Kamaroŭski Forest (also known as Vankovich Forest, named after its owners) is a former forested area on the northeastern outskirts of Minsk. It was mentioned in the 1919 report of the Commission for the Investigation of Crimes of Terror by the Cheka. The commission discovered graves of victims of Bolshevik repression there. One archival photograph shows three commission members in front of the discovered corpses. At that time, the area was sparsely populated with gardens, ravines, and woodlands. Today, the area is a densely populated part of the city. Researchers believe the graves may have been located near what is now 69 Kujbyšava Street and Secondary School No. 187.
In his book In the Claws of the GPU, Belarusian playwright Frantsishak Aliakhnovich recalled the shootings in Kamaroŭka at the end of the 1920s. He learned about the area from his cellmates while he was imprisoned in Minsk in 1927.
“‘What is this: Kamaroŭka?’ ‘A forest. In the Kamaroŭski 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 in Kamaroŭka 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, Panteleimon Ponomarenko, 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 somewhere in a closed car. Where to — I do not know, but Reikhlin warned that we were going to Kamaroŭka for an execution.”