Obliteration of Khatyn
On March 22,1943, the partisans of the unit Mstitel (Avenger) attacked a German convoy by fire and killed an officer and three Ukrainian Polizei in the Logoysk Region of the Belorussian Soviet Socialist Republic. The same day, a retaliation battalion under commander Dirlewanger, accompanied by the 118th police battalion, surrounded the village of Khatyn, 6 kilometers from the site of the convoy attack, rounded up all its residents in a barn - 149 people, including 75 children - and burned them alive. Those who tried to escape were shot with machine guns. Only two boys - 7 and 12 years old - and the local blacksmith survived the incident One of the boys later recounted that he awoke that morning from the screams, Germans! ran out in the yard and saw soldiers in yellow and green uniforms. He ran to the woods and then to his relatives in another village, and when he came back home, he found only smoking ruins and the burned bodies of his home-folk.
A total obliteration of local communities was a regular measure used by the Nazis in areas of heightened partisan activity - in Belorussia alone 628 villages followed the fate of Khatyn. These harsh punitive measures, the occupation authorities thought, would deprive the partisans of local support However, more often than not it resulted in strengthening of the popular resistance.
Khatyn, along with the Czech village of Lidice and the French village of Oradour-Sur-Glane, will forever remain a monument to the victims of the Second World War. Millions of people from all over the world visit the memorial complex erected in 1969 at the site of the massacre.
A total obliteration of local communities was a regular measure used by the Nazis in areas of heightened partisan activity - in Belorussia alone 628 villages followed the fate of Khatyn. These harsh punitive measures, the occupation authorities thought, would deprive the partisans of local support However, more often than not it resulted in strengthening of the popular resistance.
Khatyn, along with the Czech village of Lidice and the French village of Oradour-Sur-Glane, will forever remain a monument to the victims of the Second World War. Millions of people from all over the world visit the memorial complex erected in 1969 at the site of the massacre.