Formation of Underground Organizations and Survival in the Ghetto

In order to increase the chances of survival among the ghetto inmates, the first Jewish underground groups were formed after the attacks and raids of August 1941. In the course of October, they strengthened their connections with each other and joined together to form a unified underground organisation. This consisted of 12x 10 persons, the majority of whom were former members of the Communist Party. They received support, for example, from medical personnel, but also from members of the two Judenrats (Jewish councils). In the underground they operated illegal radio stations, from which they passed on various messages and slogans of perseverance to the population.

At the end of 1941, attempts were made to establish connections with the non-Jewish Soviet underground and the surrounding partisan camps. However, establishing contact was relatively problematic, as anti-Semitism was also widespread among the Soviet partisans. Jews were regarded by them as spies, traitors or cowards, and the formations were unwilling to help on a large scale. Despite the circumstances, the ghetto underground managed to smuggle several thousand Jews through to Soviet partisan units in 1942 and 1943, thus saving them from certain death.

The underground organisations not only helped people escape; they also provided food, clothing and medicine for the imprisoned ghetto inmates. The construction of so-called "malinas" (hiding places) was also part of their task. These were built behind false walls, in attics or under floors. In case of raids and attacks by the occupying forces, these hiding places were meant to offer the inmates a safe shelter to protect them from death.

Even though the underground movement of the ghetto contributed to the procurement of food, they were far from being able to cover all the people's needs on their own. Therefore, the Jews had to use the few possibilities at the risk of their lives to get the bare necessities for themselves and their family members, since the food supply in the ghetto was by no means sufficient.

One option was to leave the ghetto without permission. Since, with the exception of the "special ghettos", there were no secure walls or barbed wire fences for a long time, it was initially relatively "easy" to leave the ghetto. If you were caught, you were shot immediately. If the Jews managed to cross the fence unnoticed, they begged for food from the surrounding farmers or from non-Jewish friends. In some cases, Jews also exchanged valuables they still owned, such as watches or jewellery, for food.

However, it was almost impossible for the inmates of the two "special ghettos" to leave their area. They had to rely on bartering with the resident population. This was considered a difficult undertaking, however, because on the one hand the language was a major obstacle, and on the other hand the inmates were dependent on the goodwill of the barter partner. Often the "Reich Jews" received only a fraction of the actual value of their bartered goods. This is also shown in a report by the Düsseldorf survivor Günther Katzstein:

"Bartering was a very bad deal for us because the people on the other side held all the trump cards. This meant they could squeeze us as much as they wanted."[1]

Few managed to escape from the ghetto, at most with the help of the underground organisations mentioned above. However, there are also some reports of individual escapes, some of them by children and young people. With the help of forged papers from their Belarusian friends, they managed to escape. After a successful escape, the Jews were able to find accommodation with friends, they worked on farms in the surrounding area or found shelter in a partisan camp.

To this day, the history of the origins of the Maly Tracjanec extermination camp is unclear. The estate is said to have functioned as a place of imprisonment and execution as early as 1941. The first mass murders for which there is clear evidence go back to 11 May 1942.

The Commander of the Security Police (KdS) Eduard Strauch was commissioned by Reinhard Heydrich to transport Jews out of the German Reich. His task was to coordinate and plan the extermination of the arriving Jews. Easy accessibility by trains and remoteness of the site were important for the destination of the transports. As a result, Eduard Strauch took over the former collective farm Maly Trascjanec as an estate for self-management with the adjacent Blahauščyna forest in order to carry out the killings there as unnoticed as possible.

Source:

[1] Rentrop, Petra: Tatorte der “Endlösung”. Das Ghetto Minsk und die Vernichtungsstätte Maly Trostinez. Berlin: Metropol. 2011. p. 181.