MINSK GHETTO 3, tormenting Jews in Minsk. In late July 1941, the Germans established a ghetto in the northwestern part of Minsk.

MINSK GHETTO 3, tormenting Jews in Minsk. In late July 1941, the Germans established a ghetto in the northwestern part of Minsk.

MINSK GHETTO 3, tormenting Jews in Minsk. In late July 1941, the Germans established a ghetto in the northwestern part of Minsk. 

About 80,000 people, including Jews from nearby towns, were crowded into the Minsk ghetto. Between November 1941 and October 1942, the German government deported nearly 24,000 Jews from Germany, Austria, and the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia to Minsk. 

SS and police authorities shot or gassed—in special gas vans—most of them upon arrival in Maly Trostinets, a small village about eight miles to the east. The German occupation authorities housed the others in a separate section of the ghetto in Minsk, segregated from local Belorussian Jews.

 Little contact was permitted between residents of the two ghettos. The German authorities forced Jews to work on labor projects in factories inside the two ghettos, as well as outside the ghettos, especially in the Shiroka Street labor camp and the opera house (where the occupation authorities supervised the sorting and storage of confiscated Jewish private property).