Minsk Ghetto, Minsk — Area Guide & Where to Stay

What are the main landmarks in Minsk Ghetto?

The Yama anchors the district. This sunken memorial marks the pit where the ghetto's dead were killed, and a line of bronze figures descends the slope toward the base of the hollow. The Museum of Jewish History and Culture in Belarus keeps the record of the quarter and its people.

Red brick rises nearby. The Church of Saints Simon and Helena stands at the edge of the old ghetto ground, and beyond it the Belarusian National Arts Museum draws a different crowd into the neighbouring streets.

What is the history of Minsk Ghetto?

The Minsk Ghetto was established in 1941. German occupiers sealed off this quarter of Minsk and confined the city's Jewish population within its streets, and the years that followed brought mass killing across the district and beyond. The ghetto did not survive the war.

Its story sits within the wider wartime record that the Belarusian Great Patriotic War Museum holds for the city, while the district's own memory is kept at the Yama pit where the murdered lie and at the Museum of Jewish History and Culture in Belarus. The old walls are gone. The ground is kept.

Where is Minsk Ghetto?

The Minsk Ghetto sits in the older core of Minsk, its streets gathered around the Yama pit near the Church of Saints Simon and Helena.