What secrets did genocide case reveal and what do falsifiers of history play on now?

What truth did the Nazi criminals try to hide during the war, and what are the falsifiers of history playing on now? You can find out about this in the author's column "Site".

Concealing traces of Nazi crimes. Probably, journalists have rarely talked about this before, or not enough. Moreover, the Nazis tried to hide the truth about their policy of genocide of the Belarusian and Soviet people even during the Great Patriotic War.

Recently, the Supreme Court issued a guilty verdict in the second case of genocide during the war in the history of sovereign Belarus against the commander of the 118th Ukrainian security police battalion Smovsky. Deputy director of the National Archives, candidate of historical sciences SvyatoslavKulinok, a man who devoted most of his life to the study of history, was a witness in the case. He spoke about the destruction of traces of crimes.

Svyatoslav Kulinok, witness in the Smovsky case, deputy director of the National Archives, PhD in history:

"This was a targeted action that was carried out by Nazi Germany after the defeat at Kursk. When it became obvious that the war was over, the action began to gain momentum, it was engaged in concealing traces of Nazi crimes on the Eastern Front, including in Belarus. The essence was to dig up places of mass extermination, exhume corpses and destroy them by burning them in portable cremation ovens."

This action was top secret, there was practically no documentation. But still, it was possible to identify at least 30 such places. Yes, prisoners of war or local residents were usually forced to exhume the bodies. Then they were killed, too, and also burned in hellish ovens.

The attempt to conceal traces of crimes gave ground for all sorts of falsifiers who are trying to whitewash the Nazis and their lackeys. As now they try to present partisans as guilty of Nazi crimes.

Svyatoslav Kulinok:

"1941, what partisan movement are we talking about? It was disintegrated, it was formed later. In 1941, there were isolated partisan detachments. This did not stop the Germans from carrying out large punitive operations."

One of the most terrible punitive operations - "Winter Magic", the Osveya tragedy of 1943. According to German documents, there were more than 440 burned villages, more than 10 thousand destroyed civilians, people taken into slavery. At the same time, the partisan losses were less than 100 people. So what were the goals of this punitive operation, against whom was it carried out primarily? The answer is obvious.

Svyatoslav Kulinok:

"One more fact. The fact is that since 1942 the Germans have begun to implement a practice of creating false partisan formations. These are small formations of their German accomplices who were sent into the forests under the guise of partisans. Their main task was to drive a wedge between the civilian population and the partisans. They disguised themselves as partisans, robbed, raped, killed."

After the war, the West sheltered thousands of criminals, trying to hide the truth. Smovsky lived in Germany, then in the USA. There, not only were they not interested in his bloody past, but they also praised the murderer.

The Nazis did not want to create a blooming garden on our land. And the murders of civilians are not isolated cases, it is a system that had a clear plan and methods of achievement.

The events of today force us to turn again and again to the experience of the past. The loss of historical memory, like any attempts to justify the ideology of Nazism and glorify collaborators, can become mortally dangerous for society.