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| The bronze sculpture of an Unvanquished Man |
We are now at a symbolic edge of the village marked by a wicker fence – a usual sight to see in any local village.
The figures here show that during three years of occupation of Belarus nazis turned into ruins 9200 big and small villages, 2.23 million people were shot, hanged or tortured to death.
This figure is cited in all encyclopedias and books about World War II (the Great Patriotic War) and was first aired in 1945 by the Extraordinary State Commission of Inquiry into Atrocities Committed by German Nazi Occupiers. In recent years this figure was challenged by some historians.
The centerpiece of the memorial is a bronze sculpture of an Unvanquished Man, a man who has withstood all hardships of the war and risen from the fire, sorrowfully and gently holding a dead child’s body in his peasant’s work-weary arms. And it seems that his bronze lips would part now and he would say: “Cursed be nazism!” The prototype for the sculpture of the Unvanquished Man was Josef Kaminski, the only grown-up survivor of the Khaytin massacre.
For years Josef Kaminski was thought to be the only surviving eyewitness of the Khatyn tragedy until a former teacher from an orphanage in Pleshchenitsy recalled that among the orphanage residents there were two boys who had come alive out of the carnage in Khatyn. Their names were Anton Baranovski and Vitya Zhelobkovich.
“Good folk, remember:
We loved life, our homeland, and you, our dears.
We died burned alive.
We plead to all of you: Let your grief and sorrow impart you courage and strength to make peace and tranquility last forever on this Earth.
So that nowhere shall life ever perish again in a whirlwind of fire”.
The tombstone also carries a response from the living that reads:
“Our dear ones, with our heads bowed in deep sorrow we are standing before you. You have not submitted to nazi murderers in the blackest of times. You met your death but the flame of your love for the Soviet Homeland shall never die down. Immortal memory of you shall live eternally in our nation as eternal is the Earth and the bright Sun shining above it!”
A pathway of gray concrete slabs leads to what used to be a village street. At the site of each of the 26 burned-down log houses there is a stylized foundation of a log house shell and a chimney-like obelisk topped with a bell. Each such chimney obelisk carries a plaque with the names of household members. In front of each of the houses there is a gate that kind of invites you to come into the house that is no longer there. At the far end of the street there was the house of the Zhelobkovich family. It was Anna Zhelobkovich who saved her seven-year-old son from nazi thugs’ bullets covering him with her own body. The horror of that terrible day in March remained forever ingrained in his memory.
There are 26 such obelisks and just as many bells whose toll blends into a funereal Khatyn knell.
It is a unique section of the Khatyn Memorial. That is something that the world has never seen before. 186 villages across Belarus shared Khatyn’s fate. These are the villages that were destroyed by nazis together with their residents, villages that have never been rebuilt.
In 1969, delegations from all parts of Belarus came to Khatyn bringing sacred soil from the sites of these dead villages. On June 30, a solemn ceremony was held when urns with soil from these villages were committed to earth to funereal music.
Nazi prisons and concentration camps were an important instrument of exterminating Soviet people. They more than lived up to the eerie name given to them during the war – death factories.
There were 260 concentration camps and subcamps in the occupied territory of Belarus where nazis exterminated over one million people.
The Wall of Memory erected here is dedicated to the memory of inmates who were put to death in concentration camps.
The 128-meter-long Wall contains niches with memorial plates carrying the names of concentration camps and sites of mass killings and the number of people put to death there. The first two niches in the Wall of Memory refer to the sites of mass executions of Belarusian children.
This figure is cited in all encyclopedias and books about World War II (the Great Patriotic War) and was first aired in 1945 by the Extraordinary State Commission of Inquiry into Atrocities Committed by German Nazi Occupiers. In recent years this figure was challenged by some historians.
The centerpiece of the memorial is a bronze sculpture of an Unvanquished Man, a man who has withstood all hardships of the war and risen from the fire, sorrowfully and gently holding a dead child’s body in his peasant’s work-weary arms. And it seems that his bronze lips would part now and he would say: “Cursed be nazism!” The prototype for the sculpture of the Unvanquished Man was Josef Kaminski, the only grown-up survivor of the Khaytin massacre.
For years Josef Kaminski was thought to be the only surviving eyewitness of the Khatyn tragedy until a former teacher from an orphanage in Pleshchenitsy recalled that among the orphanage residents there were two boys who had come alive out of the carnage in Khatyn. Their names were Anton Baranovski and Vitya Zhelobkovich.
“Good folk, remember:
We loved life, our homeland, and you, our dears.
We died burned alive.
We plead to all of you: Let your grief and sorrow impart you courage and strength to make peace and tranquility last forever on this Earth.
So that nowhere shall life ever perish again in a whirlwind of fire”.
The tombstone also carries a response from the living that reads:
“Our dear ones, with our heads bowed in deep sorrow we are standing before you. You have not submitted to nazi murderers in the blackest of times. You met your death but the flame of your love for the Soviet Homeland shall never die down. Immortal memory of you shall live eternally in our nation as eternal is the Earth and the bright Sun shining above it!”
A pathway of gray concrete slabs leads to what used to be a village street. At the site of each of the 26 burned-down log houses there is a stylized foundation of a log house shell and a chimney-like obelisk topped with a bell. Each such chimney obelisk carries a plaque with the names of household members. In front of each of the houses there is a gate that kind of invites you to come into the house that is no longer there. At the far end of the street there was the house of the Zhelobkovich family. It was Anna Zhelobkovich who saved her seven-year-old son from nazi thugs’ bullets covering him with her own body. The horror of that terrible day in March remained forever ingrained in his memory.
There are 26 such obelisks and just as many bells whose toll blends into a funereal Khatyn knell.
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Cemetery of villages |
Cemetery of villages
It is a unique section of the Khatyn Memorial. That is something that the world has never seen before. 186 villages across Belarus shared Khatyn’s fate. These are the villages that were destroyed by nazis together with their residents, villages that have never been rebuilt.
In 1969, delegations from all parts of Belarus came to Khatyn bringing sacred soil from the sites of these dead villages. On June 30, a solemn ceremony was held when urns with soil from these villages were committed to earth to funereal music.
 |
The Wall of Memory |
The Wall of Memory
Nazi prisons and concentration camps were an important instrument of exterminating Soviet people. They more than lived up to the eerie name given to them during the war – death factories.
There were 260 concentration camps and subcamps in the occupied territory of Belarus where nazis exterminated over one million people.
The Wall of Memory erected here is dedicated to the memory of inmates who were put to death in concentration camps.
The 128-meter-long Wall contains niches with memorial plates carrying the names of concentration camps and sites of mass killings and the number of people put to death there. The first two niches in the Wall of Memory refer to the sites of mass executions of Belarusian children.
