Today you will not find the VILLAGE of Khatyn on any geographical map. On March 22, 1943, the punishers wiped her off the face of the earth along with the elderly, women, and children. Inhumans cut off the lives of 149 people in one day, including 75 children...
In 1943, at the burial site of the Khatyns, residents of the surrounding villages put up three wooden crosses, then erected a small concrete obelisk with a red star, a little later the sculpture “Grieving Mother” appeared here. Since the opening of the Khatyn memorial complex in 1969, this Belarusian village has become a symbol of human sorrow and a terrible example of what fascism really is.
Khatyn received a second life, posthumously. Rising from the ashes unconquered, unbroken. For almost fifty years, the memorial keeps the memory of all the burnt settlements of Belarus. There are 185 graves with urns with the earth of disappeared villages in the only "Village Cemetery" in the world. Their names can only be found here, in Khatyn, which has become the 186th in this terrible list.
Symbolic trees of life... The names of 433 Belarusian villages are marked on the branches, destroyed along with the inhabitants, but restored after the war.
It is impossible to calmly read the documents declassified by the KGB about the destruction of the village, stored in the National Archives, is impossible. Partisan diaries, lists of the wounded and dead during the battle, the act of burning Khatyn, excerpts from reports to the higher leadership of the punishers themselves, memoirs and confessions of the gendarmes, the accused, victims and witnesses. I’m reading and realizing with horror what a horde of thugs-criminals the infernal machine of Nazism sent against the civilians of my native Belarus ...
Gang of criminals led by a pedophile
The Sonderbattalion, as one of the most brutal SS formations, was born in July 1940 from among convicted poachers. The special unit was originally called the “Oranienburg Poaching Team” - after the name of the city 30 kilometers from Berlin. It was headed by Oscar Paul Dirlewanger, Doctor of Economics, a participant in the First World War and the Spanish Civil War, who fought on the side of the Francoists. Behind him at that time were not only awards such as the Iron Crosses I and II degrees, but also a criminal article for forced sexual relations with a 13-year-old girl. And in the future, Dirlewanger was noticed more than once in excessive drinking and pedophilia. After bullying, he poisoned his juvenile victims with strychnine, watching their torment from the sidelines. In total, they wanted to initiate at least 10 criminal cases against this pathological type for "desecration of the race by an SS officer."
Executioner Oscar Paul DIRLEWANGER.
So this subhuman (Untermensch, if according to Nazi qualifications) in the rank of Obersturmführer first assembled a detachment of about 55 convicted poachers who were registered in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp. They were trained by non-commissioned officers of the 5th SS Regiment "Dead Head". Insignia - buttonholes with crossed bones. Strict discipline, for the slightest violation, a terrible punishment awaited. As a result, Himmler rated the gang of "bony" on a quality scale "from good to very good."
In September 1940, the penal unit was renamed the special SS battalion "Dirlewanger", they served in Lublin, later - in a Jewish forced camp closer to the Soviet border. From January 29, 1942, the Dirlewanger team began to be considered as a volunteer battalion. Serving with a rapist-pedophile was prestigious for concentration camp prisoners, they themselves filed petitions. As a result, criminals with several convictions arrived here - murderers, pimps, robbers, rapists ... For these qualities, the gang was later called the "Special Group" Dr. Dirlewanger ".
In February 1942, Dirlewanger and his battalion were transferred to Mogilev. The personnel were initially used in anti-partisan operations. Later they began to carry out the so-called cleansing of villages. Already in May, in the Klichev district, the punishers wiped out the villages of Olkhovka, Susha, Vyazen and Selets from the face of the earth. The SS leadership assessed the combat activities of the special team very positively, and Dirlewanger himself was presented for an award. On June 15, 1942, the village of Borki, Kirov District, was burned to the ground, killing 1,800 people - residents of Borki themselves and the villages included in them.
Dirlewanger's report on the action in Borki dated June 16, 1942 has been preserved: “Yesterday's operation against Borki took place without contact with the enemy. The settlement was immediately surrounded and captured. Local residents who tried to escape were shot, three of them carrying weapons. As a result of the search, it was established that the village was a partisan one. There were almost no men, few horses, carts. […] The inhabitants were shot, the settlement was burnt down. […] 1,112 inhabitants were shot, plus 633 SD liquidated. Total: 1,745. Shot while trying to escape - 282. Total number: 2,027.”
