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Khatyn massacre

Coordinates:54°20′06″N27°56′42″E/ 54.33500°N 27.94500°E/54.33500; 27.94500
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This article is about the massacre of Belarusian civilians in 1943. For the massacre of Polish officers in 1940, seeKatyn massacre.
Khatyn massacre
Part of theEastern Front of World War II
LocationKhatyn village[Wikidata],Lahoysk District,Minsk Region,Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic,Soviet Union
Coordinates54°20′06″N27°56′42″E/ 54.33500°N 27.94500°E/54.33500; 27.94500
Date22 March 1943
TargetBelarusians
WeaponsImmolationandshooting
Deaths149
Injured2
PerpetratorsSchutzmannschaft Battalion 118of theUkrainian Auxiliary Police
Dirlewanger Brigade
MotiveRetaliation forSoviet partisanattack
ConvictedVasyl Meleshko
Hryhoriy Vasiura
Websitekhatyn.by/en/the-tragedy-of-khatyn

Khatyn(Belarusian:Хаты́нь,romanized:Chatyń,pronounced[xaˈtɨnʲ];Russian:Хаты́нь,pronounced[xɐˈtɨnʲ]) was a village of 26 houses and 157 inhabitants inBelarus,inLahoysk Raion,Minsk Region,50 km away from Minsk. On 22 March 1943, almost the entire population of the village wasmassacredby theSchutzmannschaft Battalion 118in retaliation for an attack on German troops bySoviet partisans.

The battalion was composed of primarily Ukrainian and Belorussiancollaboratorsand assisted by theDirlewangerWaffen-SSspecial battalion.[1][2][3]

Background

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The massacre was not an unusual incident in Belarus during World War II. At least 5,295 Belarusian settlements were burned and destroyed by the Nazis, and often all their inhabitants were killed (some amounting to as many as 1,500 victims) as a punishment for collaboration withpartisans.In theVitebskregion, 243 villages were burned down twice, 83 villages three times, and 22 villages were burned down four or more times. In theMinskregion, 92 villages were burned down twice, 40 villages three times, nine villages four times, and six villages five or more times.[4]Altogether, over 2,000,000 people were killed in Belarus during the three years of Nazi occupation, almost a quarter of the region's population.[5][6]

Massacre

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On 22 March 1943, a German convoy was attacked bySoviet partisansnear Kozyri village, 6 km away from Khatyn, resulting in the deaths of four police officers ofSchutzmannschaft Battalion 118.Among the dead was HauptmannHans Woellke,the battalion's commanding officer.[7]

Battalion 118 called for help from troops of theDirlewanger Brigade,a unit mostly composed of war criminals recruited forNazi security warfaretasks. Supervised byHryhoriy Vasiurathey together entered the village and drove the inhabitants from their houses and into a shed, which was then covered with straw and set on fire.[8]The trapped people managed to break down the front doors, but in trying to escape, were killed by machine gun fire. Around 149 people, including 75 children under 16 years of age, were killed due to burning, shooting or smoke inhalation. The village was then looted and burned to the ground.[9]

Survivors

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Bell tower at the Khatyn Memorial

Eight inhabitants of the village survived, of whom six witnessed the massacre – five children and an adult.

