The Minsk Ghetto This book, written by a former Jewish resistance activist, is extremely interesting as a living testimony of one of the few surviving ghetto residents. Hirsch Smolyar examines the tragic history of the Minsk ghetto in the context of the general Nazi policy towards Jews in Europe, and also tries to shed light on such little-studied aspects as the relations between the ghetto underground and the outside ghetto underground, the relations of Jewish partisans with the Central Headquarters of the partisan movement, and the anti-Semitic campaigns in the first post-war years.