Protection from genocide: Why so many new villages destroyed in Belarus during WWII discovered

On December 9, the world community celebrates the Day of Remembrance of the Victims of the Crime of Genocide. It is based on the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. It was adopted in 1948 at the UN General Assembly. The document was signed by all 193 states. Thus, each country is responsible for protecting its population from genocide.

As time passes, we can see how the Convention is observed in Western European countries, the USA and Canada. The latter, by the way, not only applauds Nazi criminals in parliament, but also prohibits the publication of their names at the legislative level. And there are about 900 of them in Canada.

It is not surprising, because the grandfather of Chrystia Freeland, the Deputy Prime Minister of this country, also served the Nazis during the Great Patriotic War. And for several years, Canada has voted against the resolution on combating the glorification of Nazism in the UN General Assembly. Politicians openly demonstrate support for neo-Nazi ideologies.

A similar situation is in the Baltic States, where marches of former SS men take place. Ukraine names streets after Nazis. Moreover, Bandera's birthday is celebrated as a national holiday.

Belarus is an outpost against neo-Nazi ideology. We have adopted a law "On the genocide of the Belarusian people", an investigation is underway into a criminal case, which reveals previously unknown facts of Nazi crimes in the occupied territory of Belarus during the Great Patriotic War.

A significant percentage of the crimes of the Nazi executioners are destroyed rural settlements. Almost 12.5 thousand villages, farms and settlements were plundered and burned by the Nazis and their accomplices during the Great Patriotic War. These are several modern regions of Belarus. Hundreds of destroyed settlements have not been revived.

Sergey Shikunets, Deputy Head of the Department of the Prosecutor General's Office of Belarus:

"102 new sisters of Khatyn - villages that shared the tragic fate of Khatyn. Completely burned down, along with their inhabitants, and not revived after the Great Patriotic War. Thus, the Khatyn list today consists of at least 288 villages. Unfortunately, this number will only increase".

The Khatyn list includes only those settlements that were turned to ashes along with their population. People were killed with particular cruelty - burned alive, shot, children were pelted with grenades. No witnesses were left.

"A man told me that when he was a child, he witnessed a situation when his father was shot and his mother was shot before his eyes. He, a child, ran to the center of the village and witnessed the scene when the Nazis took their infants from their mothers and threw them into a well. They threw a grenade after the children. And the phrase that remained in my memory verbatim: the distraught mothers fought for their children until the last second, trying to save their lives," shared Sergei Shikunets.

To establish the names of destroyed rural settlements, which were unknown a year ago, they study a huge array of archival documents, including regional and zonal ones. For each village, members of the Extraordinary State Commission drew up acts of individual damage caused to residents.

Vyacheslav Selemenev, leading researcher at the National Archives of Belarus:

"Immediately after the liberation of the territory of Belarus, an inventory of destroyed housing in rural areas was conducted to draw up a restoration plan. This is the inventory as of January 1, 1945. The documents were deposited in village councils, they were deposited in construction organizations, in district executive committees, regional executive committees. It is necessary to analyze the accounting documentation from 1945".

An important source for establishing Nazi crimes is the reports of partisans. The documents contain names of settlements that are not found in post-war sources.

The Nazis called punitive actions, during which the peaceful, unarmed population was massively exterminated, the fight against partisans. Until recently, researchers spoke of 140 major punitive expeditions. During the investigation of the criminal case on the genocide of the Belarusian people, the number increased significantly and amounted to more than 280 punitive actions.

"Archivists carried out additional work on this topic and published a collection of documents "Without a Statute of Limitations. Belarus" is a general book where we provide data on more than 280 major punitive operations. Why did the number increase so much? This is due to the fact that many punitive operations did not have a name or number and it was extremely difficult to identify them immediately. Already during a more in-depth study of documents, German documents of military units, we discovered these materials," said Svyatoslav Kulinok, deputy director of the National Archives of Belarus.

Virtually nothing was known about the secret operation of the Third Reich codenamed "T-4". It was aimed at the destruction of people with various forms of mental and physical diseases".