Tragedies in villages during the war. Victims of Nazism: the tragedy of the burned villages - Zamoshye. The further fate of Hatsuni in the post-war years
Background.
In the 20th of September 1941, on the western borders of the Chekhov district of the Moscow region, a defense line began to form, which a little later would be called the “Stremilovsky line”.
Spas-temnya-Dubrovka-Karmashovka-Mukovnino-Begichevo-Stremilovo-Khorosino
In the fall, the fascist army launched frantic activity in the Volokolamsk direction. The Germans were rushing to Moscow. Despite the fierce resistance of the Soviet troops, the enemies were approaching the capital along the Volokolamsk Highway. Then the Soviet command decided to conduct a diversionary maneuver at the Stremilovsky line of defense - to go on the offensive.
At that time, the 17th Infantry Division held the defense at the Stremilovsky line. The division was formed on 07/02/1941 in Moscow as the 17th Moscow Rifle Division of the People's Militia (Moskvoretsky District), it included mainly workers and employees of the Vladimir Ilyich plant, tannery, Goznak factory, worsted spinning factory named after M.I. Kalinin and some other enterprises of the Moskvoretsky district. In a word, workers with no combat experience and minimal preparation for combat operations. Before the start of the fighting in Spas-Demensk, the division had about 11,000 people.
The division fought its way back along the Warsaw Highway. The soldiers fought off attacks by German tanks and were subjected to brutal bombing. By October 25, 1941, 1,420 people remained alive.
Also, to strengthen the defense of the Stremilovsky line, the front command sent the 26th Tank Brigade, commanded by Colonel Mikhail Ilyich Levsky.
Leonovo during the Second World War.
The village of Leonovo burned twice, the first time before the start of the fighting on November 14-15, 1941, being in no man's land.
The fact of setting the village on fire in the absence of active hostilities between the warring parties at that time aroused particular interest and additional archival research was carried out on it, which gave an unexpected result.
A resident of the village of Leonovo, Elizaveta Ivanovna Dmitrieva, said that before the war the village of Leonovo consisted of several settlements with interesting names - Gradskaya, Zarechka, Bulychev Mountain - and was popularly called Raskidaevka.
Scheme of the village of Leonovo during the Second World War. Compiled by village resident E.I. Dmitrieva.
From the memoirs of E.I. Dmitrieva: “We hid from the Fritz in the morning, and in the evening our scouts from Khorosin and Rastovka came... Tunaevo and Markovo were already occupied. ... The village of Leonovo is on fire. There are eight houses in the Zarechka settlement, two houses on Bulychev Mountain and two houses on Gradskaya Sloboda. A total of 12 houses burned down. Everyone would have burned, but the arsonists - two shepherds who tended our flocks in the summer - Viktor Fedorovich Ivanov drove away. They were persuaded by Klavdia Ivanovna Pashutina to do such a thankless task... Without properly explaining to the residents, they were deceived and told that there would be a strong battle and that their houses would burn down. People got scared, dropped everything and ran away, as they say, in what their mother gave birth to. And there is nowhere to return - ashes. Then the Germans occupied the village, and there were still 9 houses left in it before the attack on November 14, 1941.”
It turns out that only 1 house survived on Zarechka - that of Ivan Pashutin, the father of the same Claudia Ivanovna Pashutina who was able to “persuade the shepherds.” It turns out that during the systematic arson of the said settlement, the daughter averted trouble from her home.
Who was Klava Pashutina - a traitor?
Now there is almost no information about her, and not many people remember her. And those who remember call her “Komsomol member” and “partisan”. However, in the documents of TsAMO, literature, as well as in studies on the activities of the Ugod-factory partisans and special forces of the NKVD, there is no information about Pashutina.
Why did a “Komsomol member” or “partisan” lead the arson of her native village?
Light on the events that took place in the first half of November 1941 is shed by a document discovered in the Central Academy of Medical Sciences of the Russian Federation, from which the classification of secrecy was recently removed. For a better understanding of the topic, I will provide a copy of this document in full. It should be noted that the village of Leonovo was located precisely in the zone of defense and combat operations of formations and units of the 43rd Army of the Western Front.
"SECRET
In order to ensure freedom of maneuver for troops in the army’s defense zone, as well as to prevent possible cases of using the population for espionage
I ORDER:
1. Evict all residents from the frontline zone to a depth of 15 km. The head of the Army Political Department should negotiate with local authorities to organize the eviction.
2. Commanders of formations should prepare to burn populated areas in their defense zones, if necessary, depending on the situation.
Appoint responsible commanders and the required number of soldiers to burn down each populated area so that not a single house serves as a refuge for the enemy.
Provide each team with flammable materials.
3. Submit a plan for organizing the burning of populated areas, if necessary, on 8.11.41.
Commander of the 43rd Army, Major General Golubev.
Member of the Military Council, Divisional Commissar Shabalov.
Chief of Staff of the 43rd Army, Colonel Bogolyubov.
Otp. 24 copies Correct: beginning. secret part, technician - int. 2 ranks of Fists.
(The document is located: TsAMO RF F. 208.Op.2511. D.69. L.21. - V.S.).
This means that Claudia Pashutina, most likely, carried out the orders of the Soviet leadership, and simply felt sorry for her father’s house.
In Leonovo, after November 1941, there was only one surviving house; it has survived to this day - this is the former home of the Tiksov family, who moved from Estonia before the revolution to work as laborers for the landowner.
Battle for the villages of Leonovo and Tunaevo.
Before the start of the offensive, the troops of the 17th Infantry Division were located at the edge of the forest. They were separated from the villages of Leonovo and Tunaevo by a huge field, as if sloping down towards the villages. The entire field was covered with freshly fallen snow about half a meter high. Not far from Leonovo, almost in the center of the field, there was a small brick school. After entering the field, Soviet troops were in full view.
The field separating the 17th Infantry Division from the village of Leonovo. 2011.
