You will not find this Belarusian village on any of the most detailed geographical maps today. It was destroyed by the Nazis in the spring of 1943.
Khatyn - a former village of the Logoisk district of the Minsk region of Belarus - has become a symbol of the tragedy of the Belarusian people, a mournful page in the history of the Great Patriotic War.
On March 22, 1943, a terrible tragedy occurred in the Belarusian village of Khatyn. The 118th security police battalion entered the village of Khatyn and surrounded it. The entire population of Khatyn, young and old - old people, women, children, were driven out of their homes and driven into a 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. When all the people were gathered in the shed, the punishers locked the doors, surrounded the shed with straw, doused it with gasoline and set it on fire. 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.
Who are the executioners? Interesting Facts
What do we know about those who destroyed the village of Khatyn along with all its inhabitants? It turns out that the village of Khatyn in Belarus was destroyed not by the Germans, but by a special Sonderkommando (the 118th police battalion), which consisted overwhelmingly of Ukrainian policemen. The battalion was commanded by the former Polish major Smovsky, the chief of staff - the former senior lieutenant of the Red Army Grigory Vasyura, the platoon commander - the former lieutenant of the Red Army Vasily Meleshko. The German "chief" of the 118th auxiliary battalion was Police Major Erich Kerner.
Grigory Vasyura led the punitive operation. Moreover, after the war, he hid the fact of his service in the police and the SS and even became the director of the economic part of the Velikodymersky state farm (Ukraine). In 1984, he was awarded the Veteran of Labor medal, became an honorary cadet of the Kalinin Kyiv Military School of Communications, and repeatedly spoke to young people in the guise of a front-line signalman.
Vasyura Grigory, Khatyn executioner In 1985, Vasyura, as a combat veteran, demanded the Order of the Patriotic War for himself. In the archives, the employees found only the fact that Vasyura went missing in June 1941, but further searches in the archives forced us to reconsider some of the results of the interrogation of Vasily Meleshko (Vasyura's former colleague), who was shot in 1975 for collaborating with the invaders and participating in the burning of the village Khatyn. In November 1986, Vasyura was arrested, and a criminal case was opened "due to newly discovered circumstances." Bit by bit, the testimony of 26 witnesses was collected, the trial was closed. Vasyura denied his guilt. On December 26, 1986, the tribunal of the Belarusian Military District, led by Judge Viktor Glazkov, sentenced Grigory Nikitovich Vasyura, as an accomplice of the Nazi invaders, to death by firing squad.
Now let's move on to clarifying the reasons and circumstances that eventually led to the destruction of the Belarusian village of Khatyn.
Reasons for the punitive operation
The tragic story of the Belarusian village of Khatyn, which by that time had been in the zone of German occupation for a year and a half, began on March 21, 1943, when a partisan detachment of Vasily Voronyansky spent the night in it. On the morning of March 22, a group of partisans deliberately damaged the communication line of the Nazis. A unit of the 118th police security battalion went to eliminate the damaged communication line. Here, the policemen fell into a partisan ambush set up by the Avenger detachment of the Uncle Vasya brigade. Among the killed Nazis was the chief commander of the first company, Hauptmann Hans Welke. It should be noted that this officer, despite his relatively low rank, was well known to Hitler and enjoyed his special patronage. The fact is that in 1936 he became the winner of the Olympic Games in the shot put competition.
Pursuing the attacking fighters, the punishers carefully combed the forest surrounding them and went to Khatyn. The war on the territory of occupied Belarus at that time was conducted mainly by partisan detachments, which enjoyed the support of the local population, which gave them temporary shelter and supplied them with food. Knowing this, the punishers surrounded the village in the evening of the same day.
Survivors after the tragedy
Two girls managed to escape then - Maria Fedorovich and Yulia Klimovich, who miraculously managed to get out of the burning barn and crawl to the forest, where they were picked up by the inhabitants of the village of Khvorosteni of the Kamensky village council (later this village was burned by the invaders, and both girls died). The village itself was completely destroyed.
Of the children who were in the barn, seven-year-old Viktor Zhelobkovich and twelve-year-old Anton Baranovsky survived. Vitya hid under the body of his mother, who covered her son with herself; the child, wounded in the arm, lay under the corpse of his mother until the executioners left the village. Anton Baranovsky was wounded in the leg by a bullet, and the SS took 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. Three more - Volodya Yaskevich, his sister Sonya and Sasha Zhelobkovich - also managed to escape from the Nazis.
In the photo Viktor Zhelobkovich, Sofia Klimovich and Vladimir Yaskevich Anton Baranovsky never hid the truth about the events in Khatyn, spoke openly about it, knew the names of many policemen who burned people. In December 1969 - 5 months after the opening of the memorial complex - Anton died under unclear circumstances.
