Khatyn - the story of tragedy
Every nation sacredly cherishes the memory of terrible losses suffered during past wars. The Ukrainians have Corteles, the French have Oradursur Glan, the Czechs have Lidice, the Vietnamese have Song My. But the symbol of the immortal trials of the Belarusians is Khatyn, destroyed during the war along with its inhabitants...
Was the Belarusian village destroyed by Ukrainian nationalists?
Until recently, any schoolchild could say that Khatyn was burned by German punitive forces. They were considered the culprits of the tragedy. For example, in the text of the photo album “Khatyn”, published in Minsk in 1979, the punishers are called “the Nazis, overwhelmed by the manic ideas of the “exclusiveness of the Aryan race.”
Khatyn is also represented in the Bolshoi Soviet encyclopedia. It states the following: “Khatyn is a memorial architectural and sculptural complex on the site of the former village of Khatyn (Minsk region of the BSSR). Opened on July 5, 1969 in memory of the inhabitants of Belarusian villages and hamlets completely destroyed by the fascist occupiers.”
Forgotten trail
One of the most pressing issues Ukrainian history recently - an attempt to understand who the OUN UPA units really were: fighters for the freedom of their people or servants of the occupation regime? And here there is no clear answer yet.
Thus, many people know about the Roland and Nachtigall battalions and the role of the SS Galicia division. But about the actions of the 118th police battalion of the Organization Ukrainian nationalists(OUN), created to fight partisans, is known to few.
Having lost the battle of Stalingrad at the beginning of 1943, the German government changed its policy towards the inhabitants of the occupied countries, and after the creation of two Latvian and one Estonian divisions, on April 28, 1943, the Ukrainian SS division “Galicia” was formed.
And a year before the formation of the SS division "Galicia" in July 1942, the 118th security police battalion was formed in Kyiv from among former members Kyiv and Bukovina kurens of the OUN. True, almost all of them were previously prisoners of war officers or privates of the Red Army, who, apparently, were captured in the first months of the war. This is evident from the fact that at the time when the 118th police battalion was formed in Kyiv, most of these prisoners of war had already agreed to serve the Nazis and undergo military training in Germany. Grigory Vasyura, a native of the Cherkasy region, who almost single-handedly led the actions of this unit, was appointed chief of staff of this battalion.
At first, the 118th police battalion performed “well” in the eyes of the occupiers, taking an active part in mass shootings in Kyiv, in the notorious Babi Yar. After this, the battalion was redeployed to the territory of Belarus to fight the partisans, where a terrible tragedy occurred, as a result of which Khatyn was destroyed.
Death of a Champion
The position of quartermaster in each of the divisions of this battalion was necessarily held by German officer, who was thus an unofficial curator-supervisor of the activities of the police officers of his unit. It is not surprising that one of the German officers in such a position turned out to be Hitler's favorite - Hauptmann Hans Wölke.
The Fuhrer's love for him was not accidental. It was he, Hans Wölke, who was the first German to win a gold medal in the shot put Olympic Games 1936 in Berlin, which thoroughly strengthened the Fuhrer’s thesis about the primacy of the Aryan race. And it was Hauptmann Hans Wölke who, while in an ambush, was killed by Soviet partisans who had stopped the night before in the village of Khatyn.
Of course, the murder of the Fuhrer’s favorite made all the policemen greatly worry about the safety of their own skins, and therefore the need for “worthy retribution to the bandits” became a “matter of honor” for them. The police, having failed to find and capture the partisans, followed in their footsteps to the village of Khatyn, surrounded it and began executions of the local population in revenge for the murdered Hauptmann.
The entire population of Khatyn, young and old - men, women, old people, children - were kicked out of their homes and driven into a collective farm barn. The butts of machine guns were used to lift patients from their beds, and they did not spare women with small and infant children. When all the people were gathered in the barn, the punishers locked the doors, lined the barn with straw, doused it with gasoline and set it on fire.
The wooden structure quickly caught fire. Under the pressure of dozens human bodies The doors couldn't stand it and collapsed. In burning clothes, gripped by horror, gasping for breath, people rushed to run, but those who escaped from the flames were shot from machine guns.
149 village residents burned in the fire, including 75 children under 16 years of age. The village itself was completely destroyed. Of the adult residents, only 56-year-old village blacksmith Joseph Kaminsky survived. Burnt and wounded, he regained consciousness only late at night, when the punitive squads left the village. He had to endure another severe blow: among the corpses of his fellow villagers, he found his son. The boy was fatally wounded in the stomach and received severe burns. He died in his father's arms.
At first there were different versions about the number of dead villagers. It was not until 1969 that the names of the victims were finally counted. Witness Joseph Kaminsky recalled that the punishers spoke Ukrainian and Russian among themselves, some of them were in German uniform, and others - in greatcoats gray, similar to the overcoats of Russian soldiers. “I realized that we would be shot and said to the residents who were in the barn with me: “Pray to God, because everyone here will die,” Kaminsky said. To this, the Ukrainian punisher standing at the door replied: “Oh, they trampled on the icons, they burned the icons, we will burn you now.”
