She lived in the non-Jewish parts outside of the proper city and worked in an ex-Sowjet party building. When she arrived it still had Trotzki, Lenin and Stalin statues. And even then she couldn’t move freely and had to give the correct passwords when moving from one part of the city to another.

And still life went on in Minsk. Most people there just had to keep on living. Farmers still regularly brought wares. Even theatres and cinemas were still working even when good food was scarce and expensive.

She did mention seeing fires at night in the distance. That was officially attributed to the rebels. That was easy to believe for her since some of her colleagues died from hidden bombs.

The closest she came to the actual crimes was when she got a new bed from the storage where all the furniture from the murdered people were stored. Though back then those were from “defeated Russians”.

With the way she didn’t shy away from describing atrocities she did see (before the Nazis, from family members and of course during the war) I believe that she did not know what was happening in the ghetto. The way she wrote she didn’t even know when she wrote it that these people were killed right in the city. She (and me before you showed me) thought there was a camp near the city. But not a whole part of the city itself.

I’d honestly like to see an editorialised edition of her memoirs published that showed what really happened around her. To put it all into perspective.