Sonderkommando Dirlewanger was active in the Klichevsky, Kirovsky and Bykhov regions. In the period from July 11 to 20, 1942, she burned the villages of Vetrenka, Dobuzha, Trilesino, Krasnitsa and Smolitsa. Dirlewanger did not take part in these actions, he was treated in Germany. Throughout the year, several people were brought to the Sonderkommando SS on parole. Basically, these were veterans of the German Nazi Party who were at fault, sent to Dirlewanger for "correction".
Sonderkommando trained for blood
At the beginning of November 1942, an order came: the personnel of the Sonderkommando would take part in Operation Frida, a local action to eliminate the partisan brigades of the Minsk zone. In a word, while the Dirlewanger battalion reached Khatyn, they left behind them burned villages and thousands of ruined lives. They committed no less atrocities after that. The list of victims is huge.
As for the 118th Schutzmanschaft Battalion, it began to be formed at the beginning of 1942 in Poland, continued in Chernivtsi in Western Ukraine, mainly from Ukrainian nationalists. In Kyiv, he was replenished with participants in the massacres at Babi Yar. The total number of the gendarmerie group reached 500 people. Initially, uniforms came from the Baltic States from the captured warehouses of the former Lithuanian army. Therefore, Ukrainians looked like Lithuanians. The real German uniform was given to them much later. The Germans entered the battalion only as commanders, although there was a dual control. From the German side - Erich Kerner, from the Ukrainian - Konstantin Smovsky. The chiefs of staff were Emil Zass and Grigory Vasyura. Hans Welke's deputy was the nationalist Joseph Vinnitsky.
The fighters of the 118th battalion were transferred from Ukraine to Belarus at the end of 1942. First to Minsk, then to Pleschenitsy. At their expense, the replenishment of the SS battalion "Dirlewanger" also took place. Policemen were selected and transferred without their consent. Basically, from one gang to another. What difference does it make where to kill? So under the command of Dirlewanger were not only convicts-criminals, but also motley traitors from among the former prisoners of war. As a result, by the end of August 1942, 3 divisions were formed in a special part of the SS: a German company under the command of Oberscharführer Heinz Faiertag, a Ukrainian platoon led by a former lieutenant of the Red Army Ivan Melnichenko, and a Russian-Belarusian order service company led by Volksdeutsche August Barchke. Later, even a group of German gypsies joined them. They differed from the personnel of the gang in that they had clean-shaven heads. But they also wore SS uniforms without insignia.
It is not necessary to describe each thug. There are many of them, one more beautiful than the other. In November-December 1986, one of the main executioners, Grigory Vasiura, was tried in Minsk. The court was presided over by Lieutenant Colonel of Justice, military judge of the BVO Tribunal Viktor Glazkov. Unfortunately, due to health reasons, he could not meet with me personally, we only talked by phone: it is clear that it is hard for an elderly person to remember such things.
Gendarmes of the 118th police battalion.
Retribution will overtake all
During the trial, all the accusations fell on Vasyuru. He was called the man who led the entire punitive operation. But is it?
Former director of the National Archives of the Republic of Belarus Vyacheslav Selemenev explains:
Vasyura was never the main figure in the destruction of Khatyn. He is just one of the performers, like Vladimir Katryuk. The command was given by the former UNR colonel Konstantin Smovsky, the German Erich Kerner and the commander of the Ukrainian platoon of the Dirlewanger battalion Ivan Melnichenko. In the 2000s, a number of KGB documents were declassified, which allow us to draw the appropriate conclusions. The fact is that no one has ever searched for either Smovsky or Kerner. It is not known for certain what happened to them after the war. If I'm not mistaken, Smovsky ended up in America. Vasyura lived quietly in Ukraine under his last name, so it was easiest for him to fall into the hands of justice. Until the very last moment, he denied his involvement in the punitive operation. All charges were based on the testimony of witnesses, his colleagues in the battalion. No official documents confirming his involvement have been established. But the reports were depersonalized, it was difficult to prove something. In 1974, Vasily Meleshko and a whole group from the 118th battalion were tried.