Of the adult residents of the village, only the 56-year-old village blacksmith Iosif Iosifovich Kaminsky survived. Burnt and wounded, he regained consciousness only late at night, when the punitive detachments left the village. He had to endure another heavy blow: among the corpses of his fellow villagers, he found his son Adam. 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 was the basis for the creation of the only sculpture of the memorial complex "Khatyn" - "Unbowed Man".
Khatyn history of tragedy. Photo
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Khatyn history of tragedy. Video film
- Documentary. "Executioners of Khatyn"
- Feature film "Come and See" about the tragic events in Khatyn
Khatyn. Memorial Complex
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Ilshat Mukhametyanov © IA REGNUM
Khatyn
“Dear comrades. I ask that this does not happen again ... So that this does not happen anymore ”-voiceJoseph Kaminsky breaks down.
On this day, 74 years ago, the Belarusian village of Khatyn was destroyed. In 1969, a memorial of the same name was opened in its place, reminiscent of hundreds of burned villages. The policy of "scorched earth" was applied by Nazi Germany to the Soviet Union as well.
Nobody here. Quiet in Khatyn. Only the ringing of bells is heard here every 30 seconds. There is neither horror nor fear; there is no anxiety, and there is no peace either. The silence is mesmerizing. You are in a daze. Just you and the field. Granite roof where the burning ceiling fell on heads. Mass grave and monument-symbol "Unconquered Man". Crowns of log cabins on the site of former houses, obelisks in the form of chimneys. Paths made of reinforced concrete slabs in ash color. "Cemetery of the villages", niches of the "Walls of Memory", reminiscent of places of mass extermination of people, an ever-burning flame... Everything here matters.
Vіkentsyklyapedyst
Memorial plaque on the house in Minsk where the sculptor Sergei Selikhanov lived
Khatyn
On June 22, 1941, Nazi Germany attacked the Soviet Union. The most powerful of the three groups of troops - "Center" - was deployed towards the capital. According to the original plan, she was supposed to defeat the Soviet troops in Belarus, and then advance on Moscow.
The entire territory of the republic was occupied by the end of August 1941. The invaders set up a regime of merciless suppression of any resistance.
The Belarusian village of Khatyn was destroyed in 1943.
“As I remember Khatyn, my heart bleeds so. On March 22, a fascist raided and surrounded the village. Fired. The people were herded into the barn. The doors closed. Chose the village. He set fire to the huts, and then set fire to the shed. The roofs are thatched - the fire pours on the heads. People broke down the door. People started to come out. He began to beat with a machine gun ... Ditched 149 souls. And my 5 souls - four children and a wife. Dear comrades. I ask that this does not happen anymore ... So that this does not happen again ”- the voice of Joseph Kaminsky breaks. The sole surviving adult spoke at the opening of the Khatyn memorial complex on July 5, 1969.
On the day of the tragedy, partisans fired on a German convoy near the village. As a result of the attack, the chief commander of the first company Hauptmann (captain) of the police was killed. It turned out to be Hans Wölke, the 1936 Olympic champion in shot put. The famous athlete, allegedly personally acquainted with Adolf Hitler.
Hans Wolke. 1936
The aggression of the punitive lava of inhuman cruelty splashed out on the civilian population, which supported the partisans. By evening they broke into the village of Khatyn. When all the inhabitants were driven into the shed, the Nazis locked the doors, surrounded it with straw, doused it with gasoline and set it on fire. The wooden building immediately caught fire. Children were choking and crying in the smoke. The adults tried to save them. 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 people died, 75 of them were children. The village was looted and burned to the ground.
Six people survived that tragedy.
Two more girls could have escaped. Maria Fedorovich and Yulia Klimovich miraculously got out of the burning shed and crawled 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. Much later, shortly after the opening of the memorial, the flames of the conflagration will overtake one of the six survivors - Anton Baranovsky.
In 1943, together with Viktor Zhelobkovich, he escaped from a blazing barn. When terrified people ran out of there, in burning clothes, Anna Zhelobkovich ran out together with others. She firmly held the hand of her seven-year-old son Vitya. The mortally wounded woman, falling, covered him with herself. The child lay under the mother's body 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.
Three more: Volodya and Sonya Yaskevich, Sasha Zhelobkovich - were able to escape from the punishers.
The only adult witness to the Khatyn massacre was the 56-year-old village blacksmith Iosif Kaminsky. Among the dead fellow villagers, he found his son. The boy was mortally wounded in the stomach, received severe burns and died in his father's arms.
Iosif Kaminsky, Anton Baranovsky, Victor Zhelobkovich
The tragic fate of Khatyn befell six hundred and twenty-eight Belarusian villages.
Belarus, eastern Poland, part of Lithuania and Latvia were liberated from the Nazis in the summer of 1944. During the large-scale offensive operation "Bagration", the Army Group "Center" defeated the Soviet troops. One of the largest military operations in the history of mankind led to the heaviest losses of the Wehrmacht. Subsequently, the aggressor could not make up for these losses.
