In the Vitebsk region during the war, the occupiers burned down 3086 villages. 240 of them were burned twice.
The world-renowned memorial complex "Khatyn," located on the site of one of the villages destroyed by punitive detachments along with its inhabitants, serves as an eternal reminder of the tragedy. It is a symbol of all villages in Belarus that suffered in the fire.
Today is the Day of Remembrance of the Victims of the Khatyn Tragedy. A day that is increasingly taking on the character of a day of national remembrance and sorrow for all Belarusian villages burned down. The memorial complex features the "Cemetery of Villages," where urns with soil from 185 Belarusian villages that shared Khatyn's fate are interred. The symbolic "Trees of Life" commemorate 433 Belarusian villages that survived the fiery tragedy and were rebuilt and revived.
In 2021, the Prosecutor General's Office of Belarus initiated a criminal case on the genocide of the Belarusian people during the Great Patriotic War. At that time, according to official information, 9,200 Belarusian settlements and villages were completely or partially destroyed during the occupation, with 186 of them burning down completely along with their inhabitants. During the investigation, over a thousand settlements were identified as completely or partially destroyed, among which, according to preliminary data, at least 35 shared the fate of Khatyn.
– After the Great Patriotic War, state extraordinary commissions were established in our country to investigate the crimes of the fascists on our territory, – recalls Deputy Prosecutor of the Region Vladimir Guk. – During the investigation, we study their materials and interview witnesses. In the Vitebsk region, more than 2.5 thousand people were interviewed. The majority of them are former underage prisoners and relatives of the victims. We are finding more and more places of death and burial of civilians that were not recorded or reliably established immediately after the war.
During the investigation, employees of the prosecutor's office and the Investigative Committee discovered a new burial site in Dolzha, Vitebsk region, where fascists shot civilians. Specialists are able to identify the names of traitors who worked for the occupiers. According to Belarusian legislation, a criminal case can be considered against deceased persons if required by the interests of the victims or for the restoration of social or historical justice.
– Studying the archives, even experienced prosecutors are horrified by the atrocities of the fascists, – reports Vladimir Guk. – One case is etched in my memory. A woman from the Vitebsk region said that when a group of civilians was being moved to another area, the fascists took children away from their mothers. They were herded into a ditch, doused with fuel, and set on fire. Those who tried to escape were shot on the spot before the eyes of their parents. And this is just one of thousands of similar crimes.
Executions and mass bodily torture were intended to instill fear and suppress the slightest attempts to resist the occupation regime. Often, the extermination of the population in a brutal form was carried out under the pretext of fighting partisans. The popular resistance was a convenient excuse for carrying out the criminal plans of "depopulating" the occupied territories. As early as July 1941, at one of the meetings, Hitler emphasized: "The partisan war gives us the opportunity to destroy everything that rises against us."
By the autumn of 1942, the Rossony district became one of the centers of the partisan movement. By October, the people's avengers had almost completely cleared it of the enemy. In response, the Nazis decided to carry out one of the most inhumane punitive operations to regain control of the territory and eliminate the partisan region.
The first operation was codenamed "Hare-White". According to partisan estimates, from January 25 to February 16, 1943 alone, 260 houses were destroyed in the Rossony region, and 1,245 people were shot and burned alive, including over 200 children.
The Nazis did not stop there. "Winter Magic" was the name of one of the most sadistic punitive operations in the entire history of the Great Patriotic War. It affected four districts bordering Latvia: the Belarusian Drissa, Osvy, (now Verkhnedvinsk), Rossony, and the Russian Sebezh districts. From February 14 to March 30, 1943, the occupiers inflicted heavy losses not only on the partisans: with fire, they wiped over 400 villages off the face of the earth, 46 of which were not revived. The punitive forces destroyed 10,000 – 12,000 civilians, drove about 2,000 to forced labor in Germany, and imprisoned over a thousand children in the Salaspils death camp. The scale of the Osvy tragedy is evidenced by the fact that only two (!) villages survived in this district. Thus, the Nazis created a "neutral zone" in the Belarusian-Latvian border area to block the spread of Soviet partisan activities into Latvia.