  1. Twelve-year-old Anton Iosifovich Baranovsky (1930–1969) was left for dead with wounds in both legs.[10]His injuries were treated by partisans. Five months after the opening of the Memorial, Baranovsky died in unclear circumstances.
  2. The only adult survivor of the massacre, 56-year-old village smith Yuzif Kaminsky (1887–1973), recovered consciousness with wounds and burns after the killers had left. He supposedly found his burned son, who later died in his arms. This incident was later commemorated with a statue at the Khatyn Memorial.[10]
  3. Another 12-year-old boy, Alexander Petrovich Zhelobkovich (1930–1994), escaped from the village before the soldiers were able to fully surround it. His mother woke him up and put him on a horse, on which he escaped to a nearby village. After the war, he served in the armed forces and became a reserve lieutenant colonel.[10]
  4. Vladimir Antonovich Yaskevich (1930–2008) hid in a potato pit 200 meters from his family house. Two soldiers noticed the boy, but spared him. Vladimir noted that they spoke German between themselves, not Ukrainian.[11]
  5. Sofia Antonovna Yaskevich (later Fiokhina) (1934–2020), Vladimir's sister, hid in the cellar from the early morning of the massacre. As an adult she worked as a typist, and was last reported living in Minsk.[12]
  6. Viktor Andreevich Zhelobkovich (1934–2020), a seven-year-old boy, survived the fire in the shed under the corpse of his mother.[12]As an adult, he worked at the design office of precise engineering, and was also reported to be living in Minsk.[12]

Two other Khatyn women survived because they were away from the village that day.

  • Tatyana Vasilyevna Karaban (1910 – c. 2000s) was visiting relatives in a neighboring village, Seredniaya.[13]
  • Sofya Klimovich, a relative of Karaban, was also visiting a nearby village. After the war she worked at the Memorial for several years.[13]

Post-war trials

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In 1946, the officer who ordered the massacre, Bruno Pavel, was prosecuted at theRiga Trialand executed. Ivan Melnichenko, the leader of the Dirlewanger unit which committed the massacre, was fatally shot byNKVDagents on 26 February 1946 while resisting arrest. Multiple collaborators who participated in the massacre were tried in the 1960s and 1970s. Some of them were executed.[14]

The commander of one of the platoons of 118th Schutzmannschaft Battalion, former Sovietjunior lieutenantVasyl Meleshko,was tried in a Soviet court and executed in 1975.

The chief of staff of 118th Schutzmannschaft Battalion, formerRed Armysenior lieutenantHryhoriy Vasiura,was tried in Minsk in 1986 and found guilty of all his crimes. He was sentenced to death by the verdict of the military tribunal of theBelorussian Military District.Vasiura was executed in 1987.

The case and the trial of the main executioner of Khatyn was not given much publicity in the media; the leaders of the Soviet republics worried about the inviolability of unity between theBelarusianandUkrainianpeoples.

Khatyn Memorial

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"Cemetery of villages" with 185 tombs. Each tomb symbolizes a particular village in Belarus which was burned together with its population.

Khatyn became a symbol ofmass killingsof the civilian population during the fighting betweenpartisans,German troops, and collaborators. In 1969, it was named the nationalwar memorialof theByelorussian SSR.[15]Among the best-recognized symbols of the memorial complex is a monument with threebirchtrees, with aneternal flameinstead of a fourth tree, a tribute to the one in every fourBelarusianswho died in the war.[5]There is also a statue of Yuzif Kaminsky carrying his dying son, and a wall with niches to represent the victims of all theconcentration camps,with large niches representing those with more than 20,000 victims. Bells ring every 30 seconds to commemorate the rate at which Belarusian lives were lost throughout the duration of the Second World War.

Part of the memorial is aCemetery of villageswith 185 tombs. Each tomb symbolizes a particular village in Belarus that was torched along with its population.

Among the foreign leaders who have visited the Khatyn Memorial during their time in office areRichard Nixonof theUS,Fidel CastroofCuba,Rajiv GandhiofIndia,Yasser Arafatof thePLO,andJiang ZeminofChina.[16]

According toNorman Davies,the Khatyn massacre was deliberately exploited by the Soviet authorities to cover up theKatyn massacre,and this was a major reason for erecting the memorial – it was done in order to cause confusion with Katyn among foreign visitors.[17]

In 2004, the Memorial was renovated. According to 2011 data, the Memorial was in the top ten of the most attended tourist sites in Belarus – that year it was visited by 182,000 people.[18]

  • Panorama of the central part of the Khatyn Memorial
    Panorama of the central part of the Khatyn Memorial
  • Another view of the Cemetery of Villages.
    Another view of the Cemetery of Villages.
  • Village names on memorial.
    Village names on memorial.
  • A foreign delegation from Azerbaijan, China, Russia, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan at the memorial (specifically the statue of Yuzif Kaminsky).
    A foreign delegation fromAzerbaijan,China,Russia,KazakhstanandUzbekistanat the memorial (specifically the statue of Yuzif Kaminsky).

