[2] The ghetto was created on 28 June 1941, soon after the German invasion of the Soviet Union and capture of the city of Minsk, capital of the Byelorussian SSR.
[2] The total population of the ghetto was about 80,000 (over 100,000 according to some sources), of whom about 50,000 were pre-war inhabitants, and the remainder (30,000 or more) were refugees and Jews forcibly resettled by the Germans from nearby settlements.
[3] Ghetto inhabitants lived in extremely poor conditions, with insufficient stocks of food and medical supplies.
[3] Approximately fifty German and Austrian Jews from the Sonderghetto survived the war, mostly young men who were deported from the ghetto to Poland.
[2] The Minsk Ghetto is notable for its large scale resistance organization, which cooperated closely with Soviet partisans.
[1][2][3] Barbara Epstein estimates that 30,000 Jews escaped the Minsk Ghetto to join the partisans, with half of them accounted for.