From the materials of the KGB, which I managed to look through, it is known that purebred Germans also burned Khatyn. In addition, there was also a Ukrainian platoon. The plot started with the 118th security police battalion, and the 1st German company and the Ukrainian platoon of the SS Dirlewanger detachment came to the rescue. But Kerner unequivocally led the operation.
Mass grave in Khatyn with three crosses, 1943.
Fire Lip
It cannot be argued that the Germans in 1942 boldly traveled through the forests, the partisans have long become a threat to them. But on that day, a convoy of one passenger car and two trucks was calmly driving to eliminate the break in the communication line. There were enough people, all were armed to the teeth. And then the partisans ... A small shootout, not even a battle, as a result of which a couple of Germans and a couple of policemen died. It would be possible and necessary to finish off the rest, but the partisans decided to retreat to Khatyn.
The protocol of interrogation dated January 31, 1961 of witness Iosif Kaminsky, born in 1887, a native of the village of Gani, Logoisk district, living in the village of Kozyri, says: “On March 21, on Sunday, many partisans arrived in the village of Khatyn. After spending the night, in the morning, it was still dark, most of them left our village. In the middle of the day on Monday, March 22, 1943, while at home in the village of Khatyn, I heard shooting near the village of Kozyri, located 4-5 kilometers away. And the shooting was great at first. Then it stopped and soon resumed again for a while. I do not remember exactly, it seems that at 15 o'clock in the afternoon the partisans returned to the village of Khatyn and settled down for dinner. An hour and a half later, the Germans began to surround our village. After that, a battle ensued between them and the partisans. […] The guerrillas retreated after about an hour of battle ... "
“[...] Around the middle of the day, being with my father in the barn of my house, I heard gunfire that was heard from the opposite side of the village. When my father and I ran out of the shed, I saw how one of the partisans who were in our house climbed onto a stack of hay and shouted from a height: “Germans!”, After which he fired from a rifle upwards, as if giving a signal to his comrades. After the partisans left our compound, our whole family hid in the cellar. After a short time, the door of the cellar opened, and one of the punishers with a gesture ordered us to leave the basement upstairs ... ”(Excerpt from the protocol of interrogation of June 4, 1986, witness Viktor Zhelobkovich, born in 1934.)
The first victims of the punishers were 26 civilians in the village of Kozyri, located about a kilometer from the Logoisk-Pleshchenitsy highway, not far from the turn to Khatyn. A little further on the right side were the village of Guba and the farm Izbishche, which have long been gone. According to local old-timers, the village was also burned down, few people remember it.
Iosif KAMINSKY at the monument "Grieving Mother", 1965.
The first victims are lumberjacks
In the morning of March 22, 1943, the villagers, and among them were men, women and teenagers, went to cut down the forest. Yadviga Shalupin (nee Lis) also came to work. As a witness, she testified on January 31, 1961:
“During the Patriotic War, I lived in the territory temporarily occupied by the Germans in the village of Kozyri. […] I remember, in the last days of March 1943, at about 10 o’clock in the morning, the headman of our village Alexander Lis (killed in Logoisk around 1944) ordered the residents to go to work to the Pleschenitsy-Logoisk highway to clear the roadside from bushes and forests . I was then 15 years old, but I also went to the highway to work. I remember that 40-50 fellow villagers gathered at the highway at that time. […] When we worked for about an hour, we saw how several cars (about 4) with people dressed in green German military uniforms drove along the highway from Pleschenitsy in the direction of Logoisk. How many there were, I don’t know how I remember, the cars were fully loaded with these punishers. Soon we heard from the side of Logoisk, about half a kilometer away from us, indiscriminate shooting, and when the shooting died down, soon the same cars drove up to us from the side of Logoisk, and the punishers began to herd everyone to one place on the highway. I remember well that some of the punishers spoke Russian, accusing us of knowing that we were ahead of the partisans with whom they had a shootout. Gathering everyone on the highway, the punishers built us into a column and drove in the direction of the town of Pleschenitsy. In the village of Guba, the punishers stopped and forced everyone who had axes and saws to put them on the ground, after which they drove on. Those who lagged behind or walked from the edge of the column were beaten with rifle butts. Approximately 10-15 punishers escorted us, and the rest remained at the place of our detention. When we approached the edge of the forest outside the village of Guba, some fellow villagers, including myself, rushed into the forest, trying to escape. Punishers fired randomly at us with rifles, as a result I was wounded in my right arm, back, head and left leg, but still I managed to escape. What happened next on the highway, I did not see. Exhausted from pain, I barely made it to the village, and then I was taken to the Logoisk hospital, where I was treated for about 3 months. […] All fellow villagers who were shot on the highway were buried by their relatives in the cemetery in the village of Koren.”
