Table of contents:
- Why did they burn Khatyn?
- Who destroyed the village?
- Did all the inhabitants of the Khatyn village die?
- How was the fate of the punishers?
- Who decided to perpetuate the memory of the burnt village?
- How to learn more about the tragedy in Khatyn?
Video: 76 years since the tragedy in Khatyn: Who and why destroyed the Belarusian village
2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55
76 years ago, on March 22, 1943, the Belarusian village of Khatyn was destroyed by a squad of punishers. 149 villagers were burned to death or were shot. After the Great Patriotic War, Khatyn became a symbol of the mass destruction of civilians on the territory of the USSR occupied by Germany. And everyone who heard about this tragedy wondered: who and why destroyed the Belarusian village?
Why did they burn Khatyn?
On the morning of March 22, the police battalion received an order to eliminate the damaged communication line between Logoisk and the village of Pleschenitsy. During the mission, the battalion ran into a partisan ambush and lost three people in a firefight. One of those killed was Hans Welke, the 1936 Olympic shot put champion. He was the first German to win an athletics competition. Welke was personally congratulated by Hitler himself.
The Nazis decided to avenge the death of the Fuhrer's pet. First, they went to the village of Kozyri, because they decided that the partisans had come from this particular settlement, and they shot 26 lumberjacks there. But then it turned out that Velke was killed by partisans who spent the night in Khatyn. And it was this village that the Nazis chose to intimidate the inhabitants of the area.
Who destroyed the village?
Participants in the destruction of the inhabitants of the village of Khatyn - the 118th battalion of the German auxiliary security police and the SS assault brigade "Dirlewanger". The first to do the main work. They drove all the inhabitants of Khatyn into a collective farm shed, threw a bolt on the door, surrounded the shed with straw and set it on fire. When, under the pressure of people mad with fear, the door collapsed, civilians began to shoot from a heavy machine gun and from machine guns.
It should be noted that today on various Internet forums the version is being circulated that the punitive battalion was Ukrainian. But actually it is not. Firstly, this battalion was never called that way. And secondly, the whole connection of this battalion with Ukraine is that it was formed in Kiev from prisoners of war of the Red Army who were captured on the outskirts of the Ukrainian capital. In 118, not only Ukrainians served, but also Russians, as well as people of other nationalities, so it is worth assessing only their actions, and not their nationality.
Did all the inhabitants of the Khatyn village die?
Not all died, some residents survived. Of the adults, only 56-year-old blacksmith Joseph Kaminsky survived, who that morning went into the forest for brushwood. His 15-year-old son died in the Khatyn fire. It was the father and son Kaminsky who became the prototypes of the heroes of the monument, which was installed in Khatyn.
Two girls still survived - Yulia Klimovich and Maria Fedorovich. They managed to get out of the burning barn and escape to a neighboring village. But fate turned out to be cruel to them. Although their neighbors left, they later perished when the Nazis burned down the neighboring village as well.
Survived by Anton Baranovsky, who was 12 years old at that time and whom the punishers took for the dead. Viktor Zhelobkovich (he was 7 years old) survived because he hid under the body of his murdered mother. 9-year-old Sofya Yaskevich, 13-year-old Vladimir Yaskevich and 13-year-old Alexander Zhelobkovich miraculously managed to hide when people were herded into the barn, and therefore survived.
Today only two of the survivors survived - Sofya Yaskevich and Viktor Zhelobkovich. The rest died. In total, 149 civilians were killed in Khatyn, 75 of whom were children.
How was the fate of the punishers?
The fate of the punishers was different. In the 1970s, Stepan Sakhno was sentenced to 25 years in prison. In 1975, the battalion platoon commander Vasily Meleshko was shot. Vladimirk Katryuk managed to hide in Canada. They found out about his past only in the late 1990s, but the Canadian side did not betray the villain. In 2015, he died a natural death.
Grigory Vasyura, the battalion chief of staff, who was called the chief executioner of Khatyn, managed to hide his past until the mid-1980s. After the war, he became director of the economic part of the Velikodymersky state farm, was awarded the Veteran of Labor medal, became an honorary cadet of the Kalinin Kiev Military School of Communications, and more than once appeared in front of young people in the guise of a front-line soldier. In 1985 he was sentenced to death.
Who decided to perpetuate the memory of the burnt village?
The idea of creating a memorial complex on the site of the burnt down Khatyn belonged to the First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Belarus Kirill Mazurov. In his memoirs, he wrote:
After Mazurov was promoted to Moscow in 1965, the construction of the memorial was carried out under the leadership of Pyotr Masherov, who took his place. In March 1967, a competition was announced, the winner of which was a team of architects Valentin Zankovich, architects Yuri Gradov, Leonid Levin and sculptor Sergei Selikhanov. The inauguration of the memorial took place in the summer of 1969. The memorial has become not just a memory of a specific burnt village, but a symbol of all Belarusian villages burned down during that terrible war. In total, there were more than 9,000 such villages in Belarus, and 186 of them were never rebuilt.
Over the years of its existence, the memorial has been visited by millions of people.
How to learn more about the tragedy in Khatyn?
Those who are wondering what to read or see about the tragic history of Khatyn should turn to the work of the writer Ales Adamovich. He wrote the works "The Punishers" and "The Khatyn Tale". On their basis, director Elem Klimov made the film "Come and See", which was released in 1985. This is the story of a Belarusian boy Flera, who witnessed a terrible punitive action and in a matter of days turned from a cheerful teenager into an old man. Film experts called this film one of the greatest films about the war.
Modern tourists who come to the land of blue lakes are attracted by three medieval castles of the "land of elves" of Belarus, which are worth seeing with your own eyes.
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