Minsk was unfortunately the locus of a major effort of extermination. The ghetto was first established in July 1941 and about 80,000 Jews from the surrounding areas were congregated there. Over the next year a further 24,000 Jews were transported to Minsk from areas in Germany, Austria and occupied territories. Attached is a map of the Ghetto and its environs, provided by The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Some Jews may have escaped into the woods, or hid in partisan bands or among the local population. However, at least some of them were later caught and executed. The Minsk ghetto was declared to be entirely destroyed by May of 1943.

In an interview recorded for the BBC's The World At War, Karl Fuchs recounts his visit to Minsk. He was an SS General, and an adjunct to Heinrich Himmler. Himmler had expressed a desire to see first-hand the killing operations which he had previously ordered, and the visit was organized for that purpose. Footage of this visit is archived online with The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

One hundred Jews were selected for death in anticipation of his visit, 98 men and 2 women. The victims were then marched to a cleared field where an open grave had been dug and, as it came to be their turn to die, they were made to lie face down in the pit, sometimes upon the bodies of those previously killed. This took place in August of 1941, and coincides with the opening phase of Nazism's program of extermination, a phase which Doris Bergen has described as "experimentation in brutality."

Konrad Jarausch was a soldier tasked to guarding Russian prisoners of war in the vicinity of Minsk. He was a reserve member of the Landesschutzen from Magdeburg, and was initially “assigned to security duties during the Polish campaign and its aftermath.” But as the war progressed they would eventually be transferred to Belarus in order to take charge of Durchgangslager [transit camp] 203 and the prisoners there. Here, his battalion was subordinated to the 286th Security Division. While he was not himself a member of an Einsatzgruppe, his commander General von Schenckendorff stated that refugees in the security area should “as a matter of principle, be arrested or liquidated.” And, while the 286th Security Division was a unit of the regular Army [the Wehrmacht], as opposed to the Einsatzgruppen which were subordinate to the Sicherheitsdienst [Security Service, SD], they were nonetheless “eager to report that ‘constant contact was maintained with the Security Service, specifically the Einsatzgruppe of Gruppenführer Neumann, the Einsatzkommando 8 of Sturmbannführer Dr. Bratfisch [sic], and in particular with Untersturmführer Reschke’s Orscha-based squad.”

In his recorded letters, Konrad recounts a number of times when he witnessed the purposeful execution of Jews. He also refers euphemistically to "extraordinary measures," and the SS "cleaning out [the area] terrible fashion." Minsk's Jews were targets for extermination.

Unfortunately for your great uncle and his wife, their relatively privileged, academic professions were unlikely to be very beneficial to their well being. While all Jews were equal targets of Nazi anathema, German soldiers had been ideologically prepared to regard Communists and "Jewish Marxists" as particular enemies. "In July 1941, the Army Quartermaster General, General Wagner decreed the 'immediate isolation of politically intolerable and suspicious elements, commissars and agitators.'" They were to be shoot. While this order was specific to the Wehrmacht and their treatment of prisoners of war, the sentiment held for civilians as well. The particular injunctions against "Jewish Bolshevism," as well as the interpretation of any sort of intelligentsia as being among the "politically intolerable and suspicious elements," makes it likely that your relatives faced particular danger.

That being said, at least some Jews survived the ordeal -- the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum lists survivor testimonies in its archives. Here is a photo showing some Jewish partisan leaders, soon after the liberation of Minsk. Do you know, or can you provide the names of your great uncle and his wife? Do you know where he taught? If you contact someone experienced with Soviet archives, it may be possible to find a record of his employment and perhaps further information about his fate.

Sources:

Doris Bergen, War and Genocide: A Concise History of the Holocaust

Gerhard Hirschfeld, The Policies of Genocide: Jews and Soviet Prisoners of War In Nazi Germany

Konrad Jarausch, Reluctant Accomplice: a Wehrmacht Soldier’s Letters from the Eastern Front

Testimony of Karl Wolff in The Final Solution: Part Two, produced by Jeremy Isaacs, Episode 34 of The World At War

Ben Shepherd, War in the Wild East: The German Army and Soviet Partisans

Waitman Wade Beorn, Marching into Darkness: The Wehrmacht and the Holocaust in Belarus

The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum