Maly Trostenets Memorial

The largest Nazi extermination site in the former Soviet Union, where 200,000 people were killed

Maly Trostenets is the largest extermination site on the territory of the former Soviet Union and one of the most significant Holocaust memorial sites in Europe. Located on the southeastern outskirts of Minsk, it was the site of the systematic murder of between 200,000 and 250,000 people between 1942 and 1944 — Jews from Minsk and other Belarusian communities, Jews transported from Germany, Austria, and Czechoslovakia, and Soviet prisoners of war.

A large memorial complex has been developed here in recent years, with sculptures, lists of victims' names, and interpretive installations. The site is sobering and important — Belarus lost a higher proportion of its population in World War II than any other country, and Maly Trostenets represents the darkest dimension of that catastrophe.

The memorial is located about 10 kilometres from the city centre in the Trostenets area. Bus 8 from the city centre runs nearby. Allow at least two hours, and note that the scale of the site and the weight of the history make this a visit that requires some mental preparation.

things to do sight memorial
A story
Maly Trostenets is less well known internationally than Auschwitz or Treblinka, partly because Belarus was long behind the Iron Curtain and partly because the Soviet authorities downplayed the specifically Jewish nature of the killings. More than 60,000 German, Austrian, and Czech Jews were transported to Minsk and murdered at Trostenets in 1942 — one of the largest mass killings of Jews in the Holocaust that occurred outside of Poland.