupiers and their local collaborators in the Minsk region in 1941-44, including a list of citizens who were shot, hanged, and tortured in the Minsk, Borisov, Dzerzhinsk, Diatlovo, Logoisk, Pleshchenitsy, Pukhovichi, Rudensk/Rudziensk, Smolevichi, Uzda, Cherven’, and Kholopenichi districts of the Minsk region; information on locations of mass shootings and burials of civilians and POWs; aggregated data on victims; inspection documentation; minutes of witness interrogations; etc.
Materials related to the history of the Holocaust include documents pertaining to the investigation of the mass burial sites at Blagovshchina, where 150,000 people were killed – most of the victims were Jews transported to this location from the Minsk ghetto and other cities of Belorussia, as well as from Czechoslovakia, Austria, Germany, and Poland. There is also information about the mass shootings of Jews near the hamlet of Petrashkevichi, at Urech’e and Drozdy, and elsewhere (1944).
The fond also contains statistics on the destruction of the Jewish population of the Minsk region, arranged by district (1944-45).
Also housed in the fond is testimony on the “liquidations” carried out by the invaders in the Minsk ghetto from November 1941 to July 1942, during which over 100,000 Jews were killed (1944-45).
- Administrative/biographical history:
-
The Extraordinary State Commission to Investigate and Ascertain the Crimes of the German-Fascist Invaders and their Accomplices and the Damages Caused by Them to Citizens, Collective Farms, Public Organizations, and State Enterprises and Institutions of the USSR was established by decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR on 2 November 1942. It was tasked with collecting and verifying documentary data and preparing materials on crimes committed by the Nazi occupiers and the damages caused to Soviet citizens, collective farms, and the state in the course of the occupation of part of Soviet territory by forces of Nazi Germany and its allies. Toward this end, the Extraordinary State Commission kept records of the violence and killings perpetrated by German forces and their accomplices against civilians, and analyzed the damages caused by the invasion and subsequent actions of the Nazis in Soviet territory. Extraordinary State Commission reports were used as documentary evidence at the Nuremberg trials.
On 16 March 1943, the Council of People’s Commissars of the USSR directed that, to support the operations of the union-level Extraordinary State Commission, a Belorussian republic-level commission be established to assist its work in investigating and ascertaining the crimes committed by the Nazi occupiers and the damages they caused in the Belorussian SSR. This republic-level commission was organized in Minsk; additionally, Bobruisk, Brest, Baranovichi, Vitebsk, Gomel’, Grodno, Minsk, Mogilev, Molodechno, Pinsk, Polesskaia, and Polotsk Regional Commissions were also established. In July 1944, the Minsk Regional Commission to Assist the Extraordinary State Commission conducted an investigation of Nazi atrocities committed at Blagovshchina (near the village of Bolshoi Trostinets), where prisoners of the Minsk ghetto were massacred. The Minsk Regional Commission ceased operations in 1945. The Extraordinary State Commission of the USSR was liquidated by order of the USSR Council of Ministers on 9 June 1951; per the same order, the documentary materials collected by the Extraordinary State Commission and its auxiliary commissions were transferred to state archives of the USSR.
- Access points: locations:
- Austria
- Borisov
- Cherven’
- Diatlovo
- Drozdy
- Dzerzhinsk
- Germany
- Kholopenichi
- Logoisk
- Minsk
- Pleshchenitsy
- Poland
- Pukhovichi
- Rudzensk
- Smolevichi
- Urech’e
- Uzda
- Yerusha Network member:
- Jewish Theological Seminary