In January 1966, a decision was made to create the Khatyn memorial complex.
Scorched earth policy
Having captured in 1941-1942. western and southwestern regions of the USSR, Nazi Germany established a brutal occupation regime. Hundreds of villages were swept off the face of the earth, the population was exterminated, driven into death camps or into fascist slavery.
The genocide was expressed, among other things, in the destruction of settlements along with the inhabitants. The horrors of the burned villages were written by eyewitnesses, recorded from their words, retold by children and grandchildren. Memories, memories... Revived pictures of the memory of those who miraculously survived.
Sergei Emelyantsev from the village of Kleevichi, Mogilev region, recalls: “When ours defeated them, in September 1943, the retreating Germans burned my native village.
The people hid in the forest. We managed to evacuate." Six months before that, the villages of Panki and Kavychichi were burned nearby. "Many people died. They were herded into a barn and set on fire. Only a few managed to survive." Sergei Terekhovich was then 11 years old. Today he lives in Bashkortostan.
The woman who lost everything
The highest authorities of the Third Reich developed plans in advance for waging against the USSR not an ordinary, but a merciless war of annihilation, its economic exploitation and dismemberment, as well as a plan for the colonization of the European part. Hitler declared that the war against the USSR would be "the complete opposite of a normal war in the West and North of Europe", that its ultimate goal was "total destruction" and "the destruction of Russia as a state."
It was necessary to achieve the result without pity and responsibility. On April 28, 1941, the German Field Marshal Walter von Brauchitsch issued an order emphasizing that the commanders - military and special punitive units of the Nazi security service (SD) - are responsible for carrying out actions to destroy in the rear without trial or investigation of communists, Jews and "other radical elements". Two weeks later, the chief of staff of the OKW, Wilhelm Keitel, issued a decree that relieved Wehrmacht soldiers and officers of responsibility for future criminal offenses in the occupied territory of the USSR. They were ordered to be ruthless, to shoot on the spot, without trial or investigation, anyone who would show even the slightest resistance or sympathize with the partisans. “This struggle requires merciless and decisive action against the Bolshevik instigators, partisans, saboteurs, Jews and the complete suppression of any attempt at active or passive resistance,” one of the accompanying annexes to the Barbarossa directive said.
Punishers in the village
In 1941, Hitler had the master plan "Ost" ready. It provided for from the territory of the Czech Republic, Poland, the Baltic republics, Ukraine and Belarus, where, according to the calculation of SS Oberführer Konrad Meyer, 45 million people lived, evict 31 million people “unwanted by racial indicators” beyond the Urals, and “Germanize” the rest, i.e. turn into slaves of the German conquerors. At that time, Wehrmacht soldiers and officers were handed memos that said: “... Kill every Russian, Soviet, do not stop, if you have an old man or a woman, a girl or a boy in front of you - kill, by doing this you will save yourself from death, ensure the future of your family and be glorified forever."
Village on fire
Autumn-winter 1943-1944 destructive policies have assumed the widest scale. In the last period of the occupation, the role of the Nazi Wehrmacht in implementing the policy of total devastation was manifested in the creation of special teams of arsonists.
From a letter from a non-commissioned officer of the 473rd German Infantry Regiment of the 253rd Infantry Division Karl Peters on the implementation of the scorched earth policy:
"Dear Gerda!
... Now I'm standing in Bryansk. The front line passes through the city. But this is no longer a city, but a pile of ruins. Yes, when we surrender the city, we leave only the ruins ... Huge fires turn night into day. Believe me, an Englishman is not able to achieve such destruction with any bombs ... And if we retreat to the border, then the Russians will not have a single city, not a single village from the Volga to the German border. And he probably won't be able to handle it. Yes, “total war” reigns here in its highest perfection. What is happening here is something unprecedented in world history ... "
The troops of Nazi Germany, retreating from the occupied territories, turned "settlements into a desert zone during the retreat of the troops" .
Only in Belarus, during the period of punitive operations, over 5295 villages were destroyed by the Nazis, along with all or part of the population. In the Vitebsk region, 243 villages were burned twice, 83 - three times, 22 - four or more times. In the Minsk region, 92 villages were burned twice, 40 - three times, 9 - four times, 6 villages - five or more times.
Schematic plan of Khatyn
Crime and Punishment
A group of schoolchildren from Lithuania follow their Belarusian guide. They look like they are 12-13 years old. They speak Lithuanian among themselves, but the tour takes place in Russian. The language barrier?! What is there - the guys are listening carefully, and even curious, trying to "grab" the Russian speech around.
The guide leads through the complex and talks about everything - up to the price of gas in the Eternal Flame. About everything. Just not about punishers ...
The "Chief" of the 118th was Sturmbannführer Erich Körner. The reprisal against the inhabitants of Khatyn was led by the chief of staff of the police battalion Grigory Vasyura.
