Horrific Facts of Genocide: 578 Death Camps in Belarus Shock with Their Grim Reality

In April 2021, the Prosecutor General of Belarus made a decision to initiate a criminal case concerning the genocide of the Belarusian people committed by Nazi criminals and their accomplices during the Great Patriotic War and its aftermath.

The goal was to restore historical justice, prevent the falsification of events related to the Great Patriotic War, and preserve the memory of the tragedy suffered by the Belarusian nation—an undertaking of such scale that it required the most thorough investigation.

Prior to this investigation, it was believed that during the occupation of the Belarusian SSR, around 9,200 rural settlements had suffered. However, evidence collected during the criminal proceedings confirmed the destruction of no less than 12,868 villages and hamlets.

This tragic fate repeated the destruction of Khаtyn, where entire villages along with their residents were burned to the ground and never revived after the war—at least 290 villages, not 186 as previously thought.

Nazi perpetrators and their accomplices not only burned, dismembered, shot, and crushed our people with tanks but also used poisonous substances against them. Often, to conceal their true intentions, they employed highly cynical names for their punitive operations.

Preliminary investigations have identified and questioned 19,554 people, nearly 8,000 of whom are victims, including former prisoners of death camps.

It was found that there were 578 Nazi death camps on Belarusian territory.

Thus, during the course of the investigation, it became clear that the scale of the tragedy endured by the Belarusian people during the occupation was significantly greater than previously believed. Over the period of German occupation, more than 3 million civilians and prisoners of war were murdered on Belarusian land, 209 cities were destroyed, and over 380,000 people were enslaved in German captivity.