Fair retribution
Commander of the 118th punitive battalion Grigory Vasyura for a long time was safe and sound. When his battalion was defeated, Vasyura continued to serve in the 14th SS Grenadier Division "Galicia", and at the very end of the war - in the 76th Infantry Regiment, which was defeated in France.
After the war in the filtration camp, he managed to cover his tracks. Only in 1952, for cooperation with the occupiers during the war, the tribunal of the Kyiv Military District sentenced him to 25 years in prison. At that time, nothing was known about his punitive activities. On September 17, 1955, the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR adopted a Decree “About the amnesty of Soviet citizens who collaborated with the occupiers during the war of 1941-1945”. Vasyura was released. He returned to his home in the Cherkasy region. KGB officers later found and arrested the criminal again. By that time, he worked as the deputy director of one of the state farms in the Kiev region, loved to speak to the pioneers in the guise of a war veteran, a front-line signalman, and was even called an honorary cadet in one of the military schools in Kyiv.
According to some researchers of this topic, the top party leaders of Belarus and Ukraine “had a hand” in classifying the case of atrocities in Khatyn. The leaders of the Soviet republics cared about the inviolability of the international unity of the Belarusian and Ukrainian peoples and were afraid that the relatives of the victims would try to take revenge on the perpetrators of the tragedy.
The “Khatyn” trials of Vasyura and other collaborators continued until December 1986. By the decision of the military tribunal of the Belarusian Military District, Grigory Vasyura was found guilty of crimes and sentenced to death. During the trial, it was established that he personally killed more than 360 civilian women, old people and children. Along with the main punisher, other fascist collaborators, policemen, elders, and members of the punitive battalion were convicted: Stopchenko, Smovsky, Vinitsky and others.
During the occupation, fascist henchmen destroyed about 300 villages in the central regions of Ukraine alone.
Alas, silencing these facts and other events of the past is just as harmful as altering them to suit changing ideological postulates.
Magazine: Mysteries of history, August 2015
Category: Secret Operations
From:
The history of the Great Patriotic War keeps many secrets, one of which continues to be the destruction of the Belarusian village of Khatyn. Modern youth are not interested in the past of their own country; most citizens do not know about bloody crimes German invaders. Not at today educational program lessons dedicated to shameful betrayal and complicity with the occupiers. Propaganda is growing on the fertile soil of ignorance, seeking to discredit the victorious country and put it on a par with the fascists. These views are gradually developing into Russophobia, which is facilitated by some politicians who recognize reliable military facts as fabricated. Nationalism is increasingly flourishing in Europe movement. What seemed impossible a few decades ago now happens almost every year. Parades of Soviet veterans have been replaced by a solemn procession of criminals, adherents and accomplices of fascism.
During the period of occupation, Belarus turned into a single partisan country; small detachments carried out, albeit targeted, but very painful blows behind enemy lines. The Nazis not only brutally punished the local population in response, but also carried out terrifying executions of defenseless villagers. Official soviet history believes that something similar happened in Khatyn in 1943. However, around this tragic event Today the debate is becoming increasingly heated. There were even opinions that the bloody action was carried out by NKVD officers. The Soviet archives store under the heading “secret” many documents testifying to terrible massacres and other crimes of the party leadership, but many things are being falsified today. We will try to find out what such rumors are based on in this publication.
The tragedies in a small Belarusian village of twenty-six houses are dedicated to documentaries, exposing not only German criminals, but also their Ukrainian accomplices. Some of the villains were convicted by the International Criminal Tribunal and Soviet court 1973, and a monument was erected to the victims on the site of the burnt settlement. Among the people, the bright memory of the innocently burned and executed Belarusians is expressed in songs, poems and books. However, in 1995, a book was published that honored the memory of their executioners. The work, which insulted the memory of not only veterans of the Great Patriotic War, but also its victims, was written by one of the leaders of the Ukrainian nationalist movement.
From the pages of textbooks we know that the village and almost all its inhabitants were destroyed by the Nazis. However, there are also blind spots in this tragedy that have been little explored in Soviet time. Tabloid historians believe that the killers of 147 people were NKVD workers, airlifted into the territory of Belarus. The version is absurd, although it is very beneficial to modern Eastern Europe. If you carefully study the documents stored in the Minsk archive, it becomes clear that Khatyn was burned by fascist troops, which included Nazis with western regions Ukraine. Sadly, today in Western Ukraine there are a number of nationalist organizations that honor bloody murderers as heroes. They even erected a monument to them in Chernivtsi, and the obvious facts of atrocities are simply not taken into account or are recognized as falsification. The sculpture in memory of the “heroes” of the Bukovina Kuren, as if in mockery of the millions of victims, is decorated with the wings of a German eagle. Through the efforts of figures with anti-Soviet views, legends are created about the insidious plans of the NKVD, provoking the “noble” invaders.