The site of the memorial complex says that the punitive operation was carried out by the 118th police battalion. It was formed in 1942 in Kyiv to fight the partisans and exterminate the civilian population. It mainly consisted of Ukrainians, former career officers who agreed to cooperate with the invaders, as well as units of the SS battalion Dirlewanger.
Ukrainian collaborators from Schutzmannschaft
Most of the punishers of the "118th" will later be punished. Some - much later, in the 1980s, previously lost among those who returned from the front.
Grigory Vasyura, the chief of staff of the police battalion, also managed to cover his tracks after the war - he worked as deputy director of one of the state farms in the Kyiv region. In April 1984, he was even awarded the Labor Veteran medal. Pioneers congratulated him on May 9th. He was very fond of speaking to schoolchildren in the guise of a real war veteran, a front-line signalman, and was even called an honorary cadet of the Kyiv Higher Military Engineering Twice Red Banner School of Communications named after M. I. Kalinin - the one he graduated from before the war.
In November-December 1986, the trial of Vasyura took place in Minsk. 24 punishers of the battalion were brought in as witnesses. By the decision of the military tribunal of the Belarusian military district, the chief of staff of the police battalion was found guilty of crimes and sentenced to death by firing squad.
I would also like to put an end to this "crime and punishment" of the guilty punishers. However, this would be part of the truth: it is known about Vladimir Katryuk, who lived safely in Canada until his death in 2015. He never appeared before the court for those crimes.
Policemen from the Ukrainian Schutzmannschaftbattalions at military courses in Minsk. 1942
It is scary to imagine the reality of what happened, you are burdened by modern well-being, you are afraid to believe in the possibility of such events.
Polina Yakovleva
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 DIRLEVANGER.
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 former Red Army lieutenant 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 barn, I saw how one of the partisans who were in our house climbed onto a stack of hay and shouted from its 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 that 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 the side of 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.)
From school years, the word Khatyn remained in my memory, the story of the tragedy of the Belarusian village, which was completely burned by the Nazis, could not leave anyone indifferent. The entire civilian population, mostly women and children, were exterminated in March 1943.
April 16, Saturday, 6th day by car . My car lease expires today at lunchtime. All the planned excursion program has been completed. Almost completed. Somewhere at the very beginning of planning my trip, the idea of visiting the Khatyn memorial complex popped up every now and then, but according to the map it was not on the way. Therefore, there was no certainty that it would be possible to get there.
8.00 . And this morning I have a few hours, and I decide. On the way, I stop at. But you can read a separate story about this amazingly beautiful place.
9.40 . The distance Minsk-Khatyn is 65 kilometers (I counted the route from my today's hotel in Minsk "Sport-Time"). The journey took 45 minutes. How to get here, where Khatyn is located on the map, how much it costs - see all the information at the end of the article.
A beautiful spring morning comes into its own, and I leave my car in a huge and empty parking lot near the Khatyn memorial. There's only one car here (besides me) this early.
In front of me is a huge territory of the complex, and around ... silence. It's so strange, but for some reason the spring crazy singing of birds and a light breeze are not perceived as extraneous sounds. They are so harmonious here. And it seems that this has always been the case here. This is how it SHOULD always be.
But historical facts are a merciless thing and the story about Khatyn is taking shape. On the first stone monument, fresh flowers and scary numbers.
On March 22, 1943, the Nazis destroyed the village of Khatyn with all its inhabitants, and also turned 209 cities and towns, 9,200 villages and villages into ruins. And in total, 2,230,000 Soviet citizens fell at the hands of the German invaders on the territory of Belarus. This will never be forgotten!
It was at this place that the village of Khatyn began, completely destroyed by the Nazis, along with all its inhabitants.
Belarus met me with a wonderful period of spring, when the trees are in bloom or the leaves of the marvelous color of young greenery are just hatching on them. All this created an indescribable range of feelings. The contrast of the blossoming spring and the territory of the memorial complex evoked the deepest emotions of grief, a lump came to the throat.
More than 70 years ago and just one month earlier: in March, everything was different here. The slabs on which I walked led me to the terrible past of my country. And this past concerned not only my ancestors, but the whole history of mankind as a whole. History came alive before my eyes.
The facts are such that the life of one person can show the rise and fall of an entire nation.
The life and death of the athlete Hans Welke
In 1936, the Olympic Games were held in Berlin. It so happened that the first German who was able to get a gold medal in the shot put, for the first time in the history of the games, was the athlete Hans Welke.
Every German newspaper and magazine praised Welke as a representative of the pure Aryan race. At the same time, insults and dirt were not spared in relation to “some Negroes and other humanoids,” as all other people were called.
But all this hype turned out to be absolutely in vain, since at the same Olympics, only a few days later, the Negro Jesse Owens performed superbly and won as many as 4 gold medals in athletics.
