Operation Winter Magic

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The operation Winter Magic was an action in the context of the alleged anti-partisan , part of the National Socialist racial war that during the Soviet German War from February to April 1943 in the north of Belarus and the West of Russia from Baltic and Ukrainian collaborators was performed. The operation is now classified as a crime against humanity .

Goals and participants

The aim of the operation was to create a 40-kilometer-wide "population-free" strip between Sebezh in the north and the Drissa River in the south - achieved through mass murders. This buffer zone was intended to rob the partisans of their bases. One of the centers of the action was the city of Asweja . The management of the operation was incumbent on the SS-Obergruppenführer and SS and Police Leader in the Reichskommissariat Ostland Friedrich Jeckeln . Originally seven Latvian and one Ukrainian police battalion (s), an SS police riot, air defense and artillery units of the Wehrmacht , two communications departments and an air force for special operations were involved in the operation. The Latvian units were commanded by the standard leader of the Waffen SS Voldemārs Veiss . In the course of the operation, other units were added: a Latvian police regiment, a Lithuanian and an Estonian police battalion and two German task forces. The total number of forces involved in the operation on the German side was around 4,200 men.

Course and Sacrifice

The units involved in Operation Winterzauber marched into villages and shot everyone who could be suspected of collaborating with the partisans (practically all male residents between the ages of 16 and 50), as well as old people and disabled people who could not walk a long way could handle. The remaining residents, mostly women and children, were herded to reception camps on foot. Those who lost their strength on the way were shot. In the reception camps people were sorted and some were sent to Germany for forced labor and some to death camps like Salaspils near Riga .

In some villages, residents were burned alive in houses and barns . Two Catholic priests who died in this way in the northern Belarusian village of Rossiza were beatified in 1999 by Pope John Paul II . Single-district Asweja the Oblast Vitebsk 183 villages were burned and 11,383 people (including 2,118 children) killed. 14,175 inhabitants were deported either to the German Empire or to the Salaspils camp.

Commemoration

In Belarus, memorial events for the victims of the operation are organized at regular intervals, for example at the Kurgan of Immortality in Asweja . The Belarusian history professor Ales Bely complained that there are no representatives of Latvia at these events who could show that they support the victims of this terror and not their perpetrators.

The National Memorial of the Republic of Belarus today commemorates over 600 "burned villages" and the victims from over 5000 villages.

See also

literature

  • Wolfgang Curilla: The German Ordnungspolizei and the Holocaust in the Baltic States and in Belarus 1941-1944. 2nd Edition. Ferdinand Schöningh Verlag, Paderborn 2006.
  • А. Р. Дюков: Операция "Зимнее волшебство" Нацистская истребительная политика и латвийский коллаборамционз. Фонд “Историческая память”, Moscow 2011.
  • H. Судленкова: "Зимнее волшебство" СС. // Сайт журнала «Россия в глобальной политике». (www.globalaffairs.cz) (June 28, 2007). Архивировано из первоисточника 6 декабря 2008. (недоступная ссылка - история) Проверено 30 января 2013.
  • K. Kangeris: Latviešu policijas bataljoni lielajās partizānu apkarošanas akcijās 1942. un 1943. gadā // Totalitārie okupācijas režīmi Latvijā 1940−1964. Latvijas vēstures institūta apgāds, Riga 2004, ISBN 9984-601-56-2 . (Latvijas Vēsturnieku komisijas raksti)

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Об участии латышского легиона СС в военных преступлениях в 1941−1945 гг. и попытках пересмотра в Латвии приговора Нюрнбергского трибунала (справочная информация) . // Официальный сайт МИД РФ. Archived from the original on February 22, 2012. Retrieved July 23, 2009.
  2. ↑ Igors Varpa: Latviesu Karavirs zem Kaskrusta Karoga (Latvian soldiers under the swastika), ISBN 9984-751-41-4 . P. 115.
  3. ↑ Saints and Blessed // © Conference of Catholic Bishops in Belarus, Сайт “Roman Catholic Church in Belarus” (catholic.by), Feb. 11, 2004. ( Memento of the original from July 25, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: Der Archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / catholic.by
  4. ↑ Белорусский историк: Латышские полицаи активно участвовали в карательных операциях в Белоруссии // Сайт ИА " REGNUM » (www.regnum.ru), 12 марта in 2009.