- This article is about the ghetto in Minsk. For a ghetto in
Mińsk Mazowiecki during the German Nazi occupation of Poland,
see Mińsk Ghetto. The Minsk Ghetto was created soon after the
German invasion of the Soviet Union. It was one of the largest
in Eastern Europe, and the largest in the German-occupied
territory of the Soviet Union. It housed close to 100,000 Jews,
most of whom perished in The Holocaust. The ghetto was created
soon after the German invasion of the Soviet Union and capture
of the city of Minsk, capital of the Belorussian SSR, on 28 June
1941. On the fifth day after the occupation, 2,000 Jewish
intelligentsia were massacred by the Germans; from then on,
murders of Jews became a common occurrence. About 20,000 Jews
were murdered within the first few months of the German
occupation, mostly by the Einsatzgruppen squads. On 17 July 1941
the German occupational authority, the Reichskommissariat
Ostland, was created. On the 20th, the Minsk Ghetto was
established. A Jewish Council (Judenrat) was est