On the morning of November 14, artillery preparation began. The snow-white field was covered with black craters from shell explosions. Soviet artillerymen suppressed the fire of two fascist batteries.
The Red Army soldiers, supported by tanks from the 26th brigade, quickly advanced towards the villages.
By that time, the fascist invaders left Leonovo and Tunaevo without a fight. However, on the way to the school, our fighters ran into an ambush. Several fascists settled in the basement of the school, punched embrasures in the brickwork and fired at point-blank range with heavy machine guns.
The infantry bombarded the school with anti-tank grenades. But a lot of our soldiers remained lying in the ravine in front of the school.
Ruins of a school. 2011.
By 12 o'clock our troops occupied the villages of Leonovo and Tunaevo, and the enemy retreated to Maryino and Melikhovoye. However, the villages did not remain ours for long.
The next day, November 15, 1941, 15 enemy tanks and a German infantry regiment, with air support, struck the weakly protected right flank. The blow was unexpected, the enemy's superiority in military equipment was significant. Soviet soldiers were unable to fight back and retreated to their original positions.
We heard another version from one of the local residents: on November 15, the 26th Tank Brigade mistakenly came under Soviet artillery fire, the Nazis could only take advantage of the moment and re-occupy the villages.
Bottom line.
Due to the superiority of enemy military equipment or due to a mistake by Soviet artillerymen, Soviet troops were unable to hold the villages captured during the offensive and remained in the same place. Moreover, in two days of fighting, the 17th Infantry Division and the 26th Tank Brigade lost about 600 people killed, wounded and missing. In these battles, the commander of the 26th tank brigade, Colonel M.I., died. Levsky.
At the cost of hundreds of human lives and dozens of burned villages, the diversionary maneuver was successful and the Nazi offensive on the city of Podolsk was thwarted. After the battle near Leonov-Tunaev, German troops no longer tried to go on the offensive, and on December 25, under the pressure of Soviet troops, they rolled back to the west.
The two-month period of stay of the 17th Infantry Division and the 26th Tank Brigade at the Stremilovsky line was full of dramatic and tragic events characteristic of the first year of the war. The archival documents contain a lot of all kinds of operational reports, orders, certificates about the successful raids of our reconnaissance officers, about the effective actions of artillerymen and anti-aircraft gunners, and about the fact that the soldiers have done a lot of work to strengthen the defense line.
There is no less other information: about the failures that befell, about tactical mistakes, about serious losses among personnel.
Memory.
Not many residents remained in Leonovo and Tunaev after severe trials. But they returned and restored the economy destroyed by the war.
Imagine the surprise of local residents when, in the post-war years, a monument-grave in a meadow near the school was destroyed and the remains of the soldiers were taken for burial in Stremilovo.
E.I. Dmitrieva describes: “In Bulychev there is a monument, in Vysokov there is both a village and a defense line, in Begichev there is a monument, in Stremilov there are two monuments. What a shame it was: where there was a war, there were battles, everything burned down completely, and the monuments were removed. They celebrated Memorial Day there, and we???
But justice has triumphed! In the 80s, through the efforts of local residents, a memorial obelisk was opened on the ruins of the school. Now there is a mass grave here, and the number of fighters in it continues to grow. Thanks to search teams, there are fewer and fewer unburied soldiers left.
A memorial obelisk near the ruins of a school in the village of Leonovo. 2011.
Inscriptions on the memorial and tombstones:
1941 17th People's Militia Division
Ten unknown soldiers.
Junior sergeant P. I. Lukyanov, born in 1918, junior sergeant F. P. Pugach, born in 1917, three unknown pilots.
To the unknown heroes who fell for their homeland.
To the unknown defenders of the fatherland.
To the unknown defenders of the fatherland.
Memorial plaque on the ruins of the school. 2011.
Students of the 30s:
Gorshkov S.Ya.
Gorshkov V.Ya.
Makurin A.S.
Salyankin A.P.
Chernyshev A.E.
1941-1945
Korotkov G.
Dmitriev A.P.
Gorbachev V.K.
Velikanov D.
Soldatov M.I.
Makurin S.S.
Makhov N.D.
Pashutin P.
Semenov M.
Lyskin V.
No one is forgotten, nothing is forgotten.
The village of Leonovo-Tunaevo was liberated from the Nazi invaders by units of the 17th Infantry Division of the People's Militia of the Moskvoretsky District of Moscow.
Website materials used: muzejpamyati.narod.ru
26 June 2017, 16:17Over the weekend, our family went on a trip by car to the Kursk region, the navigator took us along the Kyiv highway. Along the way, in the Bryansk region, we noticed a sign to the Khatsun memorial complex. On the way, we had time to look on the Internet what this place was. And what we learned made us shudder, as with any information about the horrors of the Great Patriotic War. And on the way back we decided to definitely visit this complex. Because of the strong impression this place made on me and my entire family, I decided to immediately write this post.
Turning right off the highway (towards Moscow) we found ourselves on a road in the middle of a dense forest. The whole atmosphere was saturated with a ringing silence; it seemed as if nature itself remained silent in memory of the tragedy that took place here in October 1941.
A little history.
Khatsun is a village in the Karachevsky district of the Bryansk region. It arose in the 1920s, 7 km north of the village of Verkhopolye, 9 km south of the urban settlement of Belye Berega. At the beginning of the 20th century, there was only one hut in Khatsuni and the only settler, Anatoly Yashkin, lived in it. Then two more families “caught up” - Stefan and Afanasy Kondrashov. Initially, the Kondrashovs lived about two kilometers from Hatsuni, in the village of Gubanovy Dvory, which consisted of 7 huts. Stefan Ivanovich Kondrashov had many children in his house: Polina, Tatyana, Ivan, Maria, Pavel, Dmitry. But there was not enough land under the garden. Then Stefan and his brother Afanasy visited Afanasy Yashkin, who in turn was a friendly and hospitable person. Soon the Kondrashov brothers built two houses there, and next to them they planted potatoes, carrots, beets, onions, cabbage and other garden delights to feed their families in the winter. And so this village was born, named by the mysterious name Hatsun.
