On 28 November 1941 a deportation train left Vienna Aspang Station with 999 Jewish men, women and children on board. The train's destination was the White Russian capital Minsk, which had been part of the »Reichkommissariat Ostland« since the invasion by German troups. Before the war broke out Minsk was host to a large Jewish community numbering about 70,000, for whom as soon as June 1941 a quarter of the city of about 2 square kilometres was turned into a ghetto.

The ghetto was controlled by the command of the Security police and the SD in Minsk, a unit of Einsatzgruppe B, which had also a company of Lettish »volunteers« at its disposal. These troops were responsible for continual maltreatment and killings in the ghetto and the labor camps.

Mass shootings began as early as autumn 1941 and at first concerned sick people incapable of work, old people and children. Thus on 7 and 20 November 1941 17,000 Jews were taken from the ghetto and shot in Tuchinka. Because of these murder programs, and also because of illness and hunger the number of people in the ghetto dropped to about 25,000 persons by the beginning of January 1942. The attempt to build up a resistance organization in the ghetto was followed at the end of March 1942 by a »punishment program« with the murder of 5000 people. A further murder program carried out on 18 July 1942 cost another 10,000 lives. By the spring of 1943 only about 2000 were still alive, a number which was again halved by the autumn. At this time the deportations of »working Jews« to occupied areas further west of Minsk was intensified. The final extinction of the ghetto in Minsk was carried out in September 1943.

Of the 999 Austrian Jews deported to Minsk ghetto three are known to have survived.