The former forested area on the northeastern outskirts of Minsk — Kamarowka Forest, or Vankovich Forest (named after its owners) — was mentioned in the 1919 report of the Commission for the Investigation of Crimes of Terror by the 'Extraordinary Commission' (Cheka). The commission found graves of victims of Bolshevik repression here. In one archival photograph, three commission members are shown in front of the discovered corpses. At that time it was a sparsely populated area with kitchen gardens, ravines, and planted woodlands; today it is a densely built-up part of the city. Researchers believe that the grave may have been located in the area of present-day 69 Kuibyshev Street and School No. 187.
Belarusian playwright Frantsishak Alyakhnovich recalled the shootings at Kamarowka at the end of the 1920s in his book "In the Clutches of the GPU." He learned about the place from fellow prisoners while serving time in a Minsk jail in 1927.
“What is this: Kamarowka? — A forest. In the Kamarowka forest they shoot people. Don't you know? I didn't know anything. I've only just learned... On Sundays the courier usually returned from Moscow with the GPU collegium's sentences, and on Mondays the executions began.”
Extrajudicial killings at Kamarowka may have continued later. At least the Chekists themselves used the name to frighten their victims. For example, in a statement addressed to the Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party (Bolsheviks) of Belarus, Pantelyamon Panamarenko, the imprisoned former Central Committee secretary I. Gibkhin wrote in April 1939: "The threat of execution was voiced by [investigator] Reikhlin. That same night I was taken in a closed car. Where — I do not know, but Reikhlin warned that we were being taken to Kamarowka to be shot."