And in the future, pure Aryan blood did not save Hans from the bullet of the Belarusian partisans, when in March 1943 he ended up in a Nazi convoy on the territory of occupied Belarus. It was here, near the then unknown village of Khatyn, that the fighters of the Avenger partisan detachment killed several policemen and one German officer in a shootout. The commander of the company was driving in that shot car. It is he who is Hauptmann Hans Welke, a former Olympic champion in the shot put...
Obviously, the death of one purebred Aryan, according to the fascist punishers, cost the life of an entire village. The Germans called for help, and the partisans were forced to retreat. The village was left unprotected.
Tragedy history
By the evening of the same day, the Nazis came to Khatyn. All residents: old people and children, men and women, everyone who was in the village at that time, regardless of condition: the sick and pregnant, women with babies, bayonets and rifle butts were driven into a wooden collective farm barn with still strong walls. They surrounded it on all sides with straw and set it on fire.
The dry wooden barn immediately caught fire like a torch. Children screamed loudly in fear and pain, and adults, choking in smoke, tried to save them. The strong doors of the barn could not withstand the pressure of human bodies and collapsed. Frightened people began to jump out, run out, and someone crawled out of the burning flame. But the fascist punishers, without any pity, shot them at point-blank range with machine guns and machine guns.
In the Khatyn tragedy, all 149 residents died, half of them: 75 people were children. Only three of them managed to hide from the Nazis and avoid the terrible fate of being burned alive: brother and sister Volodya and Sonya Yaskevich, as well as Sasha Zhelobkovich.
But of those who were in that shed-torch, surprisingly, only two children could survive. One boy, Viktor Zhelobkovich, was covered by the dying mother, and he lay under her corpse until the Germans left. And the second wounded child - Anton Baranovsky - the Germans simply mistook for the dead and did not finish off, did not shoot.
Khatyn blacksmith Iosif Kaminsky is the only surviving adult. Wounded, with severe burns, he lay unconscious until late at night. Waking up, Joseph found his 15-year-old son among the dying. The child was badly burned, but still alive. He had a fatal wound to the stomach. Soon, the boy died in his father's arms.
It is this terrible moment, the moment of the highest mortal pain, that is captured in the sculpture "Unbowed Man", which became the main key figure of the Khatyn memorial complex. Now they are together forever: father and son.
In this terrible tragedy, 54-year-old Iosif Kaminsky lost his entire family: his wife and three children.
During the period of brutal occupation during the Great Patriotic War, the terrible fate of Khatyn was shared by another 628 Belarusian large and small villages, which were burned to the ground by the Nazis along with the inhabitants.
A quarter of them: 186, like Khatyn, have never been restored.
I suggest watching a short video about this terrible tragedy.
Khatyn — from a wooden obelisk to a memorial complex of world significance
Immediately after the war, on the ashes of these villages, for a long time, simply wooden obelisks with inscriptions and a red star or small plaster monuments were placed. But the bitter memory turned out to be timeless.
In 1966, the government of the USSR decided to create a commemorative memorial: the Khatyn complex. In 1967, a competition was held for the best design of the monument. Like an unhealed wound, the memory of these dramatic events made it possible to create a masterpiece for a team of architects consisting of Yuri Gradov, Valentin Zankovich, Leonid Levin and sculptor Sergei Selikhanov.
In July 1969, the Khatyn complex was solemnly opened for visiting and excursions.
Monument "Khatyn" in Belarus
The central figure of the Khatyn monument is represented by the bronze sculpture "Unconquered". This is a tear-inducing figure of a man 6 meters high, with the body of a dead child in his arms.
A dark motionless silhouette, as if blackened from grief and burning. Illuminated by the sun's rays against a piercing blue sky, it looks especially contrasting.
The place of the barn that was burned down together with the people is marked with a black slab - personifying the roof of that very ill-fated barn.
Nearby is a mass grave, where the remains of all the burned alive inhabitants of the village of Khatyn are buried, with the words-mandate on behalf of the dead to us, the living, and a symbolic wreath of memory.
The inscription on the monument reads:
Good people, remember: we loved life and our homeland. And you, dear ones. We were burned alive in the fire. Our request to all: let sorrow and sadness turn into your courage and strength, so that you can forever establish peace and tranquility on earth, so that from now on, nowhere and never in a whirlwind of fires will life die!
Khatyn Memorial in its layout resembles a lost village: the location of houses and even wells.
In total, there were 26 houses in the village, which were completely burned down. Currently, each of them resembles a log house, inside which there is an obelisk - a chimney.
At the top of each is a bell.
The deep deafening silence of this place is pierced by the simultaneous ringing of all 26 bells of Khatyn every 30 seconds, day and night.
Here, on each column, there is a board with the names of the inhabitants of this house imprinted forever.
There are also village wells here. More precisely, the places where they once were. Now they are marked with marble roofs, and in the stone slabs there are symbolic recesses where rainwater accumulates.
