Maly Trostinec deathcamp, full information about Maly Trostinec

Arriving at a foreign country, it is tempting to learn about the history of its society and land and as is well known, the past of Belarus is full of interesting, but often tragic events. The occupation of Belarus by fascists is the most difficult one that fell to the destiny of Belarusians over the past 100 years. In the period, a big number of concentration camps and ghetto were built on the current territory of the country, where innocent but needless for fascists people were killed. One of such places became a village Maly Trostinec, including Blahauscyna forest and Shashkovka tract. On these lands a Nazi’s concentration camp was built. It locates just in 10 kilometers from Minsk, where recently the memorial which is dedicated to all the deceased in the concentration camp “Trostinec” was put up. Or how people call the place more precisely, the camp of death.  Such a name is not haphazard, during the two years of existing more than two hundred thousand of soviet citizens and the deported Hebrews from Austria, Poland and Germany were destroyed. Exactly this why a German journalist Paul Cole called the camp as “Belarusian Auschwitz ” and officially it ranks fourth in terms of the number of killed people among all the death camps built during the Second World War. 

The memorial “Trascienec”. The photo is taken from the website minsktourism.by

The memorial complex “Trascianiec” had been waiting for its opening for almost seventy years. Earlier, in the times of USSR, the obelisk with the eternal flame was placed near the camp itself, a small monument was mounted in Shashkovka tract, where furnaces for burning people were situated before. One more monument was erected  in Blahauscyna Forest, where the relatives of the deceased bring photos of their ancestors  up to now, and a large number of lists and tapes with the names of guiltlessly killed on them are hung on trees in the forest, because at this very place the largest executions were happening.

Obviously, such a significant for people place should have been emphasized respectfully so the first part of the memorial complex was opened in the 22^nd of June in 2015 the center of which became a bronze sculpture “The gates of memory”. The monument reflects exhausted bodies of twenty seven people, whose faces are distorted with pure agony while their bodies are embraced with barbed wire.

To the sculpture leads “The road of memory”. Granite monuments with historical facts about the consequences of Nazi occupation on them set up along the road. The alley is paved with grey and black tile where the black one symbolizes the footprints of the people who go to execution.