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.

“The road of memory”. The photo is taken from the website zdv.by

One of the important parts of the complex is “The road of death”, which was built by the captives themselves. It is noticeable that the poplars which were planted in those terrible times have been still growing lengthways the road. Echelons with people condemned to imminent death took this very road. Interesting to know that, all the people were given fake receipts for relocation. Thus, thousands of people came to Trostinec in total unawareness of their sentence.

Real rail wagons are put up a bit further here, in which the prisoners were brought to the camp. Now the photographs of the people who passed away in the place may be seen in the wagons. Sadly, the names of the deceased here Soviet citizens are mostly stay unknown till the present moment, while Europeans, who were sentenced to shoot in there, were registered officially so, fortunately, their names were not forgotten.

After the opening of the first part of the memorial Alexander Lukashenko addressed to the heads of Austria and Germany with a suggestion to place their own monuments along the central alley in memory of the Nazi’s victims. Austria responded to the suggestion with great enthusiasm and soon the memorial complex was extended by a sculpture called “A massif of names” which looks as split into ten pieces column symbolizing the ten trains which brought Austrians to Trascianiec. The name of each person, who had to buy the train-tickets themselves as far as they were convinced that they just change a place of living, is carved on every fragment of the monument. 

The second part of the memorial complex was opened in June of 2018 in Blahauscyna forest where the presidents of Belarus, Austria and Germany came in memory of prisoners of war. At the time of their visit a new part of “Trostinec” was exposed and this was a concrete tunnel- one more symbol of the trains in which people were brought to certain death and their names are planned to memorialize by hewing them on the concrete walls.

As well as all the places where incidents that shock mind with its barbarity had been happening, the memorial complex “Trostinec” is filled with hard spirit of humans’ suffering and death. However, in order to genuinely grasp the national spirit such places are obligatory to visit. And in spite of the fact that learning so tragic histories is, obviously, emotionally difficult, it is vital for developing not just minds, but souls to not repeat the mistakes of our ancestors.