For some reason people throw money there. It is unusual that paper bills float in the water. Probably because there are no small coins in Belarus yet.
Urns with the earth of 185 villages of Belarus devastated and burned to the ground were solemnly delivered here. 186th in this mourning list was Khatyn herself.
On each symbolic grave, the name of the disappeared village is engraved in stone. These names can now only be found here. Such names no longer exist on the map of Belarus.
The fascist invaders wiped them off the face of the earth. And they never recovered. Yes! There is none of them. But they are forever alive in people's memory. Nearby is the Wall of Sorrow.
This is a reinforced concrete wall with niches. People bring flowers and plush toys here.
On these memorial plates, 66 death camps created by the fascist invaders on the territory of Belarus are immortalized, and the places of death of a large number of people are named.
There is a Memorial Square in the memorial. On it, as a symbol of eternal life, 3 birches grow.
It burns, not going out for a minute, the Eternal Flame.
This is a symbolic reflection of the fact that only 3/4 of the destroyed villages and villages have been reborn to a new life. And a quarter disappeared from the face of the earth forever. So three birches grow here, and instead of the fourth, a memorial fire burns.
Nearby is the Tree of Life, symbolizing resurgent life.
On its "branches" there is a list of 433 villages burned by the Nazis, but revived after the war by the labor of Soviet people ...
Khatyn is a symbol of all the villages that were burned by the German conquerors during the Second World War. The history of the Khatyn tragedy has survived to this day. And I really want to hope that it will remain in the hearts and memory of people for many decades and centuries.
This memorial complex is a historical and cultural heritage of Belarus. It is visited by thousands of tourists every year. This is one of the most bitter and revered places of the Great People of Belarus. Now there is a piece of my heart.
Museum and prices
Next to the parking lot is the Museum, which presents a photo-documentary exposition "Khatyn". In a small room there are historical photographs of events that took place on the territory of Belarus during the Great Patriotic War and after it.
Terrible photos of the fascist genocide and the victims of the occupation. Executions, murders, fires. And the post-war cadres of those who survived and again learned to live, in the literal sense of the word, from scratch.
Also presented are photos of how the memorial complex was built, how monuments were erected and the Eternal Flame was lit. Here, for example, is a documentary photograph of a symbolic burial of earth from the ashes of Belarusian villages that disappeared from the face of the earth.
The exhibition is small, the cost of visiting is also: 10,000 Belarusian rubles (35 rubles, or $ 0.5). I examined her for free, since the caretaker had been drinking tea in the next house with other workers since morning. so the entrance was free 🙂
By the way, there is a tour desk in the building nearby, where you can arrange an excursion. Opening hours daily from 10 am, closed on Mondays.
Probably, as part of the tour you can hear a lot of new interesting historical facts. But on this day I was very pleased that I visited this amazingly powerful place in solitude and silence.
Entrance to the Khatyn Memorial Complex is free. You don't have to pay for parking either.
Where is it, how to get there
The Khatyn Historical Complex is located on the 54th kilometer of the Minsk-Vitebsk highway (M3 highway north of the Belarusian capital).
After the large stone sign "Khatyn" you need to turn right (if you drive from Minsk). After 4.5 km there will be a huge parking lot of the complex.
The map can be enlarged to better see the territory of the memorial monument.
A leisurely independent inspection of the territory took me exactly 1 hour.
Coordinates: 54.33473, 27.94354.
In Belarus, in any city there is a huge number of a wide variety of housing options. It is very easy to rent an apartment or a room on the service, or through booking a hotel.
The map below shows other sights of Belarus, where I managed to visit. You can see more about each of them.
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.
According to the order of the Reichsführer SS Heinrich Himmler of July 14, 1943, it was forbidden to call it Ukrainian, but only “Galician division”. The full name of the formation is “114th SS Volunteer Infantry Division “Galicia”.
The divisions of "Galicia" performed mainly police functions. The initiators of the creation of the division abandoned the word "police" for political and psychological reasons. However, the soldiers of the division had to take part in battles with regular units of the Soviet army. In the very first battle near Brody, during the Lvov-Sandomierz operation of the Soviet troops, the Galicia division was completely defeated. Some of its formations later took part in a number of police operations in Eastern and Central Europe.
A year before the formation of the SS division "Galicia", in June 1942, the 118th security police battalion was formed in Kyiv from among the former members of the Kyiv and Bukovina kurens of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN). Vasyura was appointed chief of staff of this battalion, who almost single-handedly led the battalion and its actions.
On March 22, 1943, the 118th security police battalion entered the village of Khatyn and surrounded it.
