Bodies of Executed Villagers Dismembered and Stabbed with Bayonets: Genocide in Dobroslavka

During the years of the Great Patriotic War, the village of Dobroslavka was located in the Logishinsky district of the Pinsk region

During the years of the Great Patriotic War, the village of Dobroslavka was located in the Logishinsky district of the Pinsk region. Today, it lies within the Pinsk district, but during the war, the settlement was partially destroyed.

As the German fascist invaders retreated, they employed scorched-earth tactics in Dobroslavka. Witnesses recall that mechanized units arrived in some villages to set homes ablaze with artillery fire. As Deputy Prosecutor Aleksey Borchuk of the Pinsk Interdistrict Prosecutor’s Office explained, when investigators began examining these facts, information emerged about people who perished during punitive operations aimed at destroying villages.

Aleksey Borchuk, Deputy Prosecutor

A resident of Dobroslavka, Pinsk district, Stepan Streltchuk, recounted that not the entire village was burned; the homes of a doctor and a priest, as well as some farmsteads, remained untouched. A local resident speculated that perhaps the Germans hesitated to destroy these areas due to the presence of partisans.

Currently, the Pinsk Interdistrict Prosecutor’s Office is investigating the case of eight civilians shot by the Nazis. “According to archival lists, the data align with testimonies given by witnesses. There are also two archival interrogations from 1945, in which people recounted that, at the beginning of the war, a group of executioners arrived in the village, and on August 6, 1941, the victims were shot,” Borchuk stated.

According to available information from the prosecutor’s office, at the very start of the war, Wehrmacht troops were capturing territory and advancing further. The same situation occurred in Dobroslavka. Local residents, who were interrogated, stated that German soldiers passed through the village and largely left civilians unharmed, but Einsatzgruppen—special task forces—followed behind, hunting down activists (communists, Jews) and executing them.

In Dobroslavka, as in many other villages, a German administrative representative—named Soltus—was appointed, who identified known activists. “All these individuals were detained, including a Jewish family of three members. They were taken beyond the village and executed,” noted the prosecutor’s representative.

The Pinsk Interdistrict Prosecutor’s Office learned that one woman— the wife of the head of a Jewish family—was severely impaired in her movements, but she was not abandoned or left behind. Instead, she was carried by hand along with others and taken outside the village before being shot.

One woman, during her interrogation, explained a chilling detail: the villagers were led out of the village, shot, and then their bodies were dismembered, stabbed with bayonets, and left at the scene of the execution.