The former Central Yeshiva was an educational center for the Jewish population of Minsk, where every young person was given the opportunity to study Torah. It was built and opened in 1888, and there more than 160 rabbis were educated annually. Thanks to yeshivas, the religious culture of the Jews was preserved on the territory of Belarus.
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Kitaevskaya Synagogue
Kitaevskaya synagogue was built in 1874. It is located in the historical center of Minsk – the Trinity Suburb. This prayer house belonged to the Koidanov Hasidim, but after specific events the building was transferred to the National Historical Museum of Belarus as an exhibition hall.
Image credit: The Together Plan – subject to copyright ©
Yama Memorial Complex
The Yama Memorial Complex is a memorial to all Jews who died in the Minsk ghetto. This is a tribute to the memory of the Jews who were shot during the worst punitive operation of the Nazis: on March 2, 1942, five thousand Jews were killed. It was the first memorial to the victims of the Holocaust in the USSR, on which it was allowed to make an inscription in Yiddish.
Photo credit: Adam Jones, Ph.D. / Global Photo Archive / Flickr.
Zaltzman Synagogue
Zaltsman synagogue was built in 1864, when the population of Minsk consisted of more than 40% Jews. Numerous synagogues in the city were divided according to religious trends or even according to the professional affiliation of the community. This prayer house was built on the territory of the Rakovsky suburb for the poor.
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Maly Trostenets Holocaust Memorial and Massacre Site
The Trostenets extermination camp, created in the autumn of 1941, became the largest on the territory of the Soviet Union. In terms of the number of victims of fascism, Trostenets became the fourth after Auschwitz, Majdanek and Treblinka. Civilians and prisoners of war from all countries of the Soviet Union, as well as citizens of Austria, Germany, Czechoslovakia and Poland were murdered there.
Image credit: The Together Plan – subject to copyright ©
Great Patriotic War Museum
The Belarusian State Museum of the History of the Great Patriotic War is the first museum in the world dedicated to the bloodiest war of the 20th century, and the only one in Belarus, created during the Nazi occupation in 1944. The museum has an area dedicated to partisans, and a small part of the exhibition is dedicated to the Holocaust.
Photo credit: Adam Jones, Ph.D. / Global Photo Archive / Flickr.
Former Great Choral Synagogue
The history of the Minsk Choral Synagogue goes back to 1901. The initiator of the construction was the famous Minsk doctor – Joseph Lunts. The place for it was chosen next to a Jewish four-year school and a train station on Serpukhovskaya Street. Later, in 1922, it was renamed Volodarskiy Street, and in the future the synagogue would become one of the national theaters of the Republic of Belarus.
Image credit: The Together Plan – subject to copyright ©
Minsk Ghetto
250 ghettos were created on the territory of Belarus. In the largest – the Minsk ghetto – more than 100 thousand people died. It was created in August 1941 and became one of the largest in Europe, ranking second in terms of the number of prisoners after the Lvov ghetto. On several streets wrapped with barbed wire, there were at first 80 thousand, and then more than 100 thousand prisoners.
Image credit: Adam Jones, Ph.D. / Global Photo Archive / Flickr
Daumana Street Synagogue
There were many synagogues in the city – their number exceeded the number of churches. In the area of the historical part of Minsk there is a synagogue at 13B Dauman Street, where the so-called Orthodox Christians, Litvaks, followers of the Vilna Gaon – the spiritual center for this territory, hold services.
Image credit: The Together Plan – subject to copyright ©
Cemetery at Jewish Street
On the site of the former Minsk ghetto, there was a place of execution of Jews, where at that time burials were transferred from the cemetery, which was located on the site of the present Dynamo stadium. The cemetery, which existed from 1868 to 1946, was closed at the beginning of the 1970s, and in 1990 it was completely liquidated in order to establish a park.
Image credit: The Together Plan – subject to copyright ©
