Precise demographic data on the
Jewish population of
Generalbezirk Weißruthenien in August 1941 is not available, but it is likely there were over 300,000 Jews. The area was in the heart of the
Pale of Settlement, and ten of thousands of Jewish refugees had arrived from central and western Poland in the fall of 1939, but many of them were deported to the Soviet interior before June 1941. A further unknown figure is the number of Jews who were evacuated or fled in time or were recruited into the
Red Army. As an example, of the 70,998 Jews registered in Minsk in 1939, it is estimated that about 55,000 remained when the Germans invaded on 28 June 1941. By 1944, it is estimated that roughly 800,000
Byelorussian Jews, or about 90% of the Jewish population of Byelorussia, were murdered. Following the German invasion, the Nazi death squads of
Einsatzgruppe B immediately began the systematic murder of Jews. Following a massive wave of killings between mid-May and the end of July 1942, Kube reported that in the 10 weeks, 55,000 Jews had been liquidated. Only in the districts of Baranowitsche and Hansewitschi were such large operations still to be conducted, especially in Baranowitsche, where about 10,000 Jews remained. The escape of up to 20,000 Jews from the
Jewish ghettos to the
Soviet partisans forced the Germans to accelerate the liquidations of ghettos. By the spring of 1943, ghettos remained only in a few locations, including Minsk,
Lida,
Nowogródek, and Głębokie. In October 1943, the
Minsk ghetto, the largest ghetto in the Nazi-occupied Soviet Union, was the last in
Generalbezirk Weißruthenien to be liquidated, and nearly all of its nearly 100,000 detainees perished. == Dissolution ==