With the beginning of the liberation of Belarus in the autumn-winter period of 1943-1944, the use of the "scorched earth" tactic reached monstrous proportions. In this way, the occupiers sought to secure the rear of Army Group Center. From April 11 to May 5, 1944, they carried out another massacre in the Polotsk-Lepel zone under the mocking name "Spring Festival": they destroyed about 7,000 people, and drove over 11,000 to Germany.
Over the years of occupation, the Nazis carried out more than 140 large-scale punitive operations in Belarus using motorized units, tanks, and aviation. For example, in August-October 1943, fascists subjected villages in Beshenkovichi, Sirotino (now Shumiilino), and Ushachi districts to bombing from airfields in Vitebsk and Ulla. In the latter, about 400 bombs were dropped on the village of Stai.
According to the database of the National Archives of Belarus on villages burned down during the war, there are 9,194 such villages. Of these, 3,086 are in the Vitebsk region. In the northern region, more than 240 villages were burned twice, over 80 – three times, and 22 – four or more times.
The acts compiled by partisans and surviving collective farmers during the war, and subsequent testimonies, are soul-chilling. Before extermination, most of the population was subjected to mockery, torture, and total robbery. Death by a bullet was the easiest. The executioners drowned people, burned them alive, often buried children alive, impaled them on fence stakes, and lifted them on bayonets. These were not isolated instances of sadism, but a mass phenomenon that occurred in all affected districts of the Vitebsk region.
From Soviet documents: "In the village of Gorodilovichi (Osvy district), the Zharov family: five-pointed stars were cut out on their chests and necks, after which the whole family was drowned in the Svólna River"; "Nazi executioners completely burned down the village of Volodarka, Horadok district, and in the same village shot 89 and brutally tortured 57 people. Women and children were tied together in groups, doused with gasoline and burned, and infants were bayoneted and thrown into the fire"; "fascists, bursting into the villages of Murashki and Kulakovo, Surazh district, ordered all girls aged 15 and older to appear in the village of Kulakovo. 27 girls appeared. They were locked in a barn, soldiers broke in and brutally raped them"; "in the village of Zelenka, Polotsk district, punitive forces locked citizen Zhogaleva Maria Zakharovna, born in 1918, with her three children: Zoya, 5 years old, Nikolai, 2 years old, and Anatoly, 1 year old, in a house. A nail was driven into the mother's head, and then she was burned alive with her children"...
What is this, if not genocide of the Belarusian people? Not only were thousands of villages turned into black deserts of ashes, but out of 270 cities and district centers, 209 were burned and looted. Vitebsk, Gomel, Minsk lay in ruins. The enemies destroyed more than half of the republic's national wealth. Belarus's economy was thrown back to the level of 1928, and in terms of industry and energy – to 1913.
After the war, human resources were directed to the restoration of enterprises, power plants, hospitals, schools, and housing. For reasons of loyalty to representatives of all nationalities living in the USSR, it was not publicized that the punitive battalions operating in our land during the occupation consisted mainly of ethnic Ukrainians, Lithuanians, Latvians, and Estonians. With the collapse of the USSR, the need to hide these facts disappeared. On the contrary, in light of the fact that destructive forces are trying to rewrite history, it has become necessary to make them public. So that they remember.
According to updated data from the Prosecutor General's Office of the Republic of Belarus, during the occupation, the Nazi German invaders and their accomplices destroyed (partially or completely destroyed and burned), often along with civilians, at least 5179 rural settlements in the Vitebsk region. Based on the facts established by the investigative group, the list of "sister Khatyns" – villages in Vitebsk region destroyed almost completely along with the population and not revived after the war – has been supplemented with 60 villages.
It includes 170 settlements.
Photo from open sources