Slutsk massacre
# Slutsk massacre

Part of a series on :

The Holocaust :

Jews on selection ramp at Auschwitz, May 1944 :

Responsibility

Nazi Germany

People

Major perpetrators

Adolf Hitler

Heinrich Himmler

Heinrich Müller

Reinhard Heydrich

Adolf Eichmann

Odilo Globocnik

Theodor Eicke

Richard Glücks

Ernst Kaltenbrunner

Rudolf Höss

Christian Wirth

Joseph Goebbels

Ion Antonescu

László Ferenczy

Philippe Pétain

Organizations

Nazi Party

Gestapo

Schutzstaffel (SS)

Totenkopfverbände (SS-TV)

Einsatzgruppen

Sturmabteilung (SA)

Verfügungstruppe (SS-VT)

Wehrmacht

Trawniki men

Collaborators during World War II

Nazi ideologues :

Early policies

Racial policy

Nazi eugenics

Nuremberg Laws

Haavara Agreement

Madagascar Plan

Forced euthanasia :

Victims

Jews

Romani people (Gypsies)

Poles

Soviet POWs

Slavs in Eastern Europe

Homosexuals

People with disabilities :

Ghettos

Białystok

Budapest

Kaunas

Kraków

Łódź

Lublin

Lwów

Minsk

Riga

Warsaw

Vilnius

Jewish ghettos in German-occupied Poland

List of selected ghettos :

Camps

Nazi extermination camps

Auschwitz II-Birkenau

Bełżec

Chełmno

Jasenovac

Majdanek

Sajmište

Sobibor

Treblinka

Nazi concentration camps

Auschwitz I

Bergen-Belsen

Bogdanovka

Buchenwald

Dachau

Dora

Gonars (Italy)

Gross-Rosen

Herzogenbusch

Janowska

Kaiserwald

Mauthausen-Gusen

Neuengamme

Rab

Ravensbrück

Sachsenhausen

Salaspils

Stutthof

Transnistria (Romania)

Theresienstadt

Uckermark

Warsaw

Transit and collection camps

Belgium

Breendonk

Mechelen

France

Gurs

Drancy

Italy

Bolzano

Netherlands

Amersfoort

Westerbork

Slovakia

Sereď

Divisions

SS-Totenkopfverbände

Concentration Camps Inspectorate

Politische Abteilung

Sanitätswesen

Extermination methods

Gas van

Gas chamber

Extermination through labour

Einsatzgruppen

Human medical experimentation :

Atrocities

Pogroms

Kristallnacht

Bucharest

Dorohoi

Iaşi

Izieu

Szczuczyn

Jedwabne

Plungė

Kaunas

Lviv (Lvov)

Marseille

Tykocin

Vel' d'Hiv

Wąsosz

Einsatzgruppen

Babi Yar

Bydgoszcz

Częstochowa

Kamianets-Podilskyi

Ninth Fort

Odessa

Piaśnica

Ponary

Rumbula

Erntefest

"Final Solution"

Wannsee Conference

Mogilev Conference

Operation "Reinhard"

Holocaust trains

Extermination camps

End of World War II

Wola massacre

Death marches :

Resistance

Auschwitz Protocols

Vrba–Wetzler report

Czesław Mordowicz

Jerzy Tabeau

Rudolf Vrba

Alfréd Wetzler

Bricha

Jewish partisans

Sonderkommando photographs

Witold Pilecki

Resistance movement in Auschwitz

Związek Organizacji Wojskowej

Witold's Report

Ghetto uprisings

Warsaw

Białystok

Łachwa

Częstochowa :

International responseJoint Declaration by Members of the United Nations

Auschwitz bombing debate

MS St. Louis

Nuremberg trials

Denazification :

Aftermath

Bricha

Displaced persons

Survivors

Central Committee of the Liberated Jews

Reparations Agreement between Israel and the Federal Republic of Germany :

Lists

Holocaust survivors

Deportations of French Jews to death camps

Survivors of Sobibor

Timeline of Treblinka extermination camp

Victims of Nazism

Rescuers of Jews

Memorials and museums :

Resources

Bibliography

List of books about Nazi Germany

The Destruction of the European Jews

Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos

Functionalism versus intentionalism :

Remembrance

Days of remembrance

Memorials and museums

Righteous Among the Nations :

vte :

The Slutsk affair refers to the massacre of thousands of Jews and others that occurred in Slutsk, Byelorussia in the Soviet Union, in October 1941, near the city of Minsk while under German occupation during World War II. The perpetrators were a combination of Gestapo special forces and Lithuanian allies of the Third Reich. Nearly 4,000 Jews were murdered over a two-day period along with thousands of non-Jews.

The city of Slutsk had a large concentration of Jews as well as large numbers of Belarusians. Although the German government had previously signed a non-aggression pact (the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact) with the Soviet Union, the Nazis, emboldened by success in western Europe, planned and executed Operation Barbarossa, and invaded their former ally on June 22, 1941. Along the way, the Nazis picked up a number of allies in satellite nations.

On October 27, 1941, four companies of military police stationed in Kaunas entered the city with the assignment of liquidating the city's Jewish population within two days. This "special security operation" was led by the Einsatzgruppen (death squads) of the SS, and acted without authorization from the local German civil administration and Security SS authorities that had marshaled various specialized workers from the population.

The Jews were surrounded, removed from their houses and killed en masse, in such a frenzy that not just Jews, but also other people in the area were massacred. The German civil administration in Byelorussian was outraged, after having made great efforts to gain the favor of the local population in accordance with the instructions of the Führer.

Commissioner General of White Ruthenia Wilhelm Kube wrote in protest to his superior and to Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler:

   The town was a picture of horror during the action. With indescribable brutality on the part of both the German police officers and particularly the Lithuanian partisans, the Jewish people, but also among them Belarusians, were taken out of their dwellings and herded together. Everywhere in the town shots were to be heard and in different streets the corpses of shot Jews accumulated. The Belarusians were in greatest distress to free themselves from the encirclement.

The letter concluded:

   I am submitting this report in duplicate so that one copy may be forwarded to the Reich Minister. Peace and order cannot be maintained in White Ruthenia with methods of that sort. To bury seriously wounded people alive who worked their way out of their graves again is such a base and filthy act that the incidents as such should be reported to the Fuehrer and Reichsmarshal.

Adolf Hitler, by all accounts, was never notified of the incident and thereafter mistakenly believed that Nazi partisans among the Belarusian population would support the Germans in the continuing invasion.

