National Memorial of the Republic of Belarus
The national state memorial "Chatyn" of the Republic of Belarus is the central war memorial in Belarus for all victims of the German occupation in World War II . It is particularly reminiscent of the more than 600 "burned villages" that were destroyed along with their inhabitants in the National Socialist genocide and the Nazi " scorched earth " policy in Belarus since the beginning of the Second World War. Chatyn was one of them; the place is about 60 kilometers north of Minsk on the road to Vitebsk in the Lahojsk district in the Minskaya Woblasz .
background
Of the approximately nine million people who fell into the hands of the Germans in Belarus, around 1.6 to 1.7 million were murdered, namely 700,000 prisoners of war, 500,000 to 550,000 Jews, 345,000 victims of the so-called anti-partisan campaign and around 100,000 members of other population groups. In addition, there were several hundred thousand Belarusians who had fallen in the ranks of the Red Army.
Over 147,000 residents died in over 5,000 completely or partially destroyed villages. 627 villages were totally destroyed, 186 of them not rebuilt after the war. A total of 345,000 people were killed in the German fight against partisans in Belarus. Nine out of ten of the victims were not partisans.
Of the total number of 5,295 villages destroyed, 3% were destroyed in the first year of the war in 1941, 16% in 1942, 63% in 1943 and 18% in 1944.
State visitors often come here to lay a wreath in memory of the more than two million dead.
The destruction of Khatyn and the murder of the villagers was an act of revenge in response to the shelling of a German motorcade by Belarusian partisans on March 22, 1943. The company commander, Captain Hans Woellke , and three Ukrainian members of the Bataillon 118 protection team were killed. On the same day, Chatyn was looted and destroyed by Battalion 118 and the SS Special Battalion Dirlewanger . They first drove the residents into the village barn, set them on fire and shot machine guns at the people who were trying to escape from the barn. A total of 149 villagers died, including 75 children. An adult, the then 56-year-old village blacksmith Iosif Kaminsky, and five children survived the destruction of Khatyn and the Second World War. Two other girls were able to escape from the burning barn into the forest and were taken in by residents of the village of Chwaraszjani, but then died when that village was destroyed.
The memorial
The memorial was inaugurated on July 5, 1969. The memorial was designed and created by the architects Yuri Gradow, Leonid Levin, Valentin Sankowitsch and the sculptor Sergej Selichanow. The opening began with a funeral ceremony in Minsk. Delegations from Russia , Ukraine , Georgia , Moldova and other republics of the Soviet Union , from the twin cities at the time and other foreign guests took part in the celebration and the trip to Khatyn. This place is supposed to stand for the many destroyed places in Belarus. In addition, the survivor Kaminsky spoke at the opening ceremony.
The renovation and reconstruction of the state memorial "Khatyn" was carried out in July 2004, on the occasion of the 60th anniversary of the "Liberation of Belarus from German-fascist conquerors" in Khatyn in the presence of the President of Belarus, Aljaksandr Lukashenka , of Russia , Vladimir Putin , and Ukraine, Leonid Kuchma , concluded. In July 2004, an additional exhibition with many photographic documents was opened in the memorial, particularly reminiscent of Chatyn, Maly Trostenez and, as another example, of the Osaritschi concentration camp .
The memorial contains many symbols, the three most important are probably the memories of Khatyn , the cemetery of the burned villages and the trees of the rebuilt villages.
Furthermore, the "Eternal Flame" burns in a large block of black granite from which three birch trees grow.
This symbolizes the fact that around a quarter of all Belarusians were killed in World War II.
Everywhere in the area where the houses of the village Khatyn once stood, its floor plans are indicated by concrete beams embedded in the ground. A symbolic chimney protrudes into the air and reminds of the fire ruins. A bell strikes every thirty seconds together with all the other bells in the chimney steles, which are reminiscent of the earlier houses. The number and age of the victims from the respective house are entered there. At the entrance to the symbolic village there is a six-meter-high bronze sculpture depicting Iosif Kaminsky carrying his dead son Adam in his arms. The village barn is also symbolically reproduced behind the sculpture, which commemorates the extermination of the village population.