Soon other houses began to grow: relatives of Stefan and Afanasy Kondrashov, and by 1941 the village already had 12 houses and about 50 inhabitants.
Tragic events 41.
By the fall of 1941, the territory of the Bryansk region was almost completely occupied by the Nazis. Bryansk was heavily bombed, and residents, hastily leaving the city, sought shelter in the forests. Those who did not have enough space in village houses built dugouts and huts. Khatsun, according to local historians, is the first village in the country completely destroyed by the Germans. Here the German “rehearsal” for the destruction of the Russian people took place in accordance with the Ost plan. The punitive forces acted according to the policy: for every killed German, kill a hundred Russians.
The story of a tragic day.
October 24, 1941, it seemed, would also be a day like all the previous 19 with the arrival of the Germans to Hatsuni. But suddenly several Red Army soldiers appeared in the village, emerging from encirclement. The residents pointed them to an empty hut and advised them to spend the night there and dig up potatoes in the garden to eat. No one would invite them into their home, because the Germans warned all residents that they would punish everyone for assisting the Soviet military, but their conscience would not allow them to drive away their own.
Everything would be fine, but at that very moment when the Red Army soldiers were in the Khatsun hut, three Germans were leading six prisoners of war through the village. The Red Army soldiers threw two grenades at the Nazis and started a small battle. Two Germans were killed, but the third, wounded, disappeared into the forest. The Red Army soldiers, having no idea what was now threatening the small village, left it. And already on October 25, the punitive battalion entered the village...
Here I want to deviate a little from the topic and talk about Evgeny Petrovich Kuzin, a native of the village of Priyutovo, which is 5 km from Hatsuni. Evgeniy Kuzin is a journalist, writer, poet, author of the book “The Khatsun Confession.” A man who devoted his whole life to studying the Hatsun tragedy. It all started with the fact that in the early 70s, one of the local leaders gave Kuzin, then a correspondent for the regional newspaper, a list of several dozen names of people shot in Hatsuni. It was thanks to E.P. Kuzin that he was able to find out many of the names of those executed in Hatsuni; it was he who collected the memories of eyewitnesses of the tragedy - residents of the surrounding villages, many of whom are no longer alive. His book, which tells about the tragedy of the village, was published in a small edition and did not leave its readers indifferent. Largely thanks to the work of Evgeny Kuzin, the Bryansk authorities resumed the restoration of the memorial and restored it to the appearance that we can now see when visiting.
I was 5 years old then. I remember how the Germans moved through our village towards Hatsuni at 6 am. And the next day we learned that Khatsun had been shot...
The next morning, October 25, the fascist punitive forces surrounded Khatsun with a tight ring and began to drive the residents out into the middle of the village, line them up near a deep road ditch, and installed a machine gun opposite, says Vasily Kondrashov (a native of Khatsun, drafted into the army in 1937 and escaped execution) about his own memories and the memories of his brother Sergei. “Many people were barefoot, undressed, holding small children in their arms... Six-month-old Nina Kondrashova was pierced with a bayonet right in her cradle, and seventeen-year-old Nina Yashina, having discovered some item of a German killed by the Red Army, was nailed to the gate. The punitive operation began at 10 am. Everyone was herded to the outskirts of the village, where there were machine guns around the perimeter. The first to fall under the bullets of the Nazis were forester from the Gvozdy tract Gerasim Tarasov and forester of the Viselsky cordon Mikhail Kondrashov. The Germans then opened fire with machine guns and machine guns on the crowd. The punitive forces did not spare anyone: they finished off the wounded with bayonets and rifle butts. No one should have been left alive. 318 civilians were killed. The shooting continued for several hours. The bodies of those shot lay in the open air for about two weeks. The Germans forbade burying the dead as a warning to the residents of the surrounding villages. My father told Nikolai Semenyakin about this. According to him, Hatsuni knew about the impending punitive operation and even tried to escape.
“They were warned that there would be an execution, and the whole village went into the forest, and in the morning they had to feed the cattle and milk the cows, and they returned, and here was a punitive detachment,” Nikolai said. But several people still managed to escape. So, the uncle of Vasily and Sergei Kondrashov, Afanasy Ivanovich, survived. He was wounded in the shoulder and head, lost consciousness, and was “recognized” by the Germans as dead. It was from him that the brothers learned the details of the execution, where their father, mother and 11 brothers and sisters were killed.
Suddenly - the roar of a German machine gun... The father, pressing his left hand to his chest, turned to face the children, whispered something and fell next to their mother, write Vasily and Sergei Kondrashov.
Also saved was 14-year-old Zhenya Kondrashov, from whom they learned about the tragedy in Khatsuni in the village of Osinovye Dvoriki. Afanasy Akulov, the collective farm foreman, also escaped from his pursuers. True, while escaping from the punitive forces, Afanasy Vasilyevich was wounded.
But very few are lucky. Even those who tried to hide failed to outwit the invaders. Thus, a terrible fate befell the local accordion player Mikhail. He, his wife and child hid in the basement. When people from neighboring villages came to bury the dead, this family was found in the basement, squatting: they were all riddled with bullets.
From a Document in the Federal Archives - Military Archive in Freiburg under code
BA-MA, RH 26-56/21b, Appendix 177:
“...Commanders:
Senior Lieutenant Eilemann, Lieutenant Hefel, Non-Commissioned Officer Gleser.
Exercise:
Search and release of 3 battery members, search of the place, arrest of all people and their execution.
On the way to the scene of action, Hefel's group at point 3 found 13 Cossack saddled horses with 2 guards. Security said the others had gone east. Both soldiers were taken with them, the surrounding area was examined, and the horses were left approximately 600 m on the road. Hefel's group marched further towards the village of Hatsun.
