"Aktion 1005"

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

The exhumation of mass graves in and around the Maly Trascjanec extermination site by the "Sonderkommando 1005", can be recorded as a new phase of the transformation process. The exhumation of the mass graves and the subsequent burning of the remains of the Nazi victims in Maly Trascjanec represented a systematic attempt to cover up the traces of these crimes.

Statement by Adolf Rübe on the gas vans used

During the ongoing deportations of Jewish people from Germany, Austria and Czechoslovakia to Minsk, at least 15,399 people were brought to the SD camp Maly Trascjanec in 1942. Upon their arrival at the death camp, most people were killed in the Blahaǔščyna forest at mass graves that had already been dug, which were later filled in and camouflaged with branches.¹ The murder of Jewish people gained new momentum with the use of gas vans in early June 1942. The perpetrators no longer aimed their own weapons at innocent people to kill them, but instead they crammed 60 to 100 people - depending on the size of the truck - onto the loading area of the so-called "special lorries", in which the exhaust gases of the engine flowed through a hose into the interior of the closed space. The people suffocated in agony.² The use of the mobile gas chambers accelerated the mass murders and the number of corpses grew exponentially. After the Red Army's victory at Stalingrad in early 1943, it became clear to the German occupiers that they had to cover up the traces in order not to leave any incriminating evidence in the event of a war trial.

SS Standartenführer Paul Blobel

SS Standartenfuhrer Paul Blobel was the organizer and leader of the so-called "Aktion 1005". Blobel's task was to open all the mass graves together with a work detachment, exhume the bodies and burn them. After the bodies were burned, the pits had to be filled in again - as if the mass graves had never existed.³

The organisation and setting up of the "Sonderkommando 1005" was handed over to SS-Hauptsturmführer Arthur Harder. Harder procured the necessary materials and machines and completed the preparations on 27 October 1943.⁴

Excerpt from the interrogation with Adolf Rübe

The staff of the Sonderkommando consisted of employees of the BdS (Commander of the Security Police and the Sicherheitsdienst) and the KdS (Commanders of the Security Police) office in Minsk. In addition, about 40 Romanian and Hungarian men were recruited from the "Volksdeutsche" company. The men were informed about the content of their work when they arrived, but they were not told where the bodies really came from. They signed a pledge of secrecy even towards their wives and families.⁵

Otto Goldapp

"At the start of their work in the Sonderkommando, Goldapp explained to the members of the Schutzpolizei in a speech that the corpses concerned were Jews who had been shot during the advance in 1941/42 and now had to be burned because they were not worth 'polluting the German soil'. It was also generally understood in the Kommando that the gravesites were removed in order to cover up the traces of the mass killings before the Soviet troops found them."⁶

To open the graves, 100 Russian prisoners of war were taken from a Minsk labour camp and promised that they would be released once the work was done. The workers opened the graves, lifted the bodies out of the mass graves and piled them on pyres. Trees were felled to build the pyres, creating a cleared area in the otherwise dense forest. The workers carried out the work under strict supervision by members of the SD, who urged them to work quickly. After burning the pyres, the workers sifted through the ashes to look for valuables, such as dental gold, and ground up leftover bones, as instructed by the occupiers. Due to the partisan attacks and in order to be able to murder without leaving any traces, the Šaškoǔka forest, located on the western border of the camp, was from then on used as the main execution site instead of Blahaǔščyna.

Responsible for content: Rukia Soubbotina