On this date in 1942, the start of Purim,* Nazi forces occupying Minsk massacred approximately 5,000 Jews from the Minsk Ghetto at a site known simply as Yama, “the Pit”.
The site, which hosts memorial events every March 2, was marked with a somber obelisk in the immediate postwar years; unusually for a Stalin-era monument, it is overt about the Jewish character of the victims — for Soviet propaganda often obfuscated this with a technically-correct formulation such as “Russian citizens”. In this case, the 1940s memorial obelisk remarkably had a Yiddish inscription to mirror its Russian one. (The sculpture of a column of faceless people tragically descending the slope into the pit was added in the post-Soviet period.)
All images (cc) Dennis Jarvis.
Minsk’s pre-war Jewish population of more than 50,000 was almost entirely annihilated during World War II.
* It was not the only place in the Reich’s occupation to mark Purim with blood.
On this day..
- 1921: George Bailey, the first Englishman hanged by female jurors
- 1950: Rosli Dhobi, Sarawak patriot
- 1423: William Taylor, Lollard
- 1962: Kelly Moss, restless of spirit
- 1401: William Sawtre, Lollard heretic
- 1871: Ma Hualong, Dungan rebel
- 1886: David Roberts, dutiful son
- 1942: Jakub Lemberg and family
- 2006: Ali Afrawi and Mehdi Nawaseri
- 1974: Salvador Puig Antich and Heinz Ches, the last garroted in Spain
- 1585: William Parry, Vile and Base
- 2005: Han Bok-nam, whose death was illicitly filmed