The village is not a gated community. The settlement is divided into northern and southern halves. Each part can be considered as an independent village.
Eilemann's group cleared the southern part of the village and at point 2 found 3 bodies of soldiers who had gone missing the day before. All 3 were killed. It could be established that one of them was wounded, while both others and the wounded man also had one shot in the head at close range. Boots and stockings were removed from 3 corpses, and trousers and a coat were also missing from one. Valuable items and money were stolen. Several more Soviet soldiers who were in the houses were detained. During a search of the houses, it was established that weapons and ammunition were hidden in the houses. At the same time, the women, with incomprehensible gestures, tried to distract our soldiers from the weapons caches and led them to those rooms where no weapons were hidden. Weapons and ammunition hidden in houses were destroyed. Hefel's group in the northern part of the village was freed, as it turned out that the inhabitants of the northern part did not take part in the attack. Also, no weapons were found in their homes.
While Eilemann's group covered the southern area and cleared the surrounding area, Lieutenant Hefel received orders from Senior Lieutenant Eilemann to shoot the residents, since they had supported the attack on the previous day and had also hidden weapons that day.
68 men, 60 women were shot.
Since most of the children had an average age of 2 to 10 years, it was decided not to leave them to their own devices. For this reason, all the children were shot. There were 60 of them."
Here is this chilling order with a terrible note about not leaving children aged 2-10 years alive, so that they are not subsequently left to their own devices((.
The first days after the tragedy.
“Zhenya came running scared, shaking all over. He climbed onto the stove and said: “Kap, ah Kap, your mother was shot.” Capka immediately started screaming, and Zhenya said: “Don’t scream. All of Khatsun was shot. And Aunt Nyura and Tolik were shot. Everyone..."
Memoirs of Lidia Vasilievna Inozemtseva,
lived in the village of Osinovye Dvoriki (2 km from Hatsuni)
(from the book “Hatsun Confession” by E.P. Kuzin, 2007):
When the residents of the surrounding villages learned about the terrible tragedy that had happened, they were afraid that they would suffer the same fate. Therefore, for 3 days in Hatsun, no one dared to even set foot. And only two weeks later the burial of the killed civilians took place.
According to the memoirs of Lydia Inozemtseva: “I went to bury the Khatsun people... We dug large graves, laid out the dead in rows, and their bundles too. Only some were buried by relatives in separate graves.”
For about a year, the huts remained empty, only occasionally partisans returning from combat operations entered them.
A year after the tragedy, in 1942, the Germans burned Hatsun to the ground. Apparently, this was done to prevent Russian soldiers from finding shelter and shelter there.
The further fate of Hatsuni in the post-war years.
Beginning in 1944, people from neighboring villages began to come to Hatsun and decided to settle here.
The burial place of the dead was first fenced with a wooden fence, and in the seventies of the last century a metal fence was erected here and the “Grieving Mother” monument was unveiled. 
In those years, residents of Bryansk, Karachev, Belye Beregov and other settlements, students of Karachev and Bryansk schools, often came to Khatsun, but over the years this happened less and less... The grave of the victims of that terrible tragedy fell into disrepair, there was not even a mound on it. Everything is overgrown with grass and weeds...
On September 10, 2002, the head of the administration of the Karachevsky district, Vyacheslav Ilyich Kondratov, issued order No. 476 on the creation of a creative group to prepare a project for the reconstruction of Khatsun burials. It included representatives of the district public and heads of the administration department.
Over the years, the project itself was created, donations were collected, and funds were allocated from the state and regional budgets. In 2009, work began on a complete reconstruction of the memorial. The opening of the updated memorial complex took place on October 25, 2011 - the day of the 70th anniversary of the Hatsun tragedy. The ceremony was attended by Chairman of the Government of the Russian Federation Vladimir Putin, Plenipotentiary Representative of the President of the Russian Federation in the Central Federal District Oleg Govorun, delegations from neighboring regions of Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Germany and other states, public organizations.
Today, the Khatsun memorial includes not only a monumental museum building, but also 28 granite steles (according to the number of districts of the Bryansk region with information about the victims of fascism in each district carved on them), the Wall of Sorrow, a grave of civilians with the names of 318 victims, a fraternal the grave of the Red Army soldiers, a sculptural composition by Alexander Romashevsky (an old man covering a woman, who, in turn, covering a child), as well as a chapel.
A little about the museum.
The museum, as conceived by its creators, is divided into two parts. The top one, the light one, tells about life before wartime. The life of the pre-war period is represented by a cradle, a spinning wheel, towels, and tools. The exposition was assembled bit by bit, since there was literally no trace left of the village, only a grave 30 meters long and 6 meters wide. Local residents helped in the creation of the museum - they collected preserved household items, looked for letters and other documents. Also, through relatives of the residents, we managed to find rare photographs of Khatsun residents. 
The lower part of the museum is dark. In paintings by Bryansk artists, documents, letters and photographs, he talks about the tragedy of Hatsuni and other villages that repeated its fate. Instead of windows there are stained glass windows depicting the faces and hands of people engulfed in fire. The exhibition includes photographs taken by the Germans of public executions and shootings, and execution lists, where more than half of those listed are women and young children. Tears themselves roll from the eyes from what they saw. A very difficult impression from what I saw. In the museum hall there is a thick notebook filled with reviews from caring visitors.
The names of identified residents are immortalized in granite tombstones.
Here is the story of a specific place in the Bryansk region, the existence of which was interrupted by a terrible war (. I hope that if someone is on the same path as we are, then, if possible, stop by to honor in silence the memory of the village wiped off the face of the earth.. .
And I would like to complete this story with a poem by G.A. Petrova (Baranova), resident of the Bryansk region:
Same street, same road
Only the face is covered with sorrow,
That no one will meet you at the doorstep,
It is impossible to go onto the porch.