The burnt village cemetery looks like a burial ground in a modern cemetery. Even rows of graves and identical type of lettering. But each of the 185 graves stands for a village that was destroyed as part of so-called punitive operations. On the grave there is an urn with a home base and an inscription with the name of the village and the name of the district where the village was located, which disappeared after the war.
The names of 433 Belarusian villages, which like Khatyn were burned down but rebuilt after the war, are immortalized like branches on symbolic "trees of life". In the Logoisky district alone, 21 villages and their population were burned down. After the war, 11 of these villages were rebuilt.
In a long memorial wall, memorial plaques with the names and deaths of the concentration camps and extermination sites in Belarus were placed in niches. The way along this wall reminds of over 260 death camps and places of mass extermination of the German SS, the Ordnungspolizei and the Wehrmacht.
literature
- Ales Adamovich : Khatyn. Glagoslav Publications, London 2012, ISBN 978-1-909156-07-4 .
- Bernd Boll : Chatyn 1943. In: Gerd R. Ueberschär (Hrsg.): Places of horror. Crimes in World War II. Primus-Verlag, Darmstadt 2003, ISBN 3-89678-232-0 , pp. 19-29.
- Bernhard Chiari : Everyday life behind the front. Occupation, collaboration and resistance in Belarus 1941–1944 (= writings of the Federal Archives. Vol. 53). Droste, Düsseldorf 1998, ISBN 3-7700-1607-6 .
- Jochen Fuchs, Janine Lüdtke, Maria Schastnaya: Places of remembrance in Belarus: Chatyn and Maly Trostinec. Part 1: Chatyn. In: memorials circular. No. 138, 2007, ZDB -ID 1195828-5 , pp. 3-10.
- Christian Ganzer: Memory of War and Occupation in Belarus'. The “Brest Heroes Fortress” and “Chatyn '” memorials. In: Babette Quinkert, Jörg Morré (ed.): German occupation in the Soviet Union 1941–1944. War of extermination. Reactions, memories. Paderborn 2014, pp. 318–334. [1]
- Christian Gerlach : Calculated murders. The German economic and annihilation policy in Belarus 1941 to 1944. Hamburger Edition, Hamburg 1999, ISBN 3-930908-54-9 (at the same time: Berlin, Techn. Univ., Diss., 1998).
- Natallja V. Kirylava: Chatyn. Belarus', Minsk 2005, ISBN 985-010564-X .
- Bogdan Musial (ed.): Soviet partisans in Belarus. Interior views from the Baranoviči area 1941–1944. A documentation (= series of the quarterly books for contemporary history. Vol. 88). Oldenbourg, Munich 2004, ISBN 3-486-64588-9 .
- Hans Heinrich Nolte : Osarici 1944. In: Gerd R. Ueberschär (Ed.): Places of horror. Crimes in World War II. Primus-Verlag, Darmstadt 2003, ISBN 3-89678-232-0 , pp. 186-194.
- Per Anders Rudling: The Khatyn Massacre in Belorussia: A Historical Controversy Revisited. In: Holocaust and Genocide Studies 26: 1 (2012): pp. 29–58.
- Astrid Sahm: Under the spell of war. Memorial sites and culture of remembrance in Belarus. In: Eastern Europe. Vol. 58, No. 6/8, 2008, ISSN 0030-6428 , pp. 229-245.
Web links
- Khatyn Memorial website (Russian, Belarusian, German, English)
Individual evidence
- ^ Christian Gerlach: Calculated murders. The German economic and extermination policy in Belarus 1941 to 1944. Hamburger Edition , Hamburg 1999, p. 1158.
- ^ Christian Gerlach: Calculated murders. The German economic and extermination policy in Belarus 1941 to 1944. Hamburger Edition, Hamburg 1999, p. 955.
- ^ Christian Gerlach: Calculated murders. The German economic and annihilation policy in Belarus 1941 to 1944. Hamburger Edition, Hamburg 1999 p. 957f.
- ↑ "Khatyn" - The Tragedy of Khatyn | The tragedy. Retrieved June 2, 2019 .
Coordinates: 54 ° 20 ′ 4 ″ N , 27 ° 56 ′ 37 ″ E