(To be continued.)
On the morning of March 22, a partisan detachment attacked a motorcade with punishers from the 118th battalion of the Schutzmannschaft, 6 km from Khatyn. In one of the cars was the chief commander of the first company, police captain Hans Welke, who was heading to the airfield in Minsk. The partisans opened fire on the Germans, as a result of which the punishers lost three people, including Velke. The partisans went to Khatyn. The Germans were furious at the death of Welke, who had become the 1936 Olympic champion and was personally acquainted with Hitler. Having called for reinforcements from the Dirlenwanger battalion, the Nazis began to comb the forest in search of partisans and soon surrounded the village of Khatyn.
The villagers did not know anything about the morning partisan attack on the column. But the Germans, in violation of all the rules and customs of warfare, decided to apply the principle of collective punishment to civilians for possible assistance to partisans. All the inhabitants of the village - women, old people, children, men - the Nazis drove out of their homes and drove to the collective farm barn. There were many large families among the residents: 9 children in the Baranovsky family, 7 in the Novitsky family, and the same number in the Iotko family. The Germans did not spare anyone, they raised even the sick or women with babies. Vera Yaskevich and her seven-week-old son were also herded into the barn. Those who tried to escape were shot by the Nazis.
Only three children managed to escape from the Germans in the forest. When the punishers gathered all the inhabitants, they locked the shed, surrounded it with hay and set it on fire. Under the pressure of human bodies, the walls of the barn collapsed and dozens of people, in burning clothes, burned, rushed to run. But the Nazis killed everyone. In this terrible tragedy, 149 residents of Khatyn died, including 75 children under 16 years old.
Joseph Kaminsky
By some miracle, two children managed to survive from the burning barn. When the walls collapsed, the mother of Viktor Zhelobkovich ran out with him and covered him with her body, the Nazis did not notice that the child was alive. Anton Baranovsky was wounded in the leg by an explosive bullet and the Nazis took him for dead. Of the adult witnesses of the tragedy, only 56-year-old Iosif Kaminsky survived. When Kaminsky came to his senses, the punitive detachment had already left the village. Among the corpses of his fellow villagers, he found the charred and wounded son of Adam. The boy died in his arms. This tragic moment is the basis of the sculpture "Unbowed Man" of the Khatyn memorial complex, which was opened on the site of the village in 1969.
Khatyn - the former village of the Logoisk district of the Minsk region of Belarus - was destroyed by the Nazis on March 22, 1943.
On the day of the tragedy, near Khatyn, partisans fired on a Nazi convoy and killed a German officer as a result of the attack. In response, the punishers surrounded the village, herded all the inhabitants into a barn and set it on fire, and those who tried to escape were shot from machine guns and machine guns. 149 people died, including 75 children under the age of 16. The village was looted and burned to the ground.
The tragic fate of Khatyn befell more than one Belarusian village. During the Second World War .
In memory of hundreds of Belarusian villages destroyed by the Nazi invaders, in January 1966 it was decided to create a memorial complex "Khatyn".
In March 1967, a competition was announced for the creation of a memorial project, which was won by a team of architects: Yuri Gradov, Valentin Zankovich, Leonid Levin, sculptor - Sergey Selikhanov.
The memorial complex "Khatyn" is included in the state list of historical and cultural heritage of Belarus.
The material was prepared on the basis of information from RIA Novosti and open sources
In 1936, the Olympic Games were held in Berlin. The first Olympic champion at these games was a German shot putter. Hans Welke. He not only became a champion, and not only set a world record, but also became the first German to win an Olympic gold medal in athletics.