Several people who miraculously survived, including Viktor Zhelobkovich and Anton Borovkovsky, testify that the village was exterminated by Ukrainian policemen in Latvian uniforms and the Germans. None of the witnesses even mentions any NKVD employees, so the legends and rumors actively spread in the hotbeds of neo-Nazism are unfounded.
There were about a hundred Germans among the notorious Detachment 118; the remaining 200 Wehrmacht soldiers turned out to be policemen brought in from Western Ukraine. The fascists themselves called this detachment the Bukovina Kuren, since it was formed from convinced nationalists in the city of Chernivtsi. Former soldiers and officers of the Red Army hoped that the German allies would ensure independence for Ukraine. The policemen were distinguished by wearing a Latvian uniform and a broken German. Today Ukraine denies this fact, but all the same archival documents, as well as investigative materials, indicate that Ukrainian traitors killed the Belarusian population. One of the punishers is considered to be Canadian citizen Katryuk, who has not yet been punished for his atrocities. Ardent nationalists are trying to justify him, saying that all the charges are fabricated. However, Katryuk is exposed by the testimony of his accomplices, convicted by a criminal court in 1973.
The punitive commander Vasyura, who for a long period after the war held the position of deputy director in one of the Kyiv collective farms, was not punished until 1986. Even in peacetime, he was distinguished by cruel methods, but the investigation was unable to find strong evidence of involvement in massacres in Belarus. Only almost half a century later did justice triumph and Vasyura was put on trial. His testimony is characterized by cynicism; he speaks with contempt of his accomplices, calling them scoundrels. Vasyura never sincerely repented of his crime.
From the same materials of interrogation of criminals, it is known that on March 22, 1943, the 118th detachment invaded the territory of the village. The action was punitive in nature for the actions of the partisans who carried out an attack on a German detachment on the morning of the same day at 6 a.m. IN result In a partisan attack, Hans Welke, who became Germany's first Olympic champion, was killed. The value of Welke's personality for the Third Reich was that he was a confirmation of the theory of the superiority of the white race over blacks and Asians. The death of the athlete caused fury on the part of the party leadership, as well as ordinary Germans.
The fault of the Soviet partisans was that they had not thought through the consequences of the attack. The punitive operation was a response to the murder of such an eminent German. In rage, the 118th detachment, led by former Red Army officer G. Vasyura, arrested and killed part of the group of lumberjacks, and transported the survivors along the tracks of the partisans to nearby Khatyn. By order of Kerner, people, along with young children, of whom there were 75 among 147 residents, were herded into a wooden barn, covered with dry straw, doused with fuel and set on fire. People were suffocating in the smoke, their clothes and hair caught fire, and panic began. The walls of the dilapidated collective farm building, undermined by fire, could not stand it and collapsed. The unfortunates tried to escape, but they were covered by machine gun fire. Only a few of the residents escaped, but the village was wiped off the face of the earth. The youngest resident to die in the fire was only seven weeks old. The massacre was carried out as part of an anti-partisan special operation under the beautiful German name “Winterzauber”, which translated means “Winter Magic”. Such actions turned out to be typical for the Wehrmacht, although they fundamentally violated all international acts and customs of civilized warfare.
Unlike the Ukrainian members of the Bukovina Kuren, many of the former Wehrmacht soldiers repented of their atrocities, some are ashamed only of belonging to the military forces of the Third Reich. Khatyn today is a visited place; former employees of the 118th detachment also came here. To prove their repentance and grief, they walked a six-kilometer-long path to the village. Can this action make up for their guilt? Of course not. However, former fascists publicly acknowledge and realize the abomination and inhumanity of this episode of the war; they do not seek to justify their crimes. The nationalists of Western Ukraine, contrary to all moral norms, preach outrageous ideas, and the authorities indulge in offensive propaganda.
So, the unfortunate Khatyn residents could not die at the hands of Soviet partisans or NKVD officers; there is too much evidence indicating the opposite. It remains to be seen why the Soviet leadership tried to hide information about the crimes of the 118th detachment. The answer is quite simple: most of the policemen who mercilessly killed one and a half hundred civilians were former Red Army soldiers. Captured Soviet soldiers were often asked to take the side of the invaders; few accepted this offer. The Bukovina kuren was composed mainly of traitors who exterminated the fraternal people, cowardly saving their lives in this way. To open information about each of the criminals meant admitting the fact of mass betrayal, including for ideological reasons, among the valiant Soviet army. Apparently, the government never decided to do this.
Exactly 75 years ago, the Belarusian village of Khatyn was destroyed by Nazi punitive forces and their accomplices - OUN policemen. Of the 158 village residents, 149 people died, including 75 children and adolescents under 16 years of age. Two wounded girls who miraculously escaped were able to reach the village of Khvorosteni. The girls' names were Maria Fedarovich and Yulia Klimovich. But in August of the same 1943, the village of Khvorosteni was also burned along with all the inhabitants. Yulia Klimovich died in a fire, and Maria Fedarovich’s head was cut off and her lifeless body was thrown into a well.
