Holocaust Education & Archive Research Team

We are trying to steer our battered ship in furious seas, when waves of decrees and decisions threaten to drown it every day. Through my influence I succeeded, at times, in easing the verdict and in scattering some of the dark clouds that hung over our heads.

German parachutists who had been dropped east of the city intercepted thousands of Jews who were trying to flee and forced them to return. When the civil administration was set up Minsk became the headquarters of the Generalkommissar for Belorussian Wilhelm Kube.

During the past two decades, the city has stepped up efforts to face up to the history of Jews in Vienna, including both positive and negative aspects, and to reexamine Vienna’s Jewish heritage. In addition to the Jewish institutions that have sprung up over the last few years – thanks to the support of the City of Vienna – a number of museums and memorials evoke the city’s Jewish heritage.

The camp was laid out in an irregular rectangle 400m by 600m, and was surrounded by a barbed wire fence intertwined with tree branches to block any view into the camp from the outside. A second outer fence consisting of barbed wire and anti-tank obstacles called `Spanish Horses’, was also constructed at a later stage. Watchtowers 8m high were placed at each of the four corners of the camp, and additional towers were built in the extermination area….