That cruelty has not sunk into oblivion -
The thread of many lives has been severed.
We no longer call for an answer,
We only urge you to preserve your memory!
The Nazis scurried around Hatsuni,
Suddenly the enemy attacked!
The girl was crucified at the gate,
The rest were taken away to be shot.
And in a ditch on a foggy morning
They finished off people with bayonets.
They considered the reprisal humane.-
Minor children were killed!
Obelisks: lamps under the roof,
Cranes through the fire and through the smoke.
I'm asking you to please be quiet
The bell mournfully cries for them.
ps. I apologize to users for this addition. I indicated sources of additional information and some photos, but they are not displayed in the text. And one source on the informant site itself is asked to be an active link. I add it: http://www.kray32.ru/karachevskiy003_01.html
History, unfortunately, is rich in tragic events associated with the merciless killing of civilians. The village of Khatyn and the history of its destruction still remain in the memory of the Belarusian people as an incredible act. Scary... Very scary... After all, Khatyn could have lived... The history of the tragedy will be briefly outlined in this article.
Khatyn: who burned it?
History, especially its controversial moments, very often later becomes the subject of various political speculations. For example, a version recently appeared that the Belarusian village of Khatyn was burned by Ukrainian nationalists who fought against the Red Army. Of course, each version has the right to exist, but historical facts speak of the groundlessness of this version. The fact is that certain UPA groups (Nachtigal and SS-Galicia battalions) actually fought on the side of the fascists, but it is known for sure that there were no Ukrainian nationalist units in this territory.
This means that there is no other option left but to assert that the village of Khatyn was burned by the Germans and policemen.
Causes of the Khatyn tragedy
On the night before the ill-fated tragic day of March 22, 1943, a partisan detachment spent the night in the village. This fact alone could anger the fascists and policemen. After spending the night, the partisans moved early in the morning towards the village of Pleskovichi. It was here that an event occurred that caused the village to disappear from the face of the earth and from geographical maps. On the way, our partisans encountered a detachment of policemen, with whom German officers were traveling, including the 1936 Olympic champion Hans Welke. A shootout ensued, during which many partisans and Germans, including officers, died. Among the dead was the above-mentioned Olympic champion.
Of course, the partisans did the right thing by getting involved in battle with this detachment, because in the conditions of a direct collision with the enemy it is impossible to behave differently. The Germans saw them, that is, the fascist command received information that there was a large detachment of partisans in the area. Such reports usually led to an escalation of the situation in the area of the territory where the partisans were seen.
What did the Germans come up with?
Such courage of partisan detachments often ended in grief for the settlements surrounding the site of the clashes. Having recovered from the battle and quickly remembered the dead, the Germans immediately began to think about revenge. This German detachment just happened to include one of the most brutal German punishers - SS Sturmbannführer Dirlewanger. Therefore, a soft decision was not expected. The Germans decided to act in their traditional way: to burn the settlement closest to the site of the recent battle. It turned out to be the village of Khatyn, the history of the tragedy of which is known to the entire civilized world and serves as a vivid example of the terrible crimes of German fascism against humanity in general and the Belarusian people in particular.
How did the massacre of civilians take place?
The village of Khatyn is a relatively small settlement in Belarus. The Germans destroyed it on March 22, 1943. Civilians got up in the morning of that day and began to go about their household, not suspecting anything that for the vast majority of them this day would be the last in their lives. A German detachment appeared in the village unexpectedly. It became clear to the residents what was about to happen when they began to be herded not to the square for a regular meeting, but to the barn of the former collective farm (by the way, some sources have information that the barn was not a collective farm barn at all, but one of the residents of Khatyn Joseph Kaminsky). No one received mercy, because they even drove away sick people who could barely get out of bed. The traitors mocked such people even before they were burned, because the entire path of the sick people to the barn was accompanied by blows from gun butts on the back. Young children also became victims. For example, a resident of Khatyn, Vera Yaskevich, was brought into a barn with her son in her arms. He was only 7 weeks old! And how many one-year-old children died from fascist fire...
All the villagers were driven into the barn, and the barn doors were bolted. Then they placed mountains of straw around the entire perimeter of the barn and set it on fire. The barn was made of wood and caught fire almost immediately. The chances of people surviving the fire were minimal because the barn had three compartments, separated by wooden partitions made of thick logs. This is the sad fate of a village called Khatyn. Who burned this settlement is now, we hope, clear to everyone... All possible sources have been analyzed, including German military documents and Soviet newspapers of that time, so the German trace is simply obvious.
How many people died?
It is known for sure that before the war there were 26 houses in the village. Based on the fact that many families, according to modern standards, had many children, we can calculate that the population of the village could be about 200 people or even more. It is impossible to say exactly the number of deaths even today, because different sources provide information that contradicts each other. For example, the Germans claim to have killed 90 people. Some Soviet newspapers wrote that the village of Khatyn, the story of the tragedy of which became immediately known throughout the USSR, lost 150 people. Most likely, the last figure is most accurate. But in any case, in the near future we are unlikely to know exactly how many people died in the village: history may someday dot the i’s in this tragedy. We understand perfectly well that only excavations at the site of the fire can bring us closer to the truth.
What does it mean to survive after Khatyn?
Every person loves life and strives to live as long as possible and raise their children. The people burning in the barn were fighting for themselves. They knew that even if they could escape, the probability of survival was low, but everyone dreamed of saving themselves and running away into the forest from the bullets of fascist guns. The village residents managed to tear off the doors of the barn and some of them were able to run free. The picture was terrible: people with their clothes burning on them looked like fire running across a field. The punishers saw that these poor Khatyn residents were doomed to death from burns, but they still shot at them with guns.
Fortunately, some residents of Khatyn managed to survive. Three children managed not to get into the barn at all and disappeared into the forest. These are children from the Yaskevich family (Vladimir and Sophia, both children born in 1930) and Alexander Zhelobkovich, their peer. Desperate agility and speed saved their lives that day.