Modern pro-Hitler-minded authors, especially Ukrainian false historians and their Belarusian henchmen, are today strenuously trying to shift the blame for the death of Khatyn onto the partisans. They say that the village hid a partisan detachment, for which it paid. Indeed, on the eve of the massacre, a partisan detachment led by Vasily Voronyansky spent the night in Khatyn (this partisan commander would die in September 1943)... But the Germans did not know about it. But they knew that on the way between Logoisk and Pleshchenitsy the partisans damaged the cable military communications. It is this fact that should be considered the starting point of the Khatyn tragedy. Let me emphasize: the Germans did not blame and had no reason to blame the residents of Khatyn for the damage to this ill-fated cable. That is, the cause of the massacre was not the actions of the partisans.
The partisans set up an ambush near the damaged cable, deciding that sooner or later the Germans would come to repair it. But a man personally known to Hitler fell into this ambush. Actually, it was his death that became the reason for the massacre of Khatyn. Early in the morning of March 22, 1943, German captain Hans Wölke, the 1936 Olympic champion, was driving in the direction of Logoisk in his passenger car. He was accompanied in two trucks by militants of the 118th police battalion, formed from members of the OUN-m. Researchers have different opinions about whether Wölke and his accomplices were heading to investigate the causes of the cable damage or were simply going on their next vacation. On the way, Wölke met a group of women from the village of Kozyri who were cutting down forest and asked them about the partisans. The women replied that they had not seen any partisans. And no wonder: after all, the partisans stopped in Khatyn, and not in Kozyry. But, having driven 300 meters, the punitive forces ran into a partisan ambush. A shootout ensued, during which Wölke was killed. The policeman Vasily Meleshko, who took command, called for reinforcements.
Police Captain Hans Wölke was the first German track and field athlete to
conquered olympic gold. The punishers really wanted to take revenge for him.
And no one thought about what kind of devil even invited this “athlete” to Belarus
Andriy Melnyk, one of the leaders of Ukrainian nationalists, collaborationist.
His figure today is less noticeable against the background of Bandera and Shukhevych.
But it is the Melnikovites who bear the blood of the tortured residents of Khatyn.
Soon, not only the entire punitive 118th police battalion (the same one from Melnik’s men), but also the SS Dirlewanger battalion, a specialized punitive unit recruited from criminals and distinguished by its exceptional cruelty, arrived to help him. Since the partisans had safely retreated, the punishers decided to interrogate the women lumberjacks. Or rather, interrogate - that was putting it mildly. 26 women were immediately shot. The rest, realizing that they were facing the same fate, tried to escape - they were caught and sent under escort to Pleshchenitsy. The bulk of the punitive forces moved forward along the route followed by Wolke and went to Khatyn.
The death of the Olympic champion infuriated the Nazis. In addition, Wölke was a personal acquaintance of Hitler, and those who did not save him were in danger of serious trouble. It is this, and nothing else, that should explain the report drawn up by the Nazis about the battle near Khatyn, during which, allegedly, 34 partisans were killed and “several” civilians died from “accidental” bullets and “accidental” fires. I had to quickly save my reputation and defend myself in front of my superiors. Do you remember in the old Soviet cartoon “Funtik”: “Mistress, bullets were whistling overhead!”? Apparently, these same “bullets” whistled over the head of the commander of the 118th police battalion, Major Erich Kerner, when, after the defeat of Khatyn, he drew up his report, which has been preserved to this day in the archives of Belarus.
Invasion of punitive forces into a Soviet village. This photo, naturally, is not from Khatyn.
But the same thing happened there - the residents were kicked out of their houses, and the houses were burned.
The surviving residents of Khatyn after the war talked a lot about their experiences. But none of them spoke about the battle in the village, although it would seem that there was every reason for this - such a battle turned them from helpless victims into heroes of the anti-fascist resistance. The teenager Sasha Zhelobkovich, who survived the massacre, willingly talked about the partisan overnight in the village, and about how he personally escorted three partisans into the forest, where they set up their ambush, in which Wölke was caught. But for some reason he doesn’t say anything about the battle in the village - only about how policemen walked around Khatyn, ransacked houses and drove out residents. They even lifted the seriously ill. Blacksmith Joseph Kaminsky, who miraculously did not burn in the flames of the Khatyn fire and lost his 15-year-old son, also does not remember any battle. Residents of March 22, 1943 greeted an ordinary peaceful morning, not realizing that for most of them it was their last.
