Generalkommissariat
MinskA Gallery of
Unpublished Original Photographs of occupied White
Russia, 1941-3
THESE
images are from 171 original 35mm negatives
taken by or for Joachim Reuscher, a personal
friend and an officer on the staff of the
Generalkommissariat Minsk, the civil governor of White
Russia (now: Belarus) 1941-1943. 
On
the original box is written: "Minsker Filme,
1942/1943. Aufgenommen von Reuscher, durch
Bundesarchiv Koblenz bearbeitet, zurueck erhalten Nov.
1958." In fact the negatives also show scenes in
1941.
The
photos show the Generalkommissar Wilhelm Kube
(far right, with SS Brigadeführer Karl Zenner*)
and his staff and friends, conferring with visiting
officers, and touring cities including Minsk, Riga,
and Marienburg. The images include the German school,
war-damaged buildings, an unidentified pile of Jewish
luggage, hanged partisans (including some well-known
photos), and family and private outings.
[
Enter
gallery
]Kube
was appointed by Hitler in the summer of 1941, and
assassinated by a female household staff member known
as Galina on September 21/22, 1943, as he
slept. Although involved in some atrocities, history
considers Kube generally to have been one of the more
humane German governors, even an anti-Nazi, and there
were demonstrations of sympathy during his state
funeral.
To
complete the usefulness of this collection of
negatives (of which 62 are selected here), we invite
our readers to identify by name the people, officers,
units, uniforms, women, girlfriends, locations,
events, make of automobile, and perhaps even cities,
buildings, streets, and dates. Tell us:
We
have made high resolution (10MB, sometimes more) scans
of all these photographs. They are often grainy
(Perutz film), which limits detail definition. For
further information: [email protected]
First posted: Monday, August 29, 2005
All photographs are
copyright, and permission must be sought from us
before any use whatsoever is made of them
*
Carl Zenner (1899-1969), Polizeipräsident
in Aachen 1935-41, then SS- und Polizeiführer
(SSPF) in Minsk, Weißruthenien. In July 1942 he
left Minsk and became chief of Amt B II of the
SS-Hauptamt until the end of war.
Our
insignia expert Jeff
Clark
comments: Wilhelm Kube is still wearing the
early-pattern Gauleiter tabs. It is strange that he
held that a high rank in the Reichsministerium
für die besetzten Ostgebiete but did not wear the
new Gauleiter tabs and an old-style swastika armband
to boot; the new rank insignia had been issued in 1940
by the Reichsorganisations- Leiter (Dr Ley) and it
seems many people ignored the change over.
Uniform
expert Bill
D
of Philadelphia comments: The most prevalent uniform
is an unadorned four-pocket tunic, lacking shoulder
straps or collar tabs, which is the uniform of
Rosenberg's Ostministerium officials. By regulation
there were collar tabs and shoulder insignia for rank
purposes, but most of the officials shown wear no
badges of a specific rank. By regulations, a large
curved-wing eagle was worn on the left sleeve but,
this also appears in only a few of the photographs and
several officials lack even that adornment; all seem
to wear the appropriate visor cap for the Ministry.
Note that in one image [No.
39]
an official has removed the rather massive eagle from
his sleeve and had it sewn to his right breast, in the
style of the German military, which it gives his tunic
a rather Chaplinesque "Great Dictator" look
The
son of Wilhelm Kube informs us, Sept 14, 2005: "Meine
Mutter ist auf Fotos nr.144, 63 und 79. Die Fotos
nr.39 und 42, sind von einer Ausgrabung alter
Gräber aus der Eiszeit, wo mein Vater ein Skelett
und sonstige Sachen ausgegraben hatte. Laut meiner
Mutter hatte er die Einwohner wegen dieser Hügel
gefragt, was diese wären, sie sagten es
wären Gräber aus der Napoleonzeit, aber
Vater wußte genau das Napoleon seine toten
Soldaten nicht begraben konnte auf seinen
Rückzug, deswegen hat er mehrmals dort
ausgegraben, sämtliche gefundene Sachen schickte
er damals ins Museum nach Heidelberg, dessen Direktor
extra nach Minsk gefahren war."
Thursday,
January 10, 2008: We are indebted to Mikola
Volkau
of Belarus for identifying several of the backgrounds
and buildings and supplying modern photographs of
these locations to us for comparison.
---Letter
from reader Cass about one of the images, the
execution of three partsians including
Masha |
Various
web sites identify Masha as a teenage Jewish
nurse
For
an energetic though loosely argued defence of the
proposition that the Unidentified
Young Female about to be
executed
is the (Jewish) teenager Masha Bruskina, citing
several eye-witnesses who claimed to have known her,
see the paper by Nechama Tec and Daniel Weiss, both
also Jewish, in Holocaust and Genocide Studies,
VIII, No.3, winter 1997, pages 366-377.