German newspapers glorified Welke in every way and saw him as a symbol of a new, Aryan athletics in which there would be no place for blacks, Asians and other, in their opinion, humanoids. The further course of the Olympics showed, however, that it is too early to write off black athletes. The hero of the Olympics was the black American Jesse Owens, who won 4 gold medals in the same ill-fated athletics. More than all German athletes combined.
Seven years later, on the morning of March 22, 1943, in occupied Belarus, far from Berlin, at the crossroads Pleschenitsy -Logoisk -Kozyri-Khatyn partisans of the detachment Avenger” fired at a passenger car in which the commander of one of the companies of the 118th police battalion, Hauptmann Hans Welke, was driving. Together with the former athlete, several other Ukrainian policemen were killed. The ambushed guerrillas withdrew. The policemen of the 118th battalion called for help the special battalion of the Sturmbannfuehrer Oscar Dirlewanger. While the special battalion was traveling from Logoisk, the police arrested, and after a while they shot a group of local residents - lumberjacks. By the evening of March 22, the punishers in the footsteps of the partisans went to the village Khatyn, which was burned along with all its inhabitants. The massacre was commanded by a former career senior lieutenant of the Red Army, and by that time the chief of staff of the 118th police battalion.
For a long time after the war, on the site where the village of Khatyn once stood, there was a lone wooden obelisk with a red star, then a modest plaster monument. In the 60s, it was decided to build a memorial complex on the site of Khatyn. The opening of the complex took place in 1969. The memorial was visited by pioneers and soldiers, foreign diplomats and heads of state. My family and I were in Belarus in 1981, and my parents brought me, still a child, to Khatyn, and, to be honest, I had the impressions of this visit for the rest of my life.
And all these years, not very far from the Belarusian forests, Grigory Nikitovich Vasyura lived in prosperity and honor, not hiding from anyone. He worked as deputy director of the Velikodymersky state farm in the Brovarsky district of the Kiev region, had a house, was regularly awarded certificates of honor for various successes, was known in the area as an authoritative boss and a strong business executive. Every year on May 9, the pioneers congratulated the veteran Vasyura, and the Kiev Military Communications School even enrolled its pre-war graduate as an honorary cadet. Vasyura had one spot in his biography. He was tried, but for what no one remembered for a long time. And Vasyura was convicted immediately after the war, when he fell into the hands of the competent authorities and told about how he fought with the Germans, how he was taken prisoner heavily shell-shocked, how he could not bear the horrors of the prisoner of war camp and went to serve the Germans. But the former lieutenant kept silent about his acquaintance with the Olympic champion, and about Babi Yar, where he began his career for the benefit of the Reich, and about Khatyn. Vasyura received his term, but he didn’t even serve it - he was released under an amnesty (in honor of the 10th anniversary of the Victory).
The real merits of the former punisher got to the bottom only in the mid-80s. In 1986 Grigory Vasyura was convicted in Minsk. In 1987 he was shot. There were no publications about the trial in the Soviet press at that time.
As an epilogue:
From the combat log of the partisan detachment "Avenger":
03/22/43 The first and third companies, which were in an ambush on the Logoisk-Pleschenitsy highway, destroyed a passenger car, two gendarmerie officers were killed, several policemen were wounded. After leaving the ambush site, the companies settled in the village of Khatyn, Pleshchenitsky District, where they were surrounded by Germans and policemen. When leaving the encirclement, three people were killed, four were wounded. After the battle, the Nazis burned the village of Khatyn.
Detachment commander A. Morozov, chief of staff S. Prochko:
“To the District Chief of the SS and Police of the Borisov District. I deliver the following: 22.03.43 between Pleschenitsy and Logoysk gangs the telephone connection was destroyed. 2 platoons of the first company were sent to protect the recovery team and possible clearing of rubble on the road at 9.30 118th police battalion under the command of Hauptmann of the security police H. Wölke.