However, mention of the battle of Khatyn is found in Soviet sources. " 03/22/43 The first and third companies in ambush destroyed a passenger car, two gendarmerie officers were killed, and several policemen were wounded. After leaving the ambush site, the companies settled in the village of Khatyn, Pleschenichsky district, where they were surrounded by Germans and police. When leaving the encirclement, 3 people were killed and four were wounded. After the battle, the Nazis burned the village of Khatyn,” reports the combat log of the partisan detachment “Avengers,” unless, of course, this quote was invented by a cunning journalist and borrowed from some Bandera sources. Having compared the testimony of the partisans with the stories of the surviving Khatyn residents, the journalist “ Arguments and Facts" Andrei Sidorchik concludes that the partisans, fearing the revenge of the punitive forces on the peasants, after a successful ambush decided to leave Khatyn, but when leaving the village they ran into the punitive forces and gave them a short battle, which the Melnikites did not accept, because they had other plans. Fighting armed partisans is too much of a risk; taking it out on civilians is much easier and safer.Sidorchik’s point of view is also confirmed by the absence of losses among the punitive forces - and if you believe Kerner’s report, his thugs “were fired upon from all houses”; they even had to “use anti-tank guns and mortars” (which allegedly caused the fire). With such intensity of the battle, losses among the punitive forces were inevitable - but there were none. And the Nuremberg Tribunal, which examined in detail, among others, the Khatyn case, did not find an excuse for the executioners of Khatyn.
Executioners of Khatyn from the 118th punitive police battalion
And just think about it: would the peasants support the partisans at the risk of their lives if the occupiers treated them in a civilized manner and in full accordance with the norms international law? Especially when you consider that we are talking specifically about peasants who saw little good from Soviet power. I think the answer is obvious. Also ask yourself the question: did such measures as the massacre of Khatyn contribute to the pacification of the rear, or, on the contrary, aroused anger and a desire to take revenge on the bloodthirsty invaders among the people? Did popular support for the partisans increase or weaken after the massacre of Khatyn? I think the answer is equally obvious. And therefore, all attempts to shift responsibility for the death of Khatyn onto the partisans are nothing more than “pathetic babble of justification,” which was never taken into account by anyone. The criminals were those who burned Khatyn. And not those who spent the night there the night before (which the Germans never found out about until the massacre of Khatyn).
The further course of events was repeatedly recorded in publications of both the Soviet and post-Soviet periods. Melnikov's and Dirlewanger's men surrounded Khatyn, entered it and went home, driving the residents out of their houses. Women were forced to take all their children, including infants, with them. Neither the elderly nor, as I already mentioned, the sick were spared. They didn’t give me time to get ready - they kicked me out into the street, whatever they found me wearing (let me remind you, it’s March, the weather is still far from warm). Those who tried to escape were shot on the spot. The rest, mad with fear, were driven to the collective farm barn, where they were locked. Houses from which residents were expelled were immediately set on fire. The general management of the operation was carried out by Erich Kerner. The people were locked in a barn, which was lined with straw, doused with gasoline and set on fire.
“The whole family hid in the cellar,” recalled Viktor Zhelobkovich, who miraculously survived the tragedy, and was 7 years old in the fateful March 1943. - After some time, the punishers knocked down the door in the cellar and ordered us to go outside. We went out and saw that people were also being kicked out of other huts. We were taken to the collective farm barn. My mother and I found ourselves right at the door, which was then locked from the outside. I saw through the cracks how they brought straw and then set it on fire. When the roof collapsed and clothes began to catch fire, everyone rushed to the gate and broke it down.
Viktor Zhelobkovich, one of the survivors of Khatyn
The punitive forces standing in a semicircle began shooting at the people rushing into the gap from all sides. We ran about five meters away from the gate, my mother pushed me hard, and we fell to the ground. I wanted to get up, but she pressed my head: “Don’t move, son, lie down quietly.” Something hit me hard in the arm and blood began to flow. I told my mother about this, but she did not answer - she was already dead. How long I lay like that, I don’t know. Everything around me was burning, even the hat I was wearing began to smolder. Then the shooting stopped, I realized that the punishers had left, I waited a little longer and stood up. The barn was burning down. Charred corpses lay around. Before my eyes, the Khatyn people died one after another, someone asked for a drink, I brought water in my hat, but everyone was already silent ... "
Similar memories were left by the only surviving adult, the Pole blacksmith Joseph Kaminsky, who lost his wife and four children during the “pacification” of Khatyn: “ Whenever I remember Khatyn, my heart bleeds. On March 22, the fascists arrived and surrounded the village. Fired. People were herded into a barn. The doors were closed. He robbed the village. He set fire to the huts, and then he set fire to the barn. The roofs are thatched - fire rains down on their heads. People broke down the doors. People began to come out. He started hitting with a machine gun... He killed 149 souls. And my 5 souls - four children and a wife.
Blacksmith Joseph Kaminsky survived in Khatyn. But he lost four children.
