Closure: A visit to Minsk

It took more than 50 years before it became known what happened to the poor people who were deported from Cologne on 20 July 1942. This was the only transport – some 1,100 people – that went to Minsk. A book was published by Dieter Corbach (6:00 Uhr ab Messe Köln- Deutz: Deportationen 1938-1945 (Scriba, 1999)) following the discovery of an archive with all the gruesome details of that time. Groups of Jewish people were instructed to report at the local railway station with enough food and provisions for 24 hours to be sent to the east to work. They were convinced this was the fact. They had to pay 50 marks per person for the rail fare. My mother and father were on this transport with many of my friends and acquaintances, as were my old headmaster and his family who had been instrumental in saving my life by getting me and some 130 other Jawne pupils to England on the Kindertransport. For me, this visit to Minsk was one I had to make. I had made a number of attempts to join a party but hadn’t been successful. A friend in Germany finally enabled me to join a tour. It’s not easy to enter Belarus and the area of Maly Trostinec just outside Minsk. We now know what happened when the deportation took place. The journey took some three days. The train was diverted to Maly Trostinec, where all the passengers dismounted, were taken by lorry to a prepared site and murdered. At some time during their journey they were moved from the passenger train to cattle trucks. One cannot imagine what went through their minds at that time. From Gatwick on Friday to Cologne, where Wolfgang Freier collected me to take me to his home in Reifferscheid in the Eifel, a pretty village of 300 people. Wolfgang and his wife Gisela couldn’t do enough for me. On Saturday we very busy. We looked at the cemetery in Vernich, where a number of the original Marx family are buried. Karolina Marx, whom we met in 1992 and was almost 100 when she died, was buried next to her parents 15 years ago. Then we went to Cologne, where they took me to my old home in Wittekindstrasse. We managed to visit my old home. A lad of 15 or 16 allowed us to come into the apartment. It’s not as I remember it. It was rebuilt and a family of six now live there. They each have their own room with all their things and it’s full of all their stuff – quite a mess. It was sad: not the lovely home we had. We also visited our previous home, still in the same place where we had lived when I was about five years old. After that we dropped by the Roonstrasse Synagogue. Too late to have lunch. Every Shabbat they have a communal lunch. There must have been 50 or 60 people there. The rabbi asked us to join them. There are around 5,000 Jewish people living there now, mostly from Eastern Europe. To think I was Bar Mitzvah there in 1938! We then drove to a place called Vogelsang in the Eifel. Vogelsang was built by the Nazis in 1936 to educate an elite who would become a civilian force to govern all the captured territory in the east. There was accommodation for 1,000 men. It was intended to destroy it after the war but it was so solidly built that it is now going to be used as an educational establishment. On Sunday morning we drove to Frankfurt for Belarus and arrived in Minsk in the evening. This morning, Monday, an early start. We were collected by our guide, a nice young woman who showed us many of the memorials and places of remembrance to the Holocaust victims. Minsk has almost 200,000 inhabitants and is a large modern city with a lot of building works. Then we visited the Holocaust Research Centre. On one wall were all the names of the transport from Cologne in July 1942. I saw the names of my mother and father and all the other names of the people who had been on that transport from Cologne in 1942.We had a long interview with the director of the Centre, who is creating an archive of all that took place at Maly Trostinec. After lunch we had a guided tour of the town. It was a long day. Tomorrow we will be taken to the actual site of Maly Trostinec. We were told there are about 15,000 Jewish people currently living in Minsk, possibly more as they are not required to mention their religion in the census now. Tuesday up early, first stop the Holocaust History Society. They want to know all about me and the family history. They are trying to create a record of all who were transported to Maly Trostinec. The most complete record is the one I came here for. The record in our book is the most complete. They have the names of all the people who came in July 1942. They have all the names on the wall of their centre similar to the ones in Prague. After the interview, we went on to Maly Trostinec, a few miles from Minsk. We saw the various sites of the camp. When my parents arrived they were taken from the then existing goods station by lorry to the area in the woods, walked to the pits and, as far as we know, were murdered together with the 1,100 other women, men and children. As the weather was fine, the walk wasn’t bad. The car we were in got quite close to the site; in wet weather it would very difficult. The authorities have left the approach to the site in a very bad condition as if to make it difficult to get there. On the way are a number of memorials to the people taken there. It is estimated that 250,000 people lost their lives in this place alone. In the woods, which were planted after the war, previous visitors, mostly from Vienna, had placed plaques on the trees in memory of their dear ones. The place shows no evidence of what happened there in 1942-43. It was destroyed by the Germans at the end of 1943 before the Russians came. I have taken a number of photos. I finally managed to say Kaddish for them. It was necessary. There are quite a number of memorials in and around the town. On the way back, we visited Katyn, another memorial to the villages destroyed by the Germans in 1941-43. These were burned to the ground and completely destroyed, including most of the inhabitants. Before the war Minsk had about 150,000 inhabitants, almost half of them Jewish. Today it has almost 2 million, with many good roads and modern cars. We were told the unemployment rate is very low. Tomorrow, before we leave, we will visit the Jewish Museum. We were told Minsk has three synagogues that are functioning. The Jewish Museum had a history of the community in pictures and some artefacts. The Jewish lady who showed us the exhibits spoke only Russian – not a word of Yiddish. We met one old gentleman who had been with the partisans. He showed us the book he had written, again only Russian. We also met at the Holocaust Research Centre the director, the historian Dr Kusma Kosak. As I mentioned above, they have very little detailed information on those deported by the Germans to Minsk. This was a journey I had wanted to make for many years. At last I was able to say Kaddish close to the place where my mother and father and some 1,100 poor people lost their lives in July 1942. Kurt Marx