Approximately 600 m beyond the village of Bolshaya Guba, they met workers who were harvesting timber. When asked if they had seen the bandits, the latter answered in the negative. When the detachment traveled another 300 m, it was subjected to heavy machine-gun and weapon fire from the east. In the ensuing battle, Hauptmann Volke and three Ukrainian policemen fell, two more policemen were wounded. After a short but fierce skirmish, the enemy withdrew eastward (to Khatyn), taking the dead and wounded.
After that, the platoon commander stopped the fight, because to continue the action of their own forces was not enough. On the way back, the loggers mentioned above were arrested, because it was suspected that they were collaborating with the enemy. A little north of B. Guba, some of the captured workers tried to escape. At the same time, 23 people were killed by our fire. The rest of the arrested were taken for interrogation to the gendarmerie in Pleschenitsy. But because their guilt could not be proved, they were released.
Larger forces were sent to pursue the retreating enemy, including units of the SS battalion Dirlewanger. The enemy, meanwhile, withdrew to the village of Khatyn, known for its friendliness to the bandits. The village was surrounded and attacked from all sides. At the same time, the enemy put up stubborn resistance and fired from all the houses, so heavy weapons had to be used - anti-tank guns and heavy mortars.
During the fighting, along with 34 bandits, many villagers were killed. Some of them died in the flames."
04/12/43
From the testimony of Stepan Sakhno:
- I remember that day well. In the morning we received an order to drive towards Logoisk and fix the damage on the telephone line. The commander of the first company Wölke, together with an orderly and two policemen, was driving in a car, we were in two trucks. When we were approaching Bolshaya Guba, machine guns and machine guns suddenly fired from the forest on a passenger car that had come off us. We rushed into the ditch, lay down and returned fire. The skirmish lasted only a few minutes, the partisans, apparently, immediately retreated. The car was riddled with bullets, Wölke and two policemen were killed, several were wounded. We quickly established contact, reported what had happened to our superiors in Pleschenitsy, then called Logoisk, where Dirlewanger's SS battalion was stationed. We received an order to detain lumberjacks who worked nearby - there was allegedly a suspicion of their connections with the partisans.
Lacusta with his squad drove them to Pleschenitsy. When cars appeared on the road - it was the main forces of the battalion rushing towards us - people rushed in all directions. Of course, they were not allowed to leave: more than 20 people were killed, many were injured.
Together with the SS, they combed the forest, found a place for a partisan ambush. There were about a hundred shell casings lying around. Then they moved in a chain to the east, to Khatyn.
Testimony of Ostap Knap:
- After we surrounded the village, through the translator Lukovich, along the chain, an order came to take people out of their houses and escort them to the outskirts of the village to the barn. Both the SS and our policemen did this work. All residents, including the elderly and children, were pushed into the barn, surrounded by straw. A heavy machine gun was set up in front of the locked gates, behind which, I remember well, Katryuk was lying. They set fire to the roof of the shed, as well as the straw Lukovic and some German.
A few minutes later, under the pressure of people, the door collapsed, they began to run out of the barn. The command was given: "Fire!" Everyone who was in the cordon fired: both ours and the SS men. I also shot at the barn.
Question: How many Germans participated in this action?
Answer: In addition to our battalion, there were about 100 SS men in Khatyn who came from Logoisk in covered cars and motorcycles. Together with the police, they set fire to houses and outbuildings.
From the testimony of Timofey Topchia:
- At the site of the death of Wölke near Bolshaya Guba (they say the restaurant “Partizansky Bor” is now standing there), a lot of people in long black raincoats caught my eye. There were also 6 or 7 covered cars and several motorcycles. Then they told me that they were SS men from the Dirlewanger battalion. There were about a company of them.
When they went to Khatyn, they saw that they were running away from the village some people. Our machine-gun crew was given the order to shoot at the fleeing. The first number of Shcherban's crew opened fire, but the sight was set incorrectly, and the bullets did not overtake the fugitives. Meleshko pushed him aside and lay down behind the machine gun himself. Whether he killed anyone, I don't know, we didn't check.
All the houses in the village, before being burned, were looted: they took away more or less valuables, food and livestock. They dragged everything in a row - both we and the Germans.
From the testimony of Ivan Petrychuk:
- My post was about 50 meters from the barn, which was guarded by our platoon and the Germans with machine guns. I clearly saw how a boy of six years old ran out of the fire, his clothes were on fire. He took only a few steps and fell, hit by a bullet. Shot at him someone of the officers who were standing in a large group in that direction. Maybe it was Kerner, or maybe Vasyura.