I, with my 15-year-old son Adam, found myself near the wall, dead citizens were falling on me, people still alive were rushing about in the general crowd, like waves, blood was flowing from the wounded and killed. The burning roof collapsed, the terrible, wild howl of people intensified. Beneath it, the people burning alive were screaming and tossing and turning so much that the roof was actually spinning. I managed to get out from under the corpses and burning people and crawl to the door. Immediately the punisher, a Ukrainian by nationality, standing at the door of the barn, fired at me from a machine gun, as a result I was wounded in the left shoulder. My son Adam, who had been burned before, somehow jumped out of the barn, but 10 meters from the barn, after the shots, he fell.
I, being wounded, so that the punisher would not shoot at me anymore, lay motionless, pretending to be dead, but part of the burning roof fell on my feet and my clothes caught fire. After that, I began to crawl out of the barn, raised my head a little, and saw that the punishers were no longer at the door. Near the barn lay many dead and burnt people. The wounded Etka Albin Feliksovich was also lying there, blood was pouring from his side. Hearing the words of the dying man, Etka Albin, the punisher came up from somewhere, without saying anything, picked me up by the legs and threw me, although I was half-conscious, I did not toss and turn. Then this punisher hit me in the face with his butt and left. I had a burnt rear end body and hands. I was lying there completely barefoot, as I had taken off my burning felt boots when I crawled out of the barn. Soon I heard a signal for the departure of the punitive forces, and when they drove away a little, my son Adam, who was lying not far from me, about three meters away, called me to his side to pull him out of the puddle. I crawled over and lifted him up, but saw that he had been cut in half by bullets. My son Adam still managed to ask: “Is mom alive?” and then died” (end of quote).
So, witnesses show that at first, when the residents realized that they were going to be burned alive, people panicked. They tried to scream, cry, beg for mercy. But when the roof collapsed and their clothes caught fire, the Khatyn residents realized that they had nothing to lose and tried to break down the door. The door of the dilapidated barn could not withstand the pressure of one and a half hundred people and collapsed. The crowd, pushing and crushing each other, in flaming clothes, poured out. But the punishers foresaw this scenario. The Melnikovites met the escaping people with point-blank machine-gun fire. Captured after the war and brought to trial, the punitive forces did not lie, they admitted openly: it was Melnik’s men who fired. And the execution was commanded by Grigory Vasyura, chief of staff of the 118th police battalion. It is noteworthy that after the war, Vasyura managed to evade justice, forged his documents and began to live as a full-fledged Soviet citizen, and even obtained the title of a veteran of the Great Patriotic War - he actually served for some time in the Red Army and was captured at the beginning of the war. Children on May 9 congratulated him on Victory Day... Retribution overtook the former executioner of Khatyn only in 1986.
Grigory Vasyura. Melnikovets, policeman.
One of the main culprits of the Khatyn tragedy.
Shot in 1986.
Together with Viktor Zhelobkovich and Joseph Kaminsky, 12-year-old Anton Baranovsky managed to get out of the burning barn. If 7-year-old Vitya was covered by his mother, and the police did not notice the boy under her dead body, then Anton was wounded in both legs, and Melnik’s men considered him dead. It is noteworthy that after the punitive forces left, the partisans returned to Khatyn - in the hope of finding at least someone alive. They picked up Anton and left. The boy survived, matured and died in the 1960s - when he went to raise virgin soil.
Anton Baranovsky knew many policemen by name. After the war, he spoke a lot to young people, talked about the tragedy of Khatyn - and never hid the truth. Yes, yes, in the USSR it was not customary to tell the truth about Khatyn. The high Soviet authorities were afraid of conflicts between Belarusians and Ukrainians if it became clear what the nationality of the punishers who destroyed Khatyn was. Just in case, the origin of the militants of the 118th police battalion was classified - Khatyn was officially burned by the Germans. And Anton Baranovsky did not hesitate to tell the truth, calling the killers by name. If he had not died in Orenburg, one would have assumed that one of the secret Banderaites, who feigned repentance, had silenced him forever. However, in the steppes of the Orenburg region there could have been Bandera’s rump - either in exile, or even under the guise of volunteers.
Anton Baranovsky. During the massacre of Khatyn
he was 12 years old.
Volodya Yaskevich, his sister Sonya and Sasha Zhelobkovich - yes, the same one who acted as a guide for the partisans heading into the ill-fated ambush - were also able to hide from the punitive forces and avoid the common fate. They didn't end up in the barn with everyone else. And when all the attention of the punitive forces was focused on the people breaking out of the barn, they slowly got out of the village. “The punitive forces broke into the hut,” Sonya later said. - My aunt was killed right there, before my eyes. They pushed me out into the street and pointed me in the direction of Kaminsky’s barn, saying, go there. “Schnell, schnell!” - they shout, and hit the shoulders with a butt. I could barely stay on my feet. She ran away from the house. The punishers returned to my aunt’s house to rob, and I was left alone. And she ran not to the barn, but towards the field. She ran for a long time. Then I hear they are shooting at me, the bullets are whistling.”Sofia Yaskevich and Viktor Zhelobkovich alive until now, remaining the last witnesses of the Khatyn tragedy.
