📆 #OTD in 1943, almost the entire population of the village of Khatyn in Belorussia, the total of 149 civilians including 75 children, was massacred by SS punitive battalion.
The reason for that inhuman action was an attack on Nazi troops by Soviet partisans a day before.
☝️ The operation was carried out by the Schutzmannschaft Batallion 118 assisted by the Dirlewanger Waffen-SS special battalion, both composed mostly of Ukrainian Nazi collaborators. The 118 detachment was led by Ukrainian Grigory Vasyura, former Red Army soldier who volunteered for service in Waffen-SS following German captivity.
🕯 On 22 March 1943, the death squad encircled the village. Its residents were herded into a barn and burnt alive. The trapped people managed to break down the front doors, but in trying to escape, were machine-gunned. Very few could survive.
Khatyn was not the first and not the last among more than 70,000 villages Hitlerites burnt in the occupied Soviet territories. But it became a symbol of those.
❗️Most of the participants of the killing squad were tried and executed after WW2, but several fled the Soviet Union and reached old age in the US, Canada and Europe.
📽 The tragedy of Khatyn became the basis for a Soviet war drama “Come and See” (1985). Follow the LINK to watch it.
#WWII #Victory79 #NoStateOfLimitations
The reason for that inhuman action was an attack on Nazi troops by Soviet partisans a day before.
☝️ The operation was carried out by the Schutzmannschaft Batallion 118 assisted by the Dirlewanger Waffen-SS special battalion, both composed mostly of Ukrainian Nazi collaborators. The 118 detachment was led by Ukrainian Grigory Vasyura, former Red Army soldier who volunteered for service in Waffen-SS following German captivity.
🕯 On 22 March 1943, the death squad encircled the village. Its residents were herded into a barn and burnt alive. The trapped people managed to break down the front doors, but in trying to escape, were machine-gunned. Very few could survive.
Khatyn was not the first and not the last among more than 70,000 villages Hitlerites burnt in the occupied Soviet territories. But it became a symbol of those.
❗️Most of the participants of the killing squad were tried and executed after WW2, but several fled the Soviet Union and reached old age in the US, Canada and Europe.
📽 The tragedy of Khatyn became the basis for a Soviet war drama “Come and See” (1985). Follow the LINK to watch it.
#WWII #Victory79 #NoStateOfLimitations