I don't know if there were many children in the barn. When we left the village, it was already burning down, there were no living people in it - only charred corpses, large and small, smoked. This picture was terrible. I must emphasize that the Germans who came from Logoisk burned down the village, and we only helped them. True, we robbed it together. I remember that 15 cows were brought to the battalion from Khatyn.
It happened on March 22, 1943 . The brutalized fascists broke into Khatyn village and surrounded her. The villagers did not know anything about the fact that in the morning, 6 km from Khatyn, partisans fired on a fascist convoy and killed a German officer as a result of the attack. But the fascists have already passed a death sentence on innocent people. The entire population of Khatyn, young and old - the elderly, women, children were driven out of their homes and driven to the collective farm barn. The butts of machine guns were lifted from the bed of the sick, the elderly, did not spare women with small and infant children. The families of Joseph and Anna Baranovsky with 9 children, Alexander and Alexandra Novitsky with 7 children were brought here; the same number of children were in the family of Kazimir and Elena Iotko, the youngest was only one year old. Vera Yaskevich was brought into the barn with her seven-week-old son Tolik. Lenochka Yaskevich first hid in the yard, and then decided to take refuge in the forest. The bullets of the Nazis could not catch up with the running girl. Then one of the Nazis rushed after her, catching up, shot her in front of her father, distraught with grief. Together with the residents of Khatyn, Anton Kunkevich, a resident of the village of Yurkovichi, and Kristina Slonskaya, a resident of the village of Kameno, were driven into the barn, who at that time were in Khatyn village .
Not a single adult could go unnoticed. Only three children - Volodya Yaskevich, his sister Sonya and Sasha Zhelobkovich - managed to escape from the Nazis. When the entire population of the village was in the shed, the Nazis locked the doors of the shed, lined it with straw, doused it with gasoline and set it on fire. The wooden shed immediately caught fire. Children were choking and crying in the smoke. The adults tried to save the children. Under the pressure of dozens of human bodies, they could not stand it and the doors collapsed. In burning clothes, terrified, people rushed to run, but those who escaped from the flames, the Nazis cold-bloodedly shot from machine guns and machine guns. 149 villagers burned alive in the fire, including 75 children under 16 years of age. The village was looted and burned to the ground.
Two girls from the Klimovich and Fedorovich families - Maria Fedorovich and Julia Klimovich - miraculously managed to get out of the burning barn and crawl to the forest. Burnt, barely alive, they were picked up by the inhabitants of the village of Khvorosteni of the Kamensky village council. But this village was soon burned by the Nazis and both girls died.
Only two children from those who were in the barn survived - seven-year-old Viktor Zhelobkovich and twelve-year-old Anton Baranovsky. When, in burning clothes, terrified people ran out of the burning barn, Anna Zhelobkovich ran out together with other villagers. She firmly held the hand of her seven-year-old son Vitya. A mortally wounded woman, falling, covered her son with herself. The child, wounded in the hand, lay under the corpse of his mother until the Nazis left the village. Anton Baranovsky was wounded in the leg by an explosive bullet. The Nazis mistook him for dead.
Burnt, wounded children were picked up and left by residents of neighboring villages. After the war, the children were brought up in an orphanage in the town of Pleschenitsy.
The only adult witness to the Khatyn tragedy, 56-year-old village blacksmith Iosif Kaminsky, burned and wounded, regained consciousness late at night, when the Nazis were no longer in the village. He had to endure another heavy blow: among the corpses of his fellow villagers, he found his wounded son. The boy was mortally wounded in the stomach and received severe burns. He died in his father's arms.
This tragic moment in the life of Joseph Kaminsky is the basis for the creation of the only sculpture of the memorial complex "Khatyn" - "Unbowed Man".
The tragedy of Khatyn - one of the thousands of facts testifying to the purposeful policy of genocide against the population of Belarus, which was carried out by the Nazis throughout the entire period of occupation. Hundreds of such tragedies occurred during the three years of occupation (1941-1944) on Belarusian soil.