Of those in the barn, 3 more people also survived: the owner of the “bloody barn” Joseph Kaminsky, Anton Baranovsky (11 years old) and Viktor Zhelobkovich (8 years old). Their rescue stories are similar, but slightly different. Kaminsky was able to crawl out of the barn when fellow villagers tore down the doors. He was almost completely burned, immediately lost consciousness, and came to his senses late at night, when the punitive detachment had already left the village. Vitya Zhelobkovich was saved by his mother, because when they fled from the barn, she held him in front of her. They shot her in the back. Having received a fatal wound, the woman fell on her son, who was simultaneously wounded in the arm. Vitya, who was wounded, was able to hold out until the Germans left and the residents of the neighboring village came to them. Anton Baranovsky was wounded in the leg, fell and pretended to be dead.
Khatyn: history destroyed by punitive forces
No matter how many official victims there are, unborn children must also be counted. Let's explain this in more detail. According to official data, 75 children were burned in the barn. Each of them, if they had survived, would have had children. Since migration between settlements at that time was not very active, most likely families would have been created between them. The Soviet homeland lost approximately 30-35 social units. Each family could have several children. It is also worth considering that young girls probably also burned in the barn (the boys were all sent to the army), that is, the potential population losses could be much greater.
Conclusion
The memory of many Ukrainian and Belarusian villages, including a village like Khatyn, whose history ended on March 22, 1943, should always live in society. Some political forces, including in the post-Soviet space, are trying to justify the crimes of the fascists. We must not follow the lead of these neo-fascist forces, because Nazism and its ideas will never lead to the tolerant coexistence of nations throughout the world.
75 years ago, on March 22, 1943, the Nazi executioners barbarously, mercilessly and inhumanly destroyed and burned to the ground the modest Belarusian village of Khatyn. Together with all its inhabitants. 149 people died, including 75 children under 16 years of age. Seven-year-old Viktor Zhelobkovich and twelve-year-old Anton Baranovsky were miraculously able to escape and survive in the blazing hell of hatred. The burnt and wounded children were picked up and came out by residents of neighboring villages. 56-year-old blacksmith Joseph Kaminsky got out of the inferno. Among the bodies of his fellow villagers, he found his wounded son. The boy died in the arms of his unfortunate father.
9093 - this figure now appears on the title page of the electronic database db.narb.by, created under the auspices of the National Archives of Belarus and containing information about Belarusian villages burned by the Nazis during the Great Patriotic War, in whole and in part, with and without inhabitants. The figure is constantly changing - upward, because the work to clarify this mournful list does not stop. The collection of information is carried out not only by professional scientists, but also by patriots, enthusiasts, passionate about the history of the Motherland, including Minsk engineer and local historian Alexander Pavlyukovich. On the eve of the tragic date of the death of Khatyn, he talks in his materials about the equally bitter fate of its suffering sisters - the burned villages of the Minsk region.
PHOTO BY VITALY GIL
Flame of Zamoshya
Summer 1942. In the vicinity of the legendary Lake Palik, during the war - the center of the partisan movement, detachments formed from encirclement and local residents were just beginning to appear. During this period, their operations were mainly in the nature of ambushes on roads and attacks on small German garrisons. And, in order to prevent the partisan struggle from unfolding, the occupiers actually introduced collective responsibility for residents of villages close to the sites of clashes. Zamoshye, Borisov district, was located about 10 kilometers from the town of Zembin and about halfway from it to the lake. The tragedy of Zamoshya was most directly connected with the tragedy that then occurred in Zembin.
Memoirs of Anatoly Iosifovich Yatskovsky, born in 1930,from the village of Zamoshe:
“It was in the summer. A car with Germans was driving near the village, and they were shot at. Our locals organized a partisan detachment here. The commander of the detachment was teacher Zhukovsky. The Germans jumped out of the car and killed several partisans. One was caught alive and taken to Zembin. The next morning the Germans surround our village. They burned at one end and at the other. They set fire to people and drive them out of their homes. We were all herded to the highway, and the village was burning. The Germans and police from Zembin arrived. We picked up the cars and drove to Zembin. They drove us into the church, and there we spent the night. Then they began to take me out of the church. They brought him to the partisan whom they had captured. He was badly beaten. They asked him: “Did this one have connections with the partisans, did this one bake bread?” They already knew who was connected with the partisans. School director Zuborenko was the first to be taken out. His whole family was killed: his children and his wife. They shot behind the church. The rest were released and we went home. They came to a bare field and began to build dugouts...”
Each witness saw and remembered those troubled days in his own way, highlighting what was most etched in his childhood memory.
Story by Anna Grigorievna Shevyarnovskaya, born in 1933, resident of Zamoshye:
That crime is also evidenced by partisan documents, which contain the following entry: “In July 1942, German barbarians, having entered the village of Zamoshye, completely burned 82 houses and shot 16 families, including 6 infants...”
Relatives of the Kaminskys
People who lived through those days filled with fear and horror were always unable to talk about their experiences without emotion and tears.
Valentina Konstantinovna Yukhnevich, former resident of Zamoshye:
This was in June. The Germans surrounded our village and began firing from both sides. They surrounded us with machine guns. They started driving away from the cemetery. They forced everyone to their knees and forced them to crawl, while they fired machine guns over their heads. Everything was burning, and they were chasing us. The women and children were taken to Zembin, while the men were out haymaking. Whichever of them was found was shot. In Zembin we sat in church. Three days. And they only gave me something to drink. Someone grabbed the grains on the way, and they gave us a grain each. And we, like little sparrows, took one grain at a time and ate it. We were taken out of the church one by one. Mom was the last one to come out with us. We held on to my mother's skirt. Nobody knew us in the village - that’s what saved us. Mom was asked where her man was. Mom “deceived” me, she said, in 1930 they deported me. They: “Gut, lady.” And they started beating my mother with bizuns. We were released, but 85 people were then shot...”