Sofya Yaskevich - post-war photo
In total, in Khatyn, as I already said, 75 children and teenagers under the age of 16 died. Full list the dead are on Wikipedia. I will give only the names of those who were 7 years old or younger on that fateful day. These are Lena Baranovskaya (7 years old), Kostya Novitsky (5 years old), his brothers Anton (4 years old) and Mikhail (2 years old), Kolya Baranovsky (6 years old), Zhydovichi Slavik (7 years old) and Misha (5 years old), Yuzefa Kaminskaya (5 years old), Lenya Zhelobkovich (4 years old), Misha Zhelobkovich (2 years old), Anya Yaskevich (4 years old), Misha Yaskevich (2 years old), Iotka Dominic, Regina, Styopa and Yuzefa (7, 6, 4 and 2 years old), another Yuzefa Iotka, 4 years old (apparently a relative), Drazhynskaya Mikhalina (5 years old), Miranovychi Petya (6 years old), Vasya (3 years old) and Lena (2 years old), Karaban Kostya (4 years old ), Karaban Volodya (2 years), Yaskevich Vladik (7 years), Yaskevich Tolik (7 weeks - !!!), Rudak Anton (5 years), Rudak Sonya (5 years), Rudak Khristina (3 years), Fedarovich Katya (5 years old), Anya Fedarovich (3 years old). 30 people - children only preschool age. What kind of partisan assistants could they be? And even more so - participants in what “persecution of the Church”, what “theomachists”, what “regicides”? To what extent must one have no conscience in order to justify the crimes of Hitler’s executioners with Soviet theomachism, in order to assert, like Priest D. Sysoev, that the Germans exterminated only party, Komsomol and collective farm activists - the direct persecutors of Orthodoxy? But I haven’t listed it yet junior schoolchildren- children aged 7 to 13 years, of whom there were also many among the dead.
"Collapsed Barn" is part of the memorial complex in Khatyn.
When the roof collapsed in the burning barn, where the residents were herded and set on fire, the Khatyn residents realized that they had nothing to lose,
and broke down the door, which could not withstand the weight of one and a half hundred bodies. But outside those who tried to escape
Melnikov's machine guns were waiting.
After the massacre of Khatyn, the partisan command made the appropriate conclusions - and strictly forbade its fighters to spend the night in villages under any circumstances, even alone. Nevertheless, cases of burning Belarusian villages along with the population by fascist and Bandera punitive forces continued. What once again proves the unfounded claims that Khatyn was destroyed for supporting the partisans. It was important for the punishers to get even for the life of Hitler’s favorite and thereby save their own skins - no doubt. They didn't care who to blame for this. Even Tolik Yaskevich is seven weeks old. The rest of the villages were burned just like that - in accordance with the national policy of “liberating living space.” The death of Khatyn also fit perfectly into this policy. And for God's sake, no more talk about partisans!
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Sources:
1) Svetlana Balashova. "How Khatyn was burned."
2) Andrey Sidorchik. "Burn alive: the punitive forces in Khatyn did not spare either the elderly or children."
3) Denis Martinovich. "75 years of the Khatyn tragedy. Who burned the Belarusian village and why? "
4) to the 75th anniversary of the burning of Khatyn. The author, alas, is unknown.
5) Material from Wikipedia
An hour's drive from Minsk there is an unusual village. There are no village houses, no local residents. Only visiting visitors wander here, on whose faces curiosity and horror are mixed.
On March 22, 1943, the Belarusian village of Khatyn turned to ashes. On this day, a battle took place near Khatyn - the partisans fired at a fascist convoy, and several German officers were killed in the shootout. In retaliation, the enraged Germans decided to massacre the innocent residents of a nearby village.
The Nazis broke into Khatyn. Old people, women, and children were thrown out of their houses and driven with rifle butts to the collective farm barn. When all the villagers were gathered here, the barn was locked, lined with straw and set on fire.
Residents desperately tried to escape; under the pressure of people, the barn gates collapsed. But everyone who ran out was shot by the Nazis with machine guns. Having finished massacring the people, the Germans plundered the village and burned it to the ground.
A total of 149 people died, only a few residents survived.
During the years of occupation of Belarus, hundreds of similar tragedies occurred. The destruction of civilians was a deliberate policy fascist Germany. The Slavs, as “subhumans,” should have been wiped off the face of the earth. To preserve the memory of the victims of civilians and their courage in the fight against fascism, a memorial complex was opened on the site of the destroyed village of Khatyn in 1969.
There is nothing pretentious or eye-catching here. And at the same time, every detail of the museum composition is amazing. The main material of the complex’s structures is gray granite. Ash color.
In the center of the memorial is the sculpture “The Unconquered Man” - an elderly man holding a murdered child in his arms. This monument had a real prototype. Joseph Kaminsky, a village blacksmith, miraculously survived. Burnt, he came to his senses at night, when the Germans had already left the ashes. Joseph found his son among the corpses. The seriously wounded boy died in his father's arms.