See also

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References

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  1. ^Zur Geschichte der Ordnungspolizei 1936–1942, Teil II, Georg Tessin, Dies Satbe und Truppeneinheiten der Ordnungspolizei, Koblenz 1957, s. 172–173
  2. ^Leonid D. Grenkevich;David M. Glantz(1999).The Soviet Partisan Movement, 1941–1944: A Critical Historiographical Analysis.London: Routledge. pp. 133–134.ISBN0-7146-4874-4.... Only recently it was revealed that Khatyn village was not destroyed by the Germans, but instead was destroyed by a police battalion made up of Ukrainians and Belorussians....
  3. ^Per A. Rudling, "Terror and Local Collaboration in Occupied Belorussia: The Case of Schutzmannschaft Battalion 118. Part One: Background", Historical Yearbook of the Nicolae Iorga History Institute (Bucharest) 8 (2011), pp. 202–203
  4. ^"The tragedy of Khatyn – Genocide policy / Punitive Operations".Site Memorial Complex Khatyn.2005. Archived fromthe originalon 4 February 2012.Retrieved1 July2014.
  5. ^abVitali Silitski (May 2005)."Belarus: A Partisan Reality Show"(PDF).Transitions Online:5. Archived fromthe original(PDF)on 13 October 2006.Retrieved26 August2006.
  6. ^"The tragedy of Khatyn - Genocide policy".SMC Khatyn. 2005.Archivedfrom the original on 10 March 2015.
  7. ^"The tragedy of Khatyn – Partisan attack".SMC Khatyn. 2005. Archived fromthe originalon 11 October 2018.
  8. ^""Khatyn" – The tragedy of Khatyn ".26 May 2018. Archived fromthe originalon 26 May 2018.Retrieved22 March2021.
  9. ^""Khatyn" – The tragedy of Khatyn ".21 July 2018. Archived fromthe originalon 21 July 2018.Retrieved22 March2021.
  10. ^abc""Khatyn" – The tragedy of Khatyn | Witnesses to the tragedy ".4 February 2020. Archived fromthe originalon 4 February 2020.Retrieved22 March2021.
  11. ^"Правда о том, кто убивал Хатынь: палачи и подручные | UArgument".10 February 2018. Archived fromthe originalon 10 February 2018.Retrieved22 March2021.
  12. ^abc"The tragedy of Khatyn - Witnesses".SMC Khatyn.2005. Archived fromthe originalon 4 February 2020.
  13. ^abMikhail Shimansky (2013)."Непокоренная Хатынь [Undefeated Khatyn]"..sb.by(in Belarusian). РЭСПУБЛІКА.Retrieved1 July2014.
  14. ^"Special punitive team SS Dirlewanger. The fate of the punishers from the Dirlewanger team (33 photos)".kerchtt.ru.Retrieved5 October2022.
  15. ^Khatyn Memorialbelta.by 5 July 2019 Archived6 July 2019 at theWayback Machine
  16. ^"Хатынь – интернациональный символ антивоенных акций (Khatyn: international symbol of anti-war actions)".khatyn.by(in Russian). ГМК «Хатынь». 2005. Archived fromthe originalon 29 April 2005.Retrieved26 August2006.
  17. ^Davies, Norman (1996).Europe: A History.Oxford University Press. p.1005.ISBN0-19-820171-0.
  18. ^"Исторические" нестыковки "преследуют Хатынь даже спустя 70 лет после трагедии".interfax.by(in Russian). Archived fromthe originalon 24 December 2003.Retrieved22 March2021.
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