Valentina Konstantinovna recalls that during the war she could have died many times, but fate protected her. Her mother’s sister, Adela, was married to Joseph Kaminsky from Khatyn. When everything in Zamoshye was burned, in the fall of 1942 Valya and her grandmother went to the Kaminskys in Khatyn to spend the winter. And the mother remained with her son in a dugout in Zamoshye. They stayed in Khatyn all winter, and in early spring, just before the burning of the village, for some reason my grandmother really wanted to go home to Zamoshye. No matter how much they tried to persuade her to live here, she and her granddaughter left shortly before the tragedy...
We pray for peace
Already today, stories about the tragedy that occurred near the walls of the Church of St. Michael the Archangel in Zembin in the summer of 1942 have been confirmed. During construction work, human remains were discovered here. They lay chaotically, not in single graves, and shallowly, which indicates a burial from the time of the Great Patriotic War.
The rector of the Church of the Holy Archangel Michael, Archpriest Andrei Kapultsevich, says:
In general, dark days for the residents of Zembin (where historically people of different faiths always coexisted peacefully, with an Orthodox church, a church and a synagogue operating at the same time) came from the very first days of Hitler’s occupation. On August 18, 1941, policemen and Germans who arrived from Borisov drove the civilian Jewish population of Zembin to a pre-dug ditch and shot 927 people there, including children. This place is located 2 kilometers north of the village, near the road to Begoml. There is now a monument and memorial plaque installed there.
Over its long history, the Zemba church itself has experienced a lot: desolation, devastation and destruction... At first, until the end of the 19th century, there was a wooden church in the village, but a fire in 1900 destroyed it. The brick church was erected and consecrated in 1908. During the years of struggle against religion, the temple gradually fell into disrepair, and after the war it was completely closed and used as a warehouse for agricultural products. Another cruel episode in the history of the shrine was the filming of a feature film in 1965, when a T-34 tank was driven into the church according to the script. As a result, the altar wall and the altar were destroyed, and the ancient churchyard was damaged. “SB” spoke about that unkind and offensive episode for the national culture in the article “Zembinskoe Kino” in March 2003.
And only in our time the church actually rose from the ruins and became one of the historical and architectural pearls of the Minsk region. Again, not without the help of caring and generous people - donors. As Father Andrei Kapultsevich says, those names are unlikely to tell us anything, but the Lord knows them all. By the way, the BATE football club provided great assistance in the restoration. It should be noted that the spiritual and organizational activities of the priest himself also played a significant role in the restoration of the shrine. I would like to hope that through joint efforts, a cross in memory of the villagers tortured by the Nazis will also be erected and consecrated. We haven't forgotten anything.
Alexander PAVLYUKOVICH.
Modern historians and politicians were more interested in the so-called “Katyn execution” than in the crime of fascist thugs and their collaborator accomplices.
I would like to remind such people: the Great Patriotic War was a common war of the Soviet people against the invaders, and the sacrifices that we suffered in a terrible battle cannot be pilfered to national homes, as unscrupulous politicians later plundered the country.
Belarus found itself in the flames of war from its first days. The inhabitants of this Soviet republic had to drink to the bottom the cup of occupation and the “new order” that the Nazis brought with them.
Resistance to the occupiers was desperate. The guerrilla war in Belarus continued virtually continuously. The Nazis, unable to cope with the partisans and underground fighters, turned their anger on the civilian population.
Champion Punisher
On March 22, 1943, a unit of the 118th police security battalion set out to eliminate the damaged communication line between Pleshchenitsy and Logoisk. Here the police ran into a partisan ambush set up by the Avenger detachment of the Uncle Vasya brigade. In the shootout, the punitive forces lost three people and called for reinforcements.
Among the killed fascists was chief commander of the first company, Hauptmann Hans Welke.
We should dwell on this character in more detail, because it was his death that is called one of the reasons for the punitive action in Khatyn.
Hans Welke became the Olympic champion at the 1936 Games in the shot put, winning the competition with a world record. Hitler personally congratulated Welke, who became the first German to win an athletics competition.
Meanwhile commander of the punitive security platoon Meleshko ordered the arrest of the residents of the village of Kozyri, who were engaged in cutting down forest nearby. They were accused of aiding the partisans. Additional units of the 118th battalion, as well as part of the Dirlewanger battalion, arrived at the site of the clash with the partisans.
The detained lumberjacks, deciding that they would be shot, began to run away. The punitive forces opened fire, killing 26 people, the rest were sent to Pleshchenitsy.
The police and SS men moved towards the village of Khatyn, where the partisans had retreated. A battle broke out on the outskirts of the village, in which the partisans lost three people killed, five wounded, and were forced to retreat.
The Nazis did not pursue them because they had a different plan. In retaliation for killing a pet Hitler, a former shot putter, and during the war, an ordinary punisher Hans Welke, as well as to intimidate the local population, the Nazis decided to destroy the village of Khatyn along with its entire population.
Traitor executioners
The main role in the monstrous crime committed in Khatyn was played by the 118th police battalion. Its core consisted of former Red Army soldiers captured near Kiev, in the notorious “Kiev Cauldron,” as well as residents of the western regions of Ukraine. The battalion was commanded by the former major of the Polish army Smovsky, the chief of staff was the former Senior Lieutenant of the Red Army Grigory Vasyura. The already mentioned former Red Army lieutenant Vasily Meleshko was the platoon commander. The German “chief” of the 118th punitive battalion was an SS Sturmbannführer Erich Kerner.
In post-Soviet times, some historians try to give the fascist collaborators the aura of fighters against the Stalinist regime, although their actions speak otherwise. Forces like the 118th Battalion were a bunch of scoundrels who, to save their own lives, willingly did the dirtiest work for the Nazis in exterminating civilians. Punitive actions were accompanied by violence and robberies, and they acquired such a scale that they disgusted even the “true Aryans.”
