State Memorial Khatyn

Государственный мемориальный комплекс Хатынь / Дзяржаўны мемарыяльны комплекс Хатынь

The State Memorial Khatyn is located on the site where the Khatyn village once stood, 60 kilometres north of Minsk in the Logosky district. In 1943, two SS commandos had attacked the village and burned it down completely in a »retributive action«. Almost all of the village inhabitants perished in the flames.

History

On March, 22, 1943, the German SS Battalion »Dirlewanger« attacked the small village of Khatyn in the Minsk region. In March 1943, Schutzmannschafts-Batallion 118, an auxiliary police battalion of 500 German and Ukrainian policemen that had been assembled in Kiev, came across partisans in the vicinity of Minsk. A battle with the partisans followed, upon which Schutzmannschafts-Batallion 118 had to retreat and the German officer in charge was killed. The battalion called for reinforcements and was joined by the SS battalion »Dirlewanger«. The SS battalion, named after its commander Oskar Dirlewanger, was a unit established in 1940 and composed of poachers, former (criminal and »asocial«) concentration camp prisoners and helpers from the occupied areas of the Soviet Union. The unit was relocated to Belarus in January 1942, where it murdered numerous civilians under the pretext of »combatting partisans«. The members of the unit frequently burned down whole villages and the people living there. When the partisans had retreated in the direction of Khatyn following fighting in March 1943, the SS units were in search of an opportunity to retaliate. The Schutzmannschafts-Batallion 118 and the SS battalion »Dirlewanger« encircled the village of Khatyn. They then looted the village and locked the approximately 149 village inhabitants in a barn. The SS men set fire to the building and shot those who tried to escape the flames. Before their withdrawal, the SS units burned down the entire village.

Khatyn, 2010, On the memorial's premises, Martina Berner

Khatyn, 2010, Symbolic cemetery for destroyed belarusian villages, Christian Dohnke

Victims

The SS murdered around 145 people in a burning barn in the village of Khatyn. Of the victims, around 76 were children. Only one man, the blacksmith Yozif Kaminskiy, and three children survived the massacre.

With the outbreak of the Second World War in September 1939 and the Red Army’s invasion of eastern Poland the north-east of the country was annexed to Soviet Belarus. In summer 1941 the whole of Belarus was occupied by German troops. Over the next three years between one in four and one in three residents met a violent death. Almost all of the towns were completely destroyed. The Wehrmacht or SS systematically annihilated around 620 villages together with theor inhabitants, including Chatyn. The largest extermination camp on occupied Soviet territory was located in Maly Trostenets outside the Belarusian capital Minsk. It is now presumed that at least 60,000 German and Belarusian Jews were murdered there. Up to 85,000 Jews are estimated to have died in Minsk and 230,000 in the country as a whole. From 1941, Belarus was at the heart of the Soviet partisan struggle against the German occupation with over a thousand active partisan groups. The Red Army began to recapture the country at the end of 1943 and the German occupation was considered over by summer 1944. The country was largely destroyed, the society shattered and the people traumatised. Belarus was reincorporated into the Soviet Union in 1944. A large part of the Polish territory annexed in 1939 remained part of the country. National memorial and memory culture in post-war Belarus were dominated by the liberation of the country on 3 July 1944 and the day of victory on 9 May 1945 as the end of a »heroic« struggle in the Great Patriotic War. Memory of the partisan war was also of key importance. The genocide of the Jews was not mentioned directly in the Soviet republics. An obelisk put up at the »Yama«, a pit where mass murders took place in the Minsk ghetto, was therefore an exception in the former Soviet Union. It was erected as early as 1946 and for decades was the sole memorial with a Yiddish inscription and a direct reference to the murdered Jews. The memorial site at Khatyn is also unusual. Here,153 people were burnt alive in March 1943. The memorial site, established in 1969, is notable for its simplicity, its concentration on the human dimension of the plight of the victims amidst the horrors of war and the absence of monumental features otherwise common in the former Soviet Union. After Belarus claimed independence in 1991 the search began for an independent national identity. The number of victims plays a decisive role, especially those killed during the Second World War. However, there is consciously no distinction drawn between the territorial situation of the country pre- and post-1939. Both the crimes of the Stalinist regime and the Holocaust have come to the fore but the nature of the state has prevented public discussion of these aspects. State remembrance continues to be dominated by the war in the years 1941 to 1944. Its main symbol is the monumental new building of the Museum of the History of the Great Patriotic War, opened in 2014. In the meantime, however, the association of Jewish communities in Belarus has established a series of memorials to the victims of mass murder. Since the early 1990s, several German towns have also put up stelae in Minsk to remember the Jews deported and murdered there. The Berlin stele, financed by the federal state of Berlin and the Foundation Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, was inaugurated in an official ceremony on June 25, 2009. There is also movement with regards to a fitting development of the Maly Trostenets area: In 2015, a memorial complex was inaugurated at the site. A second segment which was co-financed by Germany was opened in 2018 by the presidents of Belarus, Austria and Germany. Germany has also pledged to finance the renovation of the Historical Workshop’s historical building on the former territory of the Minsk ghetto, documenting the fates of its victims.