The entire population of Khatyn, young and old - the elderly, women, children, were driven out of their homes and driven into a 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. When all the people were gathered in the shed, the punishers locked the doors, surrounded the shed with straw, doused it with gasoline and set it on fire. The wooden shed quickly caught fire. Under the pressure of dozens of human bodies, they could not stand it and the doors collapsed. In burning clothes, terrified, suffocating, people rushed to run, but those who escaped from the flames were shot from machine guns. The fire killed 149 villagers, including 75 children under 16 years old. The village itself was completely destroyed.
Of the adult residents of the village, only the 56-year-old village blacksmith Iosif Kaminsky survived. Burnt and wounded, he regained consciousness only late at night, when the punitive detachments left the village. He had to endure another heavy blow: among the corpses of his fellow villagers, he found his son. The boy was mortally wounded in the stomach and received severe burns. He died in his father's arms.
I was in Khatyn. Then we examined the entire Memorial architectural and sculptural complex, which occupies an area of about 50 hectares. In the center of the composition of the memorial is a six-meter bronze sculpture "The Invincible Man" with a murdered child in her arms.
Nearby are closed granite slabs, symbolizing the roof of a barn in which the villagers were burned. On the mass grave of white marble - the Crown of Memory.
The former street of the village is lined with gray, ash-colored, reinforced concrete slabs. In those places where houses once stood, 26 obelisks were erected, resembling chimneys scorched by fire, and the same number of symbolic concrete log cabins. On the chimneys-obelisks there are bronze tablets with the names of those who were born and lived here. And from above - sadly ringing bells.
On the territory of the memorial there is also an eternal flame in memory of the victims of Nazi crimes.
Executioners of Khatyn - who are they?
Every nation is proud of the victories achieved in the struggle for the freedom and independence of the motherland, and sacredly respects the memory of the losses suffered in the name of these victories. The French have Oradour, the Czechs have Lidice. The symbol of the immortal trials of Belarusians is Khatyn, which represents 628 Belarusian villages destroyed during the war years along with their inhabitants.
“... The bloody tragedy of this forest settlement of 26 yards took place on March 22, 1943. 149 people, including 76 children, remained forever in this hellish grave. All except one - Joseph Yosifovich Kaminsky, who accidentally escaped from a burning barn overflowing with people and now appeared in bronze with his dead son in his outstretched arms. Everything is in his hands - despair, tragedy, and an endless will to live, which provided the Belarusians with the opportunity to survive and win ..,” Vasily Bykov wrote in the article “The Bells of Khatyn” in 1972.
What do we know about the tragedy of the destroyed Belarusian village? In our country, any schoolchild can say that German punishers burned Khatyn ... It was they who were considered guilty of the tragedy.
Indeed, in the text of the photo album “Khatyn” (Minsk, 1979), “the Nazis, overwhelmed by the manic idea of the “exclusivity” of the Aryan race, by their imaginary “superhumanity” are called punishers.
The idea of the Khatyn tragedy is also distorted in the Great Soviet Encyclopedia, where we read: “Khatyn is a memorial architectural and cultural complex on the site of the former. the village of Khatyn (Minsk region of the BSSR). It was opened on 07/05/1969 in memory of the inhabitants of the Belarusian. villages and villages completely destroyed by the Nazis. occupiers ”(TSB, M., 1978., T.28, S.217).
What really happened?
In the newspaper "Soviet Youth" No. 34 of March 22, 1991, which was published in Latvia, an article was published "Khatyn was burned by policemen" (The case of Grigory Nikitovich Vasyura, a native of the Cherkasy region).
It turns out that the village of Khatyn in Belarus was destroyed, along with all its inhabitants, not by the Germans, but by a special Sonderkommando (the 118th police battalion), which consisted overwhelmingly of Ukrainian policemen. Yes, Ukrainians!
two photos of Ukrainian policemen
The chief of staff of this battalion was Grigory Vasyura, who almost single-handedly led the battalion and its operations.
Now let's move on to clarifying the reasons and circumstances that eventually led to the destruction of the Belarusian village of Khatyn.
After its formation, the 118th police battalion at first showed itself "well" in the eyes of the occupiers, taking an active part in mass executions in Kyiv, in the infamous Babi Yar. After that, the battalion was redeployed to the territory of Belarus - to fight the partisans. It was here that the terrible tragedy occurred, as a result of which Khatyn was destroyed.
The fact is that the post of quartermaster in each of the subdivisions of this battalion was necessarily occupied by a German officer, who was, thus, an unofficial curator-supervisor of the activities of the policemen of his subdivision. Of course, such a rear service was much safer and more attractive than being at the front. Therefore, it is not surprising that one of the German officers in such a position turned out to be Adolf Hitler's favorite, Hauptmann Hans Welke.
The Fuhrer's love for him was not accidental, since it was he, Hans Welke, who was the first of the Germans to win a gold medal in the shot put at the 1936 Olympic Games in Munich, which fundamentally strengthened the Fuhrer's thesis about the supremacy of the Aryan race.