Sculpture “The Unconquered Man”
The central village street is a row of 26 obelisks, according to the number of destroyed houses in Khatyn. Each obelisk is a burnt chimney. There are plaques on the obelisks that list the names of the residents of the house. Some families have 7-9 children. At the top of the obelisks there are bells. Every 30 seconds the death toll rings.
An obelisk is a chimney with a bell on top.
List of surnames of each house
In Khatyn there is a unique monument - “Village Cemetery”. These are 185 graves, each a symbol of a Belarusian village destroyed by the Nazis. The 186th village is Khatyn itself. Each grave has a red pedestal resembling a flame, a sign that the village was burned. On the pedestal there is an urn with the soil of this village. The name of the village and its district are indicated on the grave.
The expressive element of the complex is the “Trees of Life”. On the obelisks, stylized as trees, there are leaf tablets with the names of 433 villages. These villages were destroyed but rebuilt after the war.
Eternal flame surrounded by three birch trees - a memory that in the Great Patriotic War Every fourth resident of Belarus died.
About 260 death camps were located on Belarusian soil. A wall of memorial slabs with the names of places where people were exterminated reminds us of this. At each slab there are flowers as a sign of memory. Some stoves have toys, and on the stove is the name of an orphanage...
On the occasion of the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Belarus, in 2004, a photo gallery appeared in Khatyn. Here, many documents and photographs tell about the atrocities of fascism and the fight against the occupiers.
Not on any of the most detailed geographical map you won't find this Belarusian village today. It was destroyed by the Nazis in the spring of 1943.
This happened on March 22, 1943. The brutal fascists burst into the village of Khatyn and surrounded it. The villagers did not know anything that in the morning, 6 km from Khatyn, partisans fired at a fascist convoy and as a result of the attack, a German officer was killed. But the Nazis have already sentenced innocent people to death. The entire population of Khatyn, young and old - old people, women, children - were kicked out of their homes and driven into a collective farm barn. The butts of machine guns were used to lift the sick and old people out of bed; they 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; there were the same number of children in the family of Kazimir and Elena Iotko, the youngest was only one year old. Vera Yaskevich and her seven-week-old son Tolik were driven into the barn. Lenochka Yaskevich first hid in the yard, and then decided to take safe refuge in the forest. The Nazis' bullets could not catch up with the running girl. Then one of the fascists rushed after her, caught up with her, and shot her in front of her father, distraught with grief. Together with the residents of Khatyn, a resident of the village of Yurkovichi, Anton Kunkevich, and a resident of the village of Kameno, Kristina Slonskaya, who happened to be in the village of Khatyn at that time, were driven into the barn.
Not a single adult could go unnoticed. Only three children - Volodya Yaskevich, his sister Sonya Yaskevich and Sasha Zhelobkovich - managed to escape from the Nazis. When the entire population of the village was in the barn, the Nazis locked the doors of the barn, lined it with straw, doused it with gasoline and set it on fire. The wooden barn instantly caught fire. Children were suffocating and crying in the smoke. The adults tried to save the children. Under the pressure of dozens of human bodies, the doors could not stand it and collapsed. In burning clothes, gripped by horror, people rushed to run, but those who escaped from the flames were shot in cold blood by the Nazis from machine guns and machine guns. 149 people died, including 75 children under 16 years of age. The village was plundered and burned to the ground.
Two girls from the Klimovich and Fedorovich families - Maria Fedorovich and Yulia Klimovich - miraculously managed to get out of the burning barn and crawl to the forest. Burnt and barely alive, they were picked up by residents of the village of Khvorosteni, Kamensky village council. But this village was soon burned by the Nazis and both girls died.
Only two of the children in the barn survived - seven-year-old Viktor Zhelobkovich and twelve-year-old Anton Baranovsky. When terrified people were running out of the burning barn in burning clothes, Anna Zhelobkovich ran out along with other village residents. She held her seven-year-old son Vitya tightly by the hand. The mortally wounded woman, falling, covered her son with herself. The child, wounded in the arm, 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 took him for dead.
The burnt and wounded children were picked up and came out by residents of neighboring villages. After the war, the children were raised in an orphanage in the city. Pleshchenitsy.
The only adult witness to the Khatyn tragedy, 56-year-old village blacksmith Joseph Kaminsky, burned and wounded, regained consciousness late at night, when the Nazis were no longer in the village. He had to endure another severe blow: among the corpses of his fellow villagers, he found his wounded son. The boy was fatally wounded in the stomach and received severe burns. He died in his father's arms.
This tragic moment in the life of Joseph Kaminsky formed the basis for the creation of the only sculpture of the Khatyn memorial complex - “The Unconquered Man”.
The tragedy of Khatyn is one of thousands of facts testifying to the deliberate policy of genocide towards the population of Belarus, which was carried out by the Nazis throughout the entire period of occupation. Hundreds of similar tragedies occurred during the three years of occupation (1941-1944) on Belarusian soil.
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