“Without Time Limits”: The List of Khatyn Victims Made Public for the First Time

“Without Time Limits”: The List of Khatyn Victims Made Public for the First Time

The very first document with a list of residents of the Belarusian village of Khatyn, exterminated 80 years ago, has been made public and provided to RIA Novosti for the first time as part of the ” Without Time Limits” project.

Khatyn was located 54 kilometres north-west of Minsk. On 22 March 1943, all the residents of Khatyn were driven by the Nazis and their proxies from the 118th Ukrainian Security Police Battalion into a large collective farm shed and burnt alive. The fire killed 149 people, including 75 children. During Soviet times, the official version held the Nazis responsible for this act of genocide, while the involvement of Ukrainian punishers was hushed up.

Now a photocopy of the act of the commission for clarification of the date of the burning of Khatyn and the number of murdered villagers, drawn up on 26 May 1969 in the urban settlement of Logoisk, has been made public.

During the inspection it was established that Khatyn had been burnt on 22 March 1943 at 14.00. “Twenty-six houses with outbuildings were burnt. All the inhabitants were herded into the collective farm barn, which was doused with combustible mixture and set on fire; those who tried to escape were shot. A total of 149 Soviet civilians were burnt,” the document said.

Further on the list shows the names of 25 families who died 80 years ago (one house was uninhabited). The youngest, Tolik Yaskevich, was 7 weeks old.

The Ukrainian 118th Police Battalion was formed on the basis of the paramilitary formation, the Bukovina Kuryan of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists-Melnikov*, established in July 1941, which took part in the mass execution of Jews at Babiy Yar.

In December 1942, the 118th Battalion was redeployed to Belarus. The main part of the battalion was stationed in the town of Pleshchenitsy, Minsk region. Although the main task of the 118th Battalion in the occupied territory of Belarus was to fight against partisans, it took part in punitive operations, during which civilians from the villages were massacred, shot or burnt alive. In Khatyn, the 118th Ukrainian Battalion acted together with thugs from the SS Special Battalion under the command of Oskar Dirlewanger.

However, according to documents now made public and made available to the agency as part of the ” Without Time Limits” project, it was the Ukrainian punishers who burned the residents of Khatyn alive and shot them without stopping to be sure.

 

* An extremist organisation banned in Russia.

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