By order of Kerner, punitive forces under the direct leadership of Grigory Vasyura herded the entire population of Khatyn into a collective farm barn and locked them in it. Those who tried to escape were killed on the spot.
The cordoned-off barn was lined with straw, doused with gasoline and set on fire. People were rushing about burning alive in the burning barn. When the doors collapsed under the pressure of bodies, those escaping from the fire were finished off with machine guns.
In total, 149 people were killed during the punitive action in Khatyn, of which 75 were children under 16 years of age. The village itself was wiped off the face of the earth.
Miraculously, only a few managed to survive. Maria Fedorovich And Yulia Klimovich managed to get out of the barn and get to the forest, they were sheltered by the residents of the village of Khvorosteni. But soon this village shared the fate of Khatyn, and the girls died.
Of the children in the barn, the only survivor was a seven-year-old Victor Zhelobkovich and twelve year old Anton Baranovsky. Vitya hid under the body of his mother, who covered her son with herself. The child, wounded in the arm, lay under the mother’s corpse until the punitive forces left the village. Anton Baranovsky was wounded in the leg by a bullet, and the SS men mistook him for dead. The burnt and wounded children were picked up and came out by residents of neighboring villages.
Anton Baranovsky, who survived Khatyn, was not spared by fate - a quarter of a century later he would die in a fire in Orenburg.
The only surviving adult was the village blacksmith. Joseph Kaminsky. Burnt and wounded, he regained consciousness only late at night, when the punitive squads left the village. Among the corpses of fellow villagers, he found his mortally wounded son, who died in his arms.
It was Kaminsky’s fate that formed the basis of the “Unconquered Man” monument, erected after the war in the Khatyn memorial complex.
On the trail of Judas
The crime in Khatyn became known immediately - both from the testimony of survivors and from partisan intelligence data. The dead residents were buried on the third day on the site of their former village.
After the war, the USSR State Security Committee, which investigated crimes against civilians committed by the Nazis and their accomplices, conducted a search for participants in the punitive action in Khatyn. Many of them were identified and brought to justice.
We must pay tribute to the former punishers: they skillfully hid, changed documents, integrating into peaceful post-war life. It also helped that until some time, according to the official version, it was believed that the massacre of the residents of Khatyn was solely the work of the Germans.
In 1974, Vasily Meleshko, who rose to the rank of company commander in the 118th battalion, was arrested and put on trial. In 1975, he was sentenced to capital punishment and executed.
It was Meleshko’s testimony that made it possible to completely expose Grigory Vasyura. This man retreated with the Germans all the way to France, after which he returned to his homeland, posing as a Red Army soldier released from captivity. But he failed to completely hide his collaboration with the Germans.
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 the Decree “On the amnesty of Soviet citizens who collaborated with the occupiers during the war of 1941-1945,” and Vasyura was released, returning to his home in the Cherkasy region.
The KGB officers were able to prove that Vasyura was one of the main executioners of Khatyn only in the mid-1980s. By that time, he was working as deputy director of one of the state farms, in April 1984 he was awarded the Veteran of Labor medal, and every year the pioneers congratulated him on May 9th. He loved to speak to the pioneers in the guise of a 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 Kalinin.
For everyone who knew Vasyura in his new life, his arrest came as a real shock. However, during the trial that took place in Minsk at the end of 1986, terrible facts were revealed: former Red Army officer Grigory Vasyura personally killed more than 360 women, old people and children. In addition to the atrocities in Khatyn, this non-human personally led military operations against partisans in the area of the village of Dalkovichi, led a punitive operation in the village of Osov, where 78 people were shot, organized the massacre of residents of the village of Vileika, commanded the extermination of residents of the village of Makovye and Uborok, and the execution of 50 Jews near Kaminskaya Sloboda village. For this, the Nazis promoted Vasyura to lieutenant and awarded two medals.
By the decision of the military tribunal of the Belarusian Military District, Grigory Vasyura was found guilty and sentenced to death.
Live and remember
The last of the participants in the massacre of the residents of Khatyn is still alive. Vladimir Katryuk, who is now over 90, served in the 118th battalion, personally shot those same residents of the village of Kozyri detained in the forest, and in Khatyn itself he drove the doomed people into a barn. Then Katryuk shot those who managed to escape from the fire. The testimony of Katryuk’s former colleagues, the same Vasily Meleshko, suggests that this punisher participated not only in the action in Khatyn, but also in other atrocities of Nazi collaborators.
After the war, Katryuk settled in Canada, where he still lives near Montreal, raising bees. His role in the murder of civilians in Khatyn in Canada became known relatively recently, in 2009.
However, caring relatives and lawyers, the entire Canadian justice system, do not give offense to the handsome old man. Vladimir Katryuk is unlikely to be overtaken by the retribution that caught up with his accomplices Meleshko and Vasyura.
The Khatyn memorial complex, in memory of hundreds of Belarusian villages that shared the fate of Khatyn, was opened in July 1969.
The created memorial follows the layout of the burned village. On the site of each of the 26 burned houses is the first crown of a gray concrete frame. Inside, an obelisk in the shape of a chimney is all that remained of the burned houses. The obelisks are topped with bells that ring every 30 seconds.
Next to the monument “Unconquered Man” and the mass grave of the dead residents of Khatyn, there is the “Cemetery of Unrevived Villages”. It contains urns with soil from 185 Belarusian villages, which, like Khatyn, were burned by the Nazis along with their inhabitants, and were never reborn.
433 Belarusian villages that survived the Khatyn tragedy were restored after the war.
The exact number of Belarusian villages destroyed by the occupiers and their accomplices has not been established to this day. To date, 5445 such settlements are known.
During the Great Patriotic War, every third inhabitant of Belarus was exterminated by the Nazi invaders and collaborators on the territory of Belarus.
