English

Stone commemorating Austrian Holocaust victims unveiled in Minsk

A memorial stone was unveiled Friday on Minsk’s Sukhaya Street where the Minsk ghetto was located in commemoration of the Austrian Jews who were killed by the Nazis in Belarus.

The stone bears three plaques saying in Belarusian, German and Hebrew that the monument, dedicated by the Austrian Republic, is to honor the memory of the more than 9,600 Jews who were taken by the Nazis to Belarus from Austria and killed in the Minsk ghetto and the Trastsyanets death camp near Minsk between 1941 and 1944.

Attending the ceremony were Johannes Kyrle, secretary general of the Austrian foreign ministry, and Edward (Eddie) Shapira, the Israeli ambassador to Belarus.

Thanks to the efforts of the Austrian government, the foreign ministry of Austria and the Jewish community in that country, Belarus now knows about the Austrian Jews who were carried to Belarus on 10 trains, Leanid Levin, chairman of the Union of Belarusian Jewish Public Associations and Communities, said during the unveiling ceremony. “They hoped for a new life but were immediately sent to a crematorium,” he said.

This is the place where the Minsk ghetto was situated,” Mr. Levin told BelaPAN. “Barracks stood here that housed Jews who had been deported from Europe, including from Austria. That is why the Jewish community of Austria and the foreign ministry of that country decided to commemorate them with this monument. You know this is not the first stone put up here to honor the memory of Jews who were deported from various European cities and slaughtered in Minsk. You won’t find such a place anywhere else. Belarus became a common grave for Jews from Europe.”

There are five more Holocaust monuments on Sukhaya Street. They commemorate the Jews who were deported from Cologne, Bonn, Bremen, Hamburg, Dusseldorf and Berlin and killed in the Trastsyanets death camp.