Šaškoǔka

Trigger warning: This exhibition page deals explicitly with the murder of people and could be disturbing to visitors.

The construction of the provisional crematorium and the ongoing systematic mass executions in the Šaškoǔka forest represent another stage in the transformation process of Maly Trascjanec. The transformation of the forest into an execution site reveals the brutality and cold-bloodedness of the German occupiers.

In the Šaškoǔka forest, only 500 metres from the camp, a cremation pit was built to directly burn the shot people from the end of October 1943. The German occupiers knew that they had to cover up the traces of their crimes before the Red Army reached Minsk.¹

"A pit of 8x8 m and 3 m deep was dug out and a ramp was built on one of the four walls so that the lorries with the victims could drive backwards into the pit. Since the Red Army was advancing ever closer to Minsk, from the end of October 1943 they no longer buried the dead but burned them immediately. A grate made of railway tracks was built above the ground and the walls of the pit were covered with metal plates: The whole thing was a huge oven. To block the view, a 3 m high wooden fence with barbed wire was erected around the area and signs were put up: 'Entry strictly forbidden! Violators will be shot!'"²

SS-Hauptscharführer Rieder took charge of the execution and cremation pit. "Volksdeutsche" SS members supported him as supervisors.³ 30 forced labourers were brought in to build the oven. They were the first to be burned in that oven after the work was completed.⁴ They were promised that they would be released when the work was finished; they were served a last warm meal and given a supposedly friendly farewell. To keep up the staging, they had to sign a confidentiality agreement about the subject of their work. However, the workers were taken away in a gas van and suffocated on its loading platform.⁵

From March 1944, the victims were forced to lie down in the pit, which was filled with inflammable material. They were shot, their corpses doused with flammable liquid and set on fire with incendiary bombs.⁵ The burning of the corpses in the temporary crematorium and thus the covering of evidence continued until the beginning of April 1944.⁶

Responsible for content: Rukia Soubbotina

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_{¹ Cf. Kohl, Das Vernichtungslager Trostenez, p. 18.}

_{²Kohl, Trostenez, p. 248.}

_{³Cf. Angrick, Aktion 1005, p. 584.}

_{⁴ Cf. IBB Dortmund und IBB Minsk, Vernichtungsort Trostenez in der europäischen Erinnerung, p. 15.}

_{⁵ Cf. Hoffmann, "Das kann man nicht erzählen", p. 185f.}

_{⁶ Ibid.}