And it is precisely Hauptmann Hans Welke, being in an ambush, who is killed by Soviet partisans who stopped the night before to spend the night in the village of Khatyn.
Of course, the murder of the Fuhrer's favorite made all the policemen very worried about the safety of their own skins, and therefore the need for a "worthy repayment to the bandits" became a "matter of honor" for them. Unable to find and capture the partisans, the police followed their tracks to the village of Khatyn, surrounded it and began executions on the local population in retaliation for the murdered Hauptmann.
May 13 Vasyura leads the fighting against the partisans in the area with. Dalkovichi. May 27 conducts a punitive operation in the village. Osovi, where 78 people were shot. Further - the punitive operation "Cottbus" on the territory of the Minsk and Vitebsk regions - the massacre of the inhabitants of the village of Vileyki; the destruction of the inhabitants of the village of Makovye and Uborok execution near the village. Kaminskaya Sloboda 50 Jews. For these "merits" the Nazis awarded Vasyura with the rank of lieutenant and two medals.
When his battalion was defeated, Vasyura continued to serve in the 14th SS Grenadier Division "Galicia", already at the very end of the war - in the 76th infantry regiment, which was already defeated in France.
After the war in the filtration camp, he managed to cover his tracks. Only in 1952, for cooperation with the Nazis 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 the Decree "On the amnesty of Soviet citizens who collaborated with the invaders during the war of 1941-1945", and Vasyura was released. He returned to his native Cherkasy region.
Where he became deputy director of the state farm. Moreover, he knocked out a certificate for himself that he was convicted for being captured. This allowed him to officially become a veteran of the Second World War and, accordingly, receive commemorative medals, meet with schoolchildren, receive food packages, etc.
Vasyur was ruined by the fact that in 1985, on the 40th anniversary of the Victory, he began to demand for himself the Order of the Great Patriotic War. Then some small employee in the archives of the military registration and enlistment office discovered that Vasyura was still missing. They began to dig and dug. It was lucky that at that time another WWII veteran was discovered - a certain Meleshko, who commanded one of the companies of the 118th punitive police battalion. This Meleshko began to be interrogated in Minsk, and he handed over to Vasyur, with whom they corresponded after the war.
26 witnesses were summoned to the trial of Vasyura - punishers from his battalion. They were brought to Minsk from all over the USSR. Each of them by that time had already served his sentence for helping the Germans (the maximum period that one punisher from among these 26 served in the Stalinist camps was 8 years).
The trial of Vasyura lasted 1.5 months, only one journalist was present at the trial - from the Izvestia newspaper. As a result, he made a report about Vasyur, but the newspaper did not publish it "for political reasons."
A natural question arises why at that time the case and the trial of the chief executioner of Khatyn did not receive proper publicity in the media. It turns out that, according to one of the researchers of this topic, journalist Glazkov, the top party leaders of Belarus and Ukraine "had a hand" in classifying this case. The leaders of the Soviet republics took care of the inviolability of the international unity of the Belarusian and Ukrainian peoples (!).
The first secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine, a member of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the CPSU, Vladimir Shcherbitsky, took special care of the non-disclosure of the materials of the Vasyura case. As a result of this pressure, correspondents were admitted to the process only selectively, and in the future, none of the materials prepared by them was ever published.
Dossier:
Vasyura Grigory Nikitovich, born in 1915, Ukrainian, native of the Cherkasy region, from peasants. A career military man, in 1937 he graduated from the communications school. In 1941, with the rank of senior lieutenant, he served in the Kiev fortified area. Being the chief of communications for the fortified area of the rifle division, this native of the Cherkasy region was captured in the first days of the war and voluntarily transferred to the service of the Nazis. He graduated from the school of propagandists at the so-called Eastern Ministry of Germany. In 1942 he was sent to the police of occupied Kyiv. Having shown himself to be a zealous campaigner, he soon became chief of staff of the 118th police battalion. This unit distinguished itself with particular cruelty in the destruction of people in Babi Yar. In December 1942, a punitive battalion was sent to Belarus to fight the partisans.
Such was Grigory's life before and during the war. She looked no less "interesting" after. The description of the deputy director for the economic part of the Velikodymersky state farm in the Brovarsky district of the Kyiv region reports that before retiring and after that Grigory Vasyura worked conscientiously. In April 1984, he was awarded the medal "Veteran of Labour", whom the pioneers congratulated every year on May 9, and the Kiev Military School of Communications even enrolled in honorary cadets! This was the case until 1986.
In November-December 1986, Grigory Vasyura was tried in Minsk. 14 volumes of Case No. 104 reflected many specific facts of the bloody activities of the fascist punisher. By the decision of the military tribunal of the Belarusian military district, Vasyura was found guilty of crimes and sentenced to capital punishment - execution. During the trial, it was established that he personally destroyed more than 360 peaceful women, the elderly, and children.
On the issue of Ukrainian participants in the Khatyn action. (