Remembrance

After the war, a memorial stone to the murdered inhabitants of Khatyn was set up. In 1965, a tender for a new design of the memorial site was issued on initiative of the Communist Party of Belarus. An architecture team made up of Yu. Gradov, V. Sankovich and Leonid Levin won the competition. On the 25th anniversary of the liberation of Belarus from German occupation, a state memorial was opened on the site where the village once stood. The approximately 30 ha large area of the memorial relates to the former village: concrete beams on the ground symbolise the outlines of the former 26 houses of the village at their original locations. On each of these marked houses stands a stylised concrete chimney. Memorial plaques give information about the number of victims from that house as well as their respective ages. On the site are also a stylised concrete barn, a well and a gate. In one of the memorial’s central spots is a 6 metre high bronze sculpture. It depicts the blacksmith Yozif Kaminskiy, holding his dead son in his arms. Not far lies a large concrete stele bearing an inscription to the »future generations« - it marks the mass grave for the village residents. In addition, there is a »cemetery of the villages«, 185 concrete blocks bearing the names of the 185 Belarusian villages which were destroyed and not rebuilt. »Symbolic trees of life«, on the other hand, depict the names of the 433 Belarusian villages which were burned down yet rebuilt. A several metre long »memorial wall« made of concrete names the 260 extermination sites and forced labour camps on the territory of Belarus. A further element of the memorial is the eternal flame, in memory of the fact that every fourth Belarusian citizen died in the Second World War. On the premises, bells ring regularly. Today, the complex is one of the most important memorial sites of Belarus.

Khatyn, 2010, Names of individual victims on recast chimneys, Martina Berner

Khatyn, 2010, Sculpture of Yozif Kaminskiy holding his dead son, Christian Dohnke

Open

The memorial is accessible at all times. Photo exhibition: Tuesday to Sunday: 9.00 a.m. to 5.00 p.m.

Contact

http://www.khatyn.by

khatyn@mail.ru

+375 (80)177 455 787

Logojskij Kreis, Minskaja Gebiet
223110 Chatyn

Khatyn, 2010, Names of destroyed belarusian villages, Christian Dohnke

Khatyn, 2018, Sculpture with the figure of Yozif Kaminskiy, Stiftung Denkmal

Khatyn, 2018, Detailed view of the sculpture, Stiftung Denkmal

Khatyn, 2018, Symbolic layout of a house destroyed with a bell, Stiftung Denkmal

Khatyn, 2018, Detailed view, Stiftung Denkmal

Khatyn, 2018, Memorial stones to commemorate 433 annihilated belorussian villages, Stiftung Denkmal

Khatyn, 2018, Eternal flame, Stiftung Denkmal

Khatyn, 2010, At the center of